CONFESS – Jail (2014)

*

The new wave of Swedish Sleaze gets renewed growth since the last fifteen years, and this does not seems to come to an end upon listening “Jail”, the debut CD from CONFESS.
Formed in 2008, and after a demo collection and an EP sold locally, the five piece combo is ready to take the world by assault.

When it comes to re-imagining ’80s sleaze, you have to do more than get the ‘look’ right, which, from examining the cover art of the CD, Confess surely does. You got to have the musical chops.
The ingredients are here: a racing rhythm section, sharp twin guitar leads, and snotty, sneering vocals, all wrapped up in good melodies and tight catchy hooks in arrangements and lyric (which, of course, cover the usual sordid and sexual topics of rock). In the case of Confess, think more leather Motley Crue and less spandex Poison.
In other words, Confess ‘gets it’, and on top of that they write, musically speaking, interesting songs and play awesomely well. Notable is the guitar work throughout the recording, so if you like guitar solos there’s bunches of them, while the rhythm section sounds punchy, as it should be for the genre.

Overall, Confess sounds much more polished than the gritty sleaze of Crashdiet, recalling Shotgun Messiah second, commercial era. On the other hand, Confess injects into the songs of “Jail” a strong sense of musicality and catchy (harmonized) choruses in the vein of the first Crazy Lixx.

So this is Swedish sleaze, yes, but with a lot of melodic hard rock in the veins.
Just check the bouncy “Scream”, the really good ballad “Take Aim” (escaping the usual clichés with interesting arrangements) or the poppy “Setting Sails”.
“Back to Hell” reminds me Hardcore Superstar and alikes (at this point, extremely commercial) and the groovy and melodious “Got Lucky”, including keyboards. As you see, accessible and catchy stuff.
Well, Confess do play real sleaze as well, you have the fast-for-love “Relationshit” (great title) a song really Skid Row sounding, the kickin’ “Pay Before I Go” and “Bloodstained Highway”, or the razor “Cardiac Arrest”. More Americanized are “Get Me Down” (ala G’NR 1987) and “Setting Sails”.

But these guys are not limited to a style or two: “Intervention”, the longest song here, is truly original. It’s a rocker but a bit more laid back than others. A little over four minutes in, there’s this light piano driven segue which develops into a string arrangement which, in turn, erupts with a large guitar solo.
Confess are not one trick pony, not at all, and they are very good composing songs.
Finally, the band covers Tina Turner’s hit “What’s Love Got To Do With It” giving it a nice hard rock tenor, while retaining the signature melody in the chorus.

I am little tired of the ‘new’ sleaze bands doing the same all the time, but believe me, Confess are a completely different beast. “Jail” is not a sleaze metal CD, at least more than the half of the record not.
So what you have here are mostly really melodic, stupendously arranged and played melodic hard rock songs wrapped with a sleaze patina, which in the hands of Confess works wonderfully.
You’re advised, this is really good, pretty fandamntastic I’d say.
Super Recommended.

01. Pray for the Prey
02. Relationshit
03. Scream
04. Pay Before I Go
05. Take Aim
06. Bloodstained Highway
07. Setting Sails
08. Back to Hell
09. Got Lucky
10. Cardiac Arrest
11. Get Me Down
12. Intervention (Sin & Tonic, Pt. 2)
13. What’s Love Got to Do with It

John Elliot – Vocal
Samael – Drums
Lucky – Bass
Denver – Guitar
Blomman – Guitar

Pre-Order:
www.yourcd.it/confess-jail.html?___store=en&___from_store=it
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