Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The lands of Scandinavian thought might not come shamefully readily to the attention of the British public when it comes to being considered the home of great Rock bands in the last thirty years. However, raw and sublime talent keeps being unearthed and especially in Rock and Metal circles keeps pinning down the British contribution of late in a near one-sided bout.
H.E.A.T were tagged into the ring in 2008 with the eponymously titled debut album release and since then have left a trail blazing across Europe, a trail fuelled by rock venom, great riffs and passionate delivery and all wrapped up in Swedish charm and with the added ability to outgun many of their contemporaries. This outgunning has been captured in full on the group’s first live album release. Live In London, and which showcases many of the songs found on the exciting 2014 album Tearing Down The Walls.
Recorded mostly at The Garage in London, the heavy weight of responsibility to the past could bear down on many a rock band and tear them apart. The abundance of history tied up between the outskirts of Whitechapel and Sheppard’s Bush and Islington and the South Bank of the River Thames at times can rival the music history that straddles the River Mersey or the natural home of Heavy Metal in the Birmingham heartlands and can be seen throughout as being a place in which bands are made or forgotten as quickly as Clive Allen’s short lived time at Arsenal Football Club.
There is potential energy and then there is the type of energy that crashes into the heart of all those that are able to witness it and in H.E.A.T’s Live In London, heat truly does resonate, it builds to the point of near explosion and the thought of molten metal, the intensity of a reactor trying to keep up with the demand of a nation that has just switched on every appliance possible.
Tracks caught live can at times hold a different value to those placed down in the confines of a studio atmosphere, the difference between cocooned sterility and anguished hopeful animation, but in songs such as A Shot of Redemption, the excellent 1000 Miles, It’s All About Tonight, The Wreckoning/Tearing Down The Walls and Mannequin Show, Eric Rivers, Jona Lee, Jimmy Jay, Crash and cerebral front man Erik Grönwall prove that live they are just as battle hardened as they are in the studio.
To perform Live In London is perhaps every band’s desire, the history, the splendour of achievement is there to be captured and harnessed, H.E.A.T frame that emotional suspense and agony in one fell swoop and it makes for a album that radiates great live music.
H.E.A.T’s Live in London is released in the U.K. on Monday 23rd February.
Ian D. Hall