LP Review: "Breaking News" by Grande Royale

Breaking News

It's my personal opinion that many people in this world hear music, especially popular rock music, with their eyes and not their ears.

Let's explore this concept a little bit.

There's a rock band on tour right now that made their name playing blues based arena rock with a side of hippy rock. The singer is a little left of center, but in the end, they were labeled heavy metal.

There's another band, who's famous for their outlandish stage get ups, make up designs, and pioneering the modern rock stage show.

This band though, sprouted out from a complete hippy rock band. Both of these bands wrote their first songs on acoustic guitars. The thing is, both of these bands are labeled heavy metal, but it's not like Ride The Lightning or Number of the Beast were written on Guild Acoustics....

Grande Royale

So, for fans of Guns'n'Roses and Kiss, here's a new band for you.

Grande Royale comes to us via Sweden's retro rock scene. There have been a great many bands that have tried to recapture the sound, the feel, and the power of early 70's hippy to arena transitional rock.

Naturally, Guns'n'Roses did it after the fact, but not far after the fact.

Grande Royale, through a retro usage of stereophonic recording and what appears to be the old tried and true method of tube amps cranked up to ten, has really recaptured this magic.

Seriously, it cannot be overstated how great this record sounds. The production is top notch even on a digital copy through tiny speakers. Just to be able to hear it on glorious vinyl through my home listening stereo is enough to put it on the vinyl must have list.

Of course, an album is all about the songs, though the sound quality is nice. Grande Royale has written ten tracks of bouncy blues based rock. Interestingly enough, producder, Nicke Andersson, was going through a Lyrnyrd Skynyrd phase when they went into the studio for Breaking News.

Frankly, there's very little Southern about this disc to my ears. The Mind creates a picture of this Swedish Black Metal Band that meets up with this retro Anddersson who can't stop listening to Free Bird and they crank this album out.

That anecdote is spun out of whole cloth, but it's funny isn't it?

Release: 8/25/17
Genre: Rock
Label: The Sign Records
Formats: LP/CD/Digital
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