The Hellacopters - By the Grace of God

Continuing with the "cleaner" side of the Hellacopters, By the Grace of God is still anther superior rock'n'roll record filled with high quality songs and lots of amazing playing!

Starting with a lonely sounding single piano note, the group explodes in with the title cut, and it's a helluva monster with catchy guitar licks, shouted "heys" and a memorable chorus - besides the prerequisite layers of guitars! I am always impressed with the quality of Nicke's songwriting and how he managed to be highly prolific and maintained variety within the genre - from the cool starts-n-stops of "All New Low" to the melodies in "Down on Freestreet" (where he makes "turn that damn thing down" a hook) to the Chuck-Berry-meets-Kiss riffs in "Better Than You" to the pop-ridden chord progression and melodies of "Carry Me Home" to the downright pretty piano work by keyboardist Anders in "Rainy Days Revisited".

"It's Good But It Just Ain't Right" is a pure r'n'r blaster and "U.Y.F.S." rivals it in intensity, but is also highly melodic. A little moodier, but with cool "hey, hey heys" and great riffs is "On Time" while "All I've Got" is another hard rocker with yet another stellar affirmation chorus ("won't - stop - give it all I got"). More of the same greatness in "Go Easy Now" before the somewhat cooly discordant (appropriately) "The Exorcist" and the album "officially" finishes with the rockin' "Pride" (with lots of wild guitar work). The CD has two bonus tracks - true punk'n'rollers, "Big Guns" and "Red Light" - and a couple of videos, as well as an electronic press kit, not to mention the fold-out CD case and booklet. Liquor and Poker Records did almost as great of a job on the packaging as the band did on the songs! Yes, I think you should own this!