Rockin' Engine
Midnight Road Rage

Midnight road rage shouldn’t bee too uncommon in traffic these considering how people tend to act, thinking that they are always correct. That usually leads to needless irritation and dumb behaviour. But I don’t think Canadian band Rockin’ Engine has made a concept album about midnight road rage; they have just given their debut album that title. And in the press material I can read that they “take pride in firing up the audience with their charismatic energy and entertaining scenes, making everyone believe that Hard Rock and Heavy Metal will never die.” I guess you can call that a noble cause, if you believe that all culture and forms of expression are worth saving for all time. But I doubt rock’n’metal will survive if it stops evolving, the ever increasing similitude we are seeing today is slowly killing the genre, it will be crushed under its own mass when the giant artists and their old fans die.

Does Rockin’ Engine offer up something that revitalise the genre? Not really, it is the same regurgitated stuff again, classic riffs, vocals, themes, chords, drums, songs, in a slightly altered guise – kind of like it has been done for decades now. This is the eighties glam/sleaze variety and it is done in accordance with the format, no real surprises. We get the songs we expect, the variation we expect and the playing time we expect – there are no alarms and no surprises. Do you know why people prefer the old stuff so much? Because the new stuff is too often like this – it offers nothing.

It isn’t too bad though; pretty okay songs with catchy choruses and decent energy. But we have heard this all before so many times and nothing sets these guys apart from anything else in the genre and that will lead to them being forgotten rather quickly – I doubt that even the nostalgic people will care about this album, some will of course but not many. They don’t make me believe that heavy metal or hardrock will never die, rather that it will die before I do – not only them of course but this album along with most other stuff I receive in my mailbox. It will never fully die of course, some will always carry the torch but it will be a lot less popular in the future than it is now.

Perhaps I read too much into the never die thing but that is what they wrote in the press material so it is natural to focus on something like that, especially when it is not possible to write anything special about the music. In the end I think that the album is nothing special and I no one will miss anything by overlooking it, I hope that they haven’t made too many CDs as I doubt that they will be very sought after. There are better albums if you want to go rockin’ in your car along the midnight roads.

HHHHHHH