THE VOID

Rikard Sjoblom, leader of the quirky eclectic retro-proggers Beardfish, who have been increasing in heaviness lately, has said he was a fan of metal. There was before the rare growl in Destined Solitaire (from eponymous album), and in the ...And the Stone Said. Now he indulges himself with several stabs at a sort of gritty proto-metal riffs. Problem is, while in Solitaire the metal was a send-up, and in the Stone it was appropriate to the segment, in the Void it comes across as strained and forced, although the riffs themselves are not half bad. The reaction is more of raised eyebrows rather than head-banging. It overstays the welcome. To me, their best stab at heaviness remains the metal/tango intro to Sleeping in Traffic.

Another half of this album is Beardfish at their usual pleasant self - a jazzy instrumental, a sad pop-rocker, an epic full of glorious melodies and vocals (the album also ends on an unexcepted but cool note with unrecognizable lo-fi country-blues). The problem is, however, that even those songs are prone to being somewhat repetitious (Seventeen Again and Ludvig and Sverker could have both be shaven by two minutes easily).

Well, kudos to Beardfish for trying on, with occasional success, new approaches, but to me The Void is their typically interesting, but least compelling album.