Band of Spice – By The Corner Of Tomorrow
Release Date: 26th March 2021
Label: Scarlet Records
Pre-Order/Pre-Save
Genre: Hard Rock, 80’s Metal.
FFO: Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Spiritual Beggars, Graveyard, Blues Pills, Avatarium.
Review By: Paul Franklin
The press release that accompanies this album starts with the line ‘Does he really need any introduction?’ Well, to be polite, the eponymous Spice is also known as Christian Sjötrand, ex-Spiritual Beggars vocalist/bassist, whilst his band are bassist Alex Sekulovski and drummer Bob Ruben.
Something else that apparently doesn’t need any introduction is openning track The Fading Spot, launching on the back of a galloping riff, before the unmistakable vocal style of Spice comes barking into life with a ferocious urgency that gives the impression he could read out your shopping list and make it sound like an incantation for summoning the apocalypse.
The goal he set himself was “..to make an album with strong influences from records like ‘Heaven and Hell’, ‘Mob Rules’, ‘Blizzard of Ozz’, those were the albums I had in mind when I wrote the songs..” With slabs of Sabbath-esque doom and crushing riffs smeared liberally across the nine tracks he seems to have hit the back of the net. Some of the tracks, the aforementioned The Fading Spot, Call Out Your Name and Cold Flames, display more of the heavy rock and searing solos associated with Spiritual Beggars. On others, most notably the broody and weighty atmospherics of Reglutina, and the mid-section of The Sharp Edge the Sabbath influence is more obviously front and centre. The title track takes the ferocious edge out of Spice’s voice and introduces an acoustic guitar to deliver a more mid-paced reflective number, whereas Midnight Blood stalls a little thanks to a mid-song psychedelic wash-out, that brings to mind early Monster Magnet, but in all honesty goes on a bit too long.
Interviews with the main man list Sabbath’s Paranoid album as another big influence for this record, and final track Rewind The Wind, is Spice heading out to roam the cosmos with his own Planet Caravan hooked up to the back of an intergalactic Ford Cortina.
In terms of spiciness we might be talking Habanero rather that the full Ghost Pepper, but if you’re a fan of any of the bands listed above, By The Corner Of Tomorrow will still give you a tingle.
(3.5 / 5)
