Album review: The Hellacopters – Overdriver

It’s quite something that Nicke Andersson, a man who started his career drumming in Swedish death metal heroes Entombed while looking like he’d just climbed out of a skip, should find himself 30 years and change later as one of rock ‘n’ rolls suavest and most effortlessly cool characters as frontman of legendary retro riffers The Hellacopters. One might say similar about The Hellacopters themselves – ultra-cool, swaggering rock that calls to mind prime ‘70s Aerosmith or the Stones, cut through with the more grubby electrifying charge of the Ramones and The Stooges.

After initially splitting in 2007, in 2022 the band returned with the killer Eyes Of Oblivion. Three years later on Overdriver, the sass, the riffs, the charm, the grease, the class and the volume are all as present and correct as ever.

Token Apologies and Don’t Let Me Bring You Down strut nonchalantly along as though this sort of thing was no more difficult than clicking your fingers, the organs of the latter offering some hint as to where Ghost’s Tobias Forge might have learned a thing or two as a youth. (I Don't Wanna Be) Just A Memory is straight from the Cheap Trick school of pop-rock choruses, as is Doomsday Daydreams, while Coming Down is how Foo Fighters might sound were they a Swedish garage rock band.

It’s all marvellous. It matters not that, if you’ve ever heard The Hellacopters or, indeed, rock ‘n’ roll before, there isn’t a single surprise to be had here. As with all the most enduring such bands – AC/DC, Ramones, Motörhead – this is not the point at all. Instead, it’s a simple, engrained thing, done by people for whom this is a natural instinct. This stuff seemingly oscllates within Nicke Andersson anyway, the sound is just what happens when you catch it on a guitar and through a mic.

In a blink-and-you’ll miss it age, such sturdy reliability is very welcome. Especially when, three decades in, The Hellacopters still perfectly embody the grimy spirit and golden glamour of rock 'n' roll at both its most low down and its most classy.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: The Struts, The Wildhearts, Cheap Trick

Overdriver is out now via Nuclear Blast