Evil Will Prevail

Hellsingland Underground

Killed By Records/Rootsy, 2012

This is one of those releases whose sweeping scope I wasn’t quite ready to process. It left me at a loss for how to best explain something familiar I was hearing for the very first time.

This CD smells like pine trees in the Summer afternoon after a hard rain. There’s swampy muck in the distance, adding age and time to the mix. It feels like being an hour inland from Georgia’s coast, salty and humid, so your clothes are plastered to your skin, and October can’t get here soon enough. This is what you want from a truly fascinating Southern rock band. Especially one from Ljusdal, Sweden.

Hellsingland Underground is a six piece Southern rock outfit from Sweden, who can stand toe to toe with any of the touring US bands of comparable ilk.  They formed in 2006 and this is their second full length release.

Everything about the band’s music has a dyed in the wool authenticity to it. There’s the elegant southern boogie number, “Midsummer’s Wreath Meltdown,” with soaring twin guitar leads which would make it feel right at home on legendary Allman Brothers Band release Brothers and Sisters.

The title track “Evil Will Prevail” sports wry Gothic sentiments Flanery O’Connor might have typed had she lived long enough. “Jesus was an Idealist/Like me when I was a communist/He was too good for people to handle/And look where it got him.”

There’s a great Dylan-ism and moment of self awareness on “They All Grew Old While I Grew Young,” when Charlie sings, “Even the King of Sweden/ Must sometimes stand naked.”

“King of Nothing”quietly contemplates taking chances in life. “In the Evening” is another Allman Brothers sort of upbeat number designed to get the pretty girls in the audience on their feet and moving purposefully. Throughout the musicianship is top shelf. Always bright, colorful and never indulgent. Throughout there’s the genial vocal delivery from singer Charlie Granberg as he reflects on the music, the women and losses which helped to shape the man who stands before us now. But there is so much more to this band than meets the eye.

Hellsingland Underground bring a fresh spin to old themes and attacks them with the enthusiasm only an outsider could truly bring to the form. This feels like much more than mimicry. The Southerness, all of it; its playful swagger, the muscular drive and by turns the bands graceful elan, feels and sounds authentic. This wouldn’t be anymore red clay real if it came from Itchnatuckee or Macon.

If this was 1974, there’d be a bidding war between MCA and Capricorn to sign them. Hellsingland Underground would be opening for Skynyrd and Marshall Tucker, and making the headliners work to earn their guarantee. They are that good. But it’s 2013. Time to make them underground superstars and work up from there.