Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Bodyguerra
Label: Dust On The Tracks
Release: 2013
Runtime: 71:52
Rating: 2.5/5
Bodyguerra are a German band from the city of Münster who crank out classic heavy metal, or let’s just call it heavy rock. Their story goes all the way back to 1979, but a string of circumstances kept them from getting the wider music crowd to notice them in the eighties, and from putting their material out on an actual album. Their guiding principle at every turn is crafting punchy lead motifs with a high degree of catchiness. So they keep things infectiously musical from start to finish.
The guys obviously had to grow up into grown men first, and so they’ve finally managed to pull their studio debut together. For this fresh run at a career, the band picked a concept that stretches across the music. It’s a »psychogram of death«. Know the story of Dr. Harold Frederick Shipman? The guy was a doctor, and? Also a junkie. A serious addict. He was a serial killer. He’s suspected of murdering around 250 of his patients in total, mostly older women. He did most of his killing while on official duty in the town of Hyde, near Manchester in Britain. The man was finally caught entirely by chance. They managed to prove »only« 15 murders and sentenced him to life in prison. The doctor killed himself in prison on January 13, 2004. And that’s also the concept of the album »Freddy… Nothing As It Seems«.
There’s almost 72 minutes of music. That’s a ton for a debut. And a full 14 tracks. The swings in quality are all the more glaring. All of this reads as a pretty ambitious starting point. The concept has clearly taken hold of the band. In all their zeal and enthusiasm, Bodyguerra naturally wanted to give their listeners their creative maximum. Even though the guys are good musicians, the genericness and the weight of clichés are what drain the interest out of this record, despite a few clever ideas that call for committed, carefully thought-out arranging.
The production, as you’d expect, nails a retro sound. The record is deliberately not sonically polished and has a somewhat raw sound, which is welcome of course, since it adds to the liveliness and dynamics of the recording. Rainbow, Wishbone Ash, UFO,… you can feel the influence of these pioneering rock bands and you can’t miss it. But it’s exactly this ambition and the urge to serve up the best you’ve got that sometimes leads the band into motifs that get repeated decidedly too many times, and that also sound like stuff you’ve already heard.
Another problem for the band is the nondescript, uncharismatic vocal, which on top of everything doesn’t sound convincing in English. You can tell in a second that the vocal is »German«. So the English falls below the required quality bar. That’s one more distracting factor. Given the sweeping scale of some of the arrangements, you miss a denser wall of sound in the background (backing the vocal). The arrangements lack a beefier mass of guitars, and keyboards would by no means be superfluous. At least an imitation of a Hammond sound. Adding one more guitar would hugely liven up the dynamics of the songs!
But the guys are obviously sentimental nostalgics playing the old-school studio authenticity card, yet this time it just doesn’t catch fire. There are simply too many clichés that remind you now of one legendary rock band, now of another. Let’s hope the band sheds them as its career goes on and starts developing more of a voice of its own. Above all, it has to keep pace with the times when it comes to hitting satisfactory sonic standards in the production itself, which the technological advances of the last twenty years have spoiled us with. And, of course, the singing absolutely must be fixed in terms of using proper English.
Lineup
Daniel Seebass – vocals
Guido Stöcker – guitar
Nils Middelhauve – bass guitar
Hermann Focke – drums
Production
Bodyguerra
Tracklist
1. 21 Market Street (Radio Edit) (3:41)
2. Dr. Death (4:45)
3. Castle in the Dark (7:10)
4. Vera (5:53)
5. Spin the Needle (4:24)
6. Path to Eden (3:49)
7. The Retreat (4:17)
8. I Wanted All (4:50)
9. 21 Market Street (4:46)
10. No Proof for Innocence (5:53)
11. Smoke Without a Fire (4:30)
12. In the End (4:55)
13. Last Transfer (5:56)
14. Coming Home (6:56)
