Nu Metal. Love it? Hate it?
Hold that thought.
This year the Finnish “borgarcore” band Bob Malmström are celebrating their tenth anniversary, and in addition to popping champagne and blowing out candles they’ve chosen to commemorate the occasion by releasing a series of three split 7″ vinyl records. The first of those, Sälj Åland, is with the long-running Finnish melodic hardcore band The Enchained (whose history extends back to 1997). Bob Malmström‘s side of the split includes two tracks, and today we’re spreading the word about the band’s video for the title track.
Bob Malmström seem to enjoy raising eyebrows and ruffling feathers, but not by hailing Satan, growling about viscera and maggots, or railing about capitalist oppression (none of which raises many eyebrows any more). Instead, even though the band’s roots are in hardcore punk, they have taken delight since 2010 in jabbing their fingers into the eyes of standard “against the system” punk mentality by celebrating the benefits of Dom Perignon, lap dances by pretty girls, fast cars, and favorable swings in the stock markets. I mean, take another look at the cover art for Bob Malmström‘s songs on this new split.
Perhaps such waywardness was to be expected from a group of Swedish-speaking Finns, a community who seem to be regarded as elitist and have been a common target for populist Swedish politicians for years.
But of course you knew all that, because of course you’ve been religiously following NCS since at least December 2011, which was when I first wrote about Bob Malmström — and have further written about them every time they’ve released new music since then (if you’ve been living under a rock, but not our rock, you can catch up on all those articles and all that music right here).
Part of the reason why I’ve been following them so loyally is that their music itself has has been unconventional, and usually surprising in one way or another. Given their general irreverence and lack of political correctness, I guess it’s not shocking that they would record a Nu Metal song for this split with The Enchained.
The rapper in “Sälj Åland” goes by the name JAG, and he ejects the rhymes with increasing fieriness as Bob Malmström bring out some heaviness behind him with rumbling bass, neck-cracking drums, grim, ringing chords, and eventually a vibrant melodic pulse and punch. But it might go too far to call the song Nu Metal, because the chorus has a distinctive punk feel as everyone joins in raucously singing together. The song also soars to glorious heights (as the camera in the video soars above the streets of Helsinki) — and then changes again, through a piano melody paired with jittery electronics, followed by solemn choral voices in the finale.
So yeah, not entirely Nu Metal, to say the least. And by the way, the song title translates to “Sell Åland”, Åland being an autonomous archipelago with an interesting history that lies between Sweden and Finland and is the only monolingually Swedish-speaking region in Finland.
The music video was recently filmed in the Helsinki winter by Ola Salminen and Heikki Kosomaa.
The Enchained also released a video for one of their songs on the split — “It’s Time To Go” — and we’ve included that one below as well.
We mentioned at the outset that Bob Malmström would be releasing three splits, so two more will follow this one with The Enchained. There will be two-month intervals between them. The next one will be with Tvärnitad from Västerås, Sweden (and will be released in April), and the final one will pair Bob Malmström with Dispyt from Finland (for release in June). There’s also a wooden box set that includes all three splits, if it hasn’t sold out already.
All three splits include guest artists. On the second split Anni Lötjönen from Huora appears on “Jag älskar att supa”, and on the third split Jonas Ekroos from Tvärnitad gives his voice to “Helsingfors borgarmangel”. Teemu Aalto, known for his work with Insomnium and Omnium Gatherum, was the producer.
The split with The Enchained, which includes two songs by each band, is currently available digitally on Bandcamp (each band has their tracks up on their own pages, and we’ve included the streams below). For info about the vinyl editions, check the Facebook links below.
STREAM / DOWNLOAD:
https://bobmalmstrom.bandcamp.com/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/695VuzFQDeJ350qtWhi138
http://theenchained.bandcamp.com
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6U5LDKTy4EaSMvJwwISxz1
BOB MALMSTRÖM:
https://www.facebook.com/BobMalmstrom/
THE ENCHAINED:
https://www.facebook.com/theenchained/