Swedish vocals, instrumental
International relevance: ***
If a band loses its most important
member and radically changes the musical style, is it still the same
band?
Is ”Vi drar vidare” really a
Kebnekajse album?
Kenny Håkansson, guitarist par excellence, left the band after ”Elefanten” and that should have
been the end of the once godlike Kebnekajse, but instead they signed
to Mercury for one more album. Trying to fill the void Håkansson left gaping galaxy wide, Mats Glenngård stepped in as the main songwriter and
turned the band into some kind of fusion/symph rock amalgam.
A Kaipa parody? A Jean-Luc Ponty charade? Something even worse?
Call it what you will, this album drags
Kebnekajse's name in the dirt and then drags it back again twice as
hard. I feel genuinely sorry for Kenny Håkansson who had to see this
happen to his former band. And I feel sorry for myself and every
other Kebnekajse fan that this even exists. It hurts.
People told me long before I had heard the album that it was bad, but crikey! I couldn't imagine just how bad it actually is. And it does not get better over time. Had it been a Coste Apetrea or a Kornet
album, then it might have been excellent. Sort of. But Kebnekajse's
name's on that catastrophic cover, in large letters, and that makes ”Vi drar
vidare” an insult. No more, no less.
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