Mean Streak
Blind Faith

“Mean Streak is a Swedish metal band who manages the legacy of traditional heavy metal. The band was formed in 2008 by Peter Andersson. The general idea was (and still is) to write classic metal straight from the heart.” This is a quote from the press sheet and it sure is a noble idea to write from the heart, but classic metal straight from the heart always sound the same. And Mean Streak is no exception to this as they make typical heavy metal done by millions of bands before them, and they have nothing that sets them apart from the rest in the genre. Sure they will be liked by metal guys who will buy the album and play it once, place it in a shelf never to play it again – I just can’t help but thinking that they would do better to tour the world doing covers of hit songs from the bigger bands in the genre. The potential fans of these bands like those songs better than they will ever like anything Mean Streak can put together.

Their music is typical classic heavy metal; the term déjà vu comes to mind very often. The songs are catchy, the vocalist the boring metal stereotype and the sound is a modern take on eighties heavy metal, nothing special. I think that they have borrowed a lot from their idols, be it consciously or unconsciously but every song sounds like it has been done by someone else before. One could simply point out that if you have heard bands like Iron Maiden, Helloween, Saxon or anything like that you will know how this album sounds. It sounds like something made from the standard blueprints for the genre, and originality is not anything anyone will think of when listening to this album.

Generic is a word that comes to mind when I listen to this album, and I find it hard to really bother with the songs and the content of the thing, as it is so generic that it hits me like a bad case of migraine. With a massive headache I try to think of something not pointless to write about an album that to me is very pointless. What’s the point? Is the question I return to over and over and over and over and over again when I listen to this album that feels repetitive two minutes into it. I am not impressed, and I doubt that anyone else will really be impressed either. But fans of power metal will probably find it rather appealing even though they will forget it fast. As a critic it is still very difficult to see the point of it even though it may not be bad. But no matter which way you look at it, you can’t in good conscience describe this as having even the tiniest fraction of creativity.

While this album might be somewhat appealing to fans of the genre I cannot really recommend to anyone to buy this album because I doubt that anyone will play it more than once or twice before putting it away in a shelf for it to be forgotten forever. They really need to stop copying and find some creativity before they can be relevant. The ending might be a tad mean to the band but it is what I think: Blind Faith is like any other blind faith, pointless and extremely boring.

HHHHHHH