Review, DareDevil Dec 30 1999



HALF MAN - The complete field guide for cynics

Half man and full blues

This four-piece from Sweden released a real cool long-player with 12 songs (about 52 minutes). All songs have a strong blues-basement. But often you are surprised by strange breaks. But there are also heavier songs to be found on the CD which really rock, erg. INSANE.

NOWHERE LEADING ROAD has a beautiful acoustic guitar intro followed by a huge monster-riff leading into a great heavy song. Also worth to be mentioned is the song HARDLY WAIT - fantastic cover version (P.J. Harvey is god!!!!!!)

Though almost each song is blues influenced there is no single boring minute to be found, also because the band plays very tight and one can hear that they are together since 1990 (originally started in 1986) and played hundreds of gigs. Musically and technically everything sounds very professional.

WHEN THE TRAIN COMES BACK shows the great potential J. Bengtsson has in his voice. Very powerful but also smooth vocal performance, full of feelings. Often the vocals remind me of some black blues singers - really great. Their style is often described as heavy psychedelic blues and I can`t add anything to that.

If you enjoy listening to bluesy tunes you will love this professional output of spacy heavy blues.

by Peter, DareDevil Magazine