Band : House Of Heavy
Album title : House Of Heavy
Label : Spiritual Beast
Distributor : Spiritual Beast - Connecting Music - Music Buy Mail - Rough Trade Benelux.
Release Date : 06/09/2009
Release : CD

House Of heavy is a collaboration between Henrik Lundberg and Mattias Wellhag.  Lundberg  you might know from Swedish band Masquerade, who released 3 cd's in Japan, and another studio album outside Japan on  Metal Blade Records.

Masquerade pretty much having fallen asleep, Henrik  kept on creating some music at home. Mattias at about the same time was with Staitjackets, a band form Mellerud - Sweden.  The two having met during a studio session , the became good friends, and at some point Henrik joined Straitjackets to record an album, that never got finished.
At some time the two of them started playing together again, and out of that House Of Heavy was born.

Stylewise I would compare them to Circle II Circle, they've got the same raw energy and powerful guitar riffs as them.  There's also a Def Leppard  cover on the album, being "Billy's got a gun".  Compared to the original it's not as good, but how many times did you ever find a cover version better than the original?  They've pretty much left out the keyboards, and of course having played the original version over and over again, it's damn hard to equal the vocal prowess of Joe Elliot, but still they've done a fine job.

85/100

Erik Morren.