Sandness
Play Your Part

Sandness’ new album has a quite cool and striking artwork. It makes me think of a rocked-up version of Hamlet, or perhaps a stage performance of Indiana Jones in a bit of a rocked-up shape as well. Behind this cover hides of course the fourth album of an Italian trio that begun its journey in 2008 and released their first EP on their own in 2010. Play Your Part is what the new album is called, and it features two lead singers, something that could be considered a bit different.

It is a good strategy for the dynamics to use dual singers as it adds more depth in the vocal department, for Sandness I think the singers are a little too similar for it to be as effective as it could be. The singers are both good and perform their tasks at a high quality. The music they perform is of the sleazy rock variety, catchy, quite melodic, very inspired by the eighties, and Sandness doesn’t really try to freshen it up to a more modern standard. So, after hearing the first minutes of this album I have a good idea how it will sound, and I am not surprised when it all ends. It is a rather predictable album, and it doesn’t give a sense of novelty.

I like this album, not only does it look good, the songs are also good. The problem I find is the one that so many albums have, the lack of novelty will make it stand in a shelf not really doing much at all. This is not because it is bad but because you will quickly notice that the albums that you already have in this genre are better to listen to. But it is an enjoyable album to listen to for a while, until that realisation and when it ends up in the shelf or whatever. I am not saying that Sandness will be a waste of money but I have about two full boxes with albums that are as good or better than Play Your Part that I never ever play, I haven’t even opened the boxes since putting the records there, and they are all filled with good albums but not that good apparently – many of them better than Play Your Part.

If you like the genre you might like what you get on Play Your Part, Sandness clearly know how to craft catchy rock songs and do it well. The problem is that Sandness aren’t exactly alone in knowing this, and the question is what makes them more interesting than all those other bands that also know this craft. My answer to that is that I can’t really find anything.

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