Hey, as an old fan of Purple, Sabbath, Zeppelin, Whitesnake and later Skidrow and to some extend Mötley Crüe, I’m always game for a bit of hardrock although I suppose I in some ways moved on to other and oftentimes harder territories.

Swedish outfit MarysCreek have decided to label themselves hardrock. This is for the most part true of their debut release ‘Some Kind of Hate’. The first six songs are pure hardrock the good old fashioned way – with a great production and nice, fat sound. Mats Nilsson’s voice is excellent, and the guitar work is definitely decent.

Now, come track seven, something odd happens. MarysCreek decide for some reason to turn themselves into an Alice In Chains tribute band. It is almost eerie how close Nilsson comes to sounding like the late Layne Staley and that, by any measure is cool…but, but what about the context? The AIC sound goes on for two or three songs before the Swedes slowly pull back the claws and become a hardrock band again.

This is a band with a huge potential and clearly lots of skills. But their sophomore release is not as powerful as one could wish for as a confusion of inspirational sources muddle up things.

The next one will be really good, I’m sure.