HEAVY LOAD – Full Speed At High Level (Heavy Sound, 1978)

English vocals
 International relevance: *

Formed in 1976 as a trio by brothers Ragne and Styrbjörn Wahlquist, it wasn't until the early 80's that Stockholm band Heavy Load had their real breakthrough – as a quartet – championed by Sweden's then only high profile heavy metal journalist Anders Tengner. Albums ”Death Or Glory” and ”Stronger Than Dirt” – along with busy gigging – made them into Sweden's first prominent contribution to the ever growing heavy metal scene. With their old Norse aesthetics, they were also pioneers of what was to become known as the nebulous Viking metal style, predating even Bathory with a couple of years.

However, when ”Death Or Glory” was released in 1982, they already had one album out. Released as early as in 1978, ”Full Speed At High Level” was self-financed with support from Stockholm hard rock shop Heavy Sound who put it out on its shortlived imprint bearing the same name as the shop. Falling somewhere between 70's hard rock and the not yet fully developed heavy metal, ”Full Speed At High Level” not only suffers from being insufficiently self-produced, but worse: inexperienced songwriting and amateurish playing. Ragne Wahlquist's vocals are laughably bad, weak and screechy, much like the guitars actually. The drums (handled by Styrbjörn Wahlquist) try so hard to be powerful, but due to the inferior production, it sounds is if they never quite gel with the rest of the music. Dan Molén's bass is perfectly audible though, flipflopflapping about in the midrange. It takes only one listen to ”Full Speed At High Level” to understand why Heavy Load was once dubbed Sweden's very own Spinal Tap.

The best tracks, if you can find anything here worthy of that description, are also the two most rooted in prog, the rambling, twelve-minute ”Storm” and ”Caroline”, which could have been moody with a producer without a broken hearing aid.

Heavy Load's later albums aren't good either, but at least the band hade obtained some clue of what they were doing by then. Here they just don't know squat. ”Full Speed At High Level” flaps and flaps like a psychotic turkey, never going anywhere but right down to the ground. It's easy to poke fun at this meltdown as the ambitions are so high and the results are so low, but honestly, it deserves no better than being laughed at – hard. It's more comedy than anything else, and a definite must-hear for fans of grand fails.

Full album