Grande Royale – Welcome to Grime Town
Release Date: 24th March 2023
Label: The Sign Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Hard Rock, Garage Rock.
FFO: The Offsrping, Hellacopters, Rokets, The Drippers.
Review By: Paul Franklin
Fulfilling the promise made by the title of their last album (2021’s Carry On) Swedish four-piece Grande Royale are back with 12 more high energy cuts of their signature sound – straight forward, no-nonsense Scandinavian classic/garage rock.
Although Grime Town might sound like a place as appealing to visit as Luton (recently voted the worst place in the UK to live) on a wet Monday morning, the band have set up their welcome stall on the outskirts of town with a knee-deep, shag pile red carpet, reams of luridly coloured bunting, and a cache of weapons-grade fireworks in order to receive you with more wild-eyed enthusiasm than a reality TV star getting an invite to an Oscars after party. The opening twin salvo of Tell Me and Status Doom are perfect, both hitting hard and fast directly to the ‘feel good’ centres of your brain. The former a storming example of classic hard rock, the latter with a dirtier garage rock sound.
With vocal performances from every member of the band, including new guitarist Calle Rydberg, Welcome to Grime Town features more layers and depth than you might expect from an album in this genre. Plus, we get a couple of guest appearances, Helen Vilsson provides lead vocals on the preposterously catchy Run Officer Run, whilst Mattias Rydell pops up to unleash a superb solo on the atmospheric Augury, which sounds for all the world like The Reverend Horton Heat jamming with The Addams Family.
OK, let’s get to the point. Welcome to Grime Town is not going to win any prizes for originality, nor is it going to change the face of rock music as we know it. But then again, that was never the intention. This is not an album that explores the complexities and vagaries of human emotion or exposes the inequalities and ambivalence in modern society. This is an album that explores the contents of the fridge in the off license and exposes its arse out the car window on the way home. It’s fun with a capital Fuck U.
(4 / 5)
