Velvet Insane, a Scandinavian rock band, heads into this new year with a debut album which they named after themselves. “Velvet Insane” is compilation of 10 songs recorded in Sweden during the last year. The production quality of the record is high and the collective band performances are top notch. All songs are sung in English and their music is impressively international. From a land normally associated with ice and snow this crazy little quartet has come up with some pretty hot sounds. Traces of The Hellacopters, another Swedish band, can clearly be heard buried in Velvet Insane’s garage rock sound. While some roughness around the edges is detectable there’s enough applied polish that the final finish shines. Hey, come on now, isn’t that what commercial rock and roll is really all about at the end of the day" I, for one, believe it is indeed. Comprised of singer, Jonas Eriksson, guitarist, Jesper Lindgren, bassist, Niklas Henriksson, and drumer, Tobias Reimbertsson, Velvet Insane’s four members mesh like a well oiled machine on overdrive. Case in point is the opening track titled “Break Out of Eden”. It leads off with a brief, galloping, solo snare drum roll which the guitarist slides into like a running sliding into home plate for the winning run of the final World Series game. Before the umpire can make the call and the fans in the stands can rise to cheer the bassist begins to form a tight little counterpoint pattern with his band mates. By the time they arrive at the eighth measure in the singer is laying down a choppy melody within the verse. The melody reaches its stride as they get to the chorus of “Break Out of Eden” and their frantic front man changes up the phrasing with some drawn out sustained syllables of each words he sings.
