Full Speed at High Level

Ah, yes. Heavy Load. The band that is responsible for the Swedish heavy metal movement and the band that acted as the catalyst for what would later be known as the subgenres of nordic metal and viking metal. To me, this album started the career of one of the best and most influential bands that would inspire me as a guitar player and songwriter.

For starters, the production is about what you'd expect. Considering this album was self-produced by Ragne and
Styrbjörn Wahlquist, it holds up well to other heavier albums of the same year: Stained Class by Judas Priest, Long Live Rock 'n' Roll by Rainbow, Obsession by UFO, etc, etc. The guitar tones are really solid on the rhythm tracks and really only fall flat during solos, the drums are tight, and the bass stays out of the way but can still be heard during melody breaks. Yes, Heavy Load would go on to make two of the best Swedish metal albums of all time 4 years down the road, but this album was a jumping-off point for a young ambitious band; a band that would greatly improve going forward.

In truth, the vocal work is really the only thing that bugs me about this album. Styrbjörn didn't sing a lick on this album, Eddy Malm wasn't in the band yet, and Ragne was not a well-developed singer at this point. Sure, he could technically "sing" but not nearly as well as he would later on. His range at this time was very weak, with his vocals being more nasally and flat. He does, however, have great vocals on some songs, especially Caroline, Midnight Crawler, and Son of the Northern Light.

Now for the instrumentation. The riffs? Killer. The drumming and basslines? Killer. The vocals? Eh, we already covered that but, hey, they're not terrific but also not terrible. The solos? Mediocre. What more can I say? With the incredible potential of a song like Storm with that heavy, bluesy, Deep Purple-esque riffing and songwriting, the extended (and probably improvised) guitar solo is sometimes a chore to sit through. Yes, Ragne throws out some great licks during it here and there, but for a song that's structured as an epic, there isn't a whole lot to rejoice over.

For the most part, the solos aren't that great. If you're here for guitar goodies, focus on the riffs. Don't worry about the solos because you've got a fast train comin' if this is the first Heavy Load album you're hearing. But I digress.

Well, what about the lyrical content? Yes, the classic Swedish-English songwriting style of Heavy Load is still very present on this album. With songs like Full Speed at High Level and In Two Minds, the possible mistranslations are funny to listen to. Even with that, the epicness and heavy ancestral influences in their songwriting are still there. The lyrics for Storm and Son of the Northern Light especially showcase good songwriting abilities that would only increase as time went on.

Bonus points for the really cool album cover!

In short, solid album, but Heavy Load would take 4 years to release another full-length, and, my God, would it show a massive alteration in their style, sound, and overall musicianship.

While it's sad that more people likely know of Sweden's Heavy Load through the HammerFall cover of "Running With the Devil" than through any quality time spent with the actual originals, I feel like the time is right for a renaissance of interest in bands like this, who were active by the time the dust alighted on the 70s and deserved quite a lot more attention than was ever granted them. Nostalgia is in full bloom of late, with countless bands attempting to mimic ever more obscure forebears, so why half ass it? Let's skip the 80s and head straight to the roots with this 1978 debut Full Speed at High Level, and album that might have knocked elbows with oldies like Stained Class or Never Say Die! had the winds of fate favored their choice in the treacherously obscure (self-issued) Heavy Sound imprint and given them a single worth its salt.

After all, we're talking about what is arguably the first Swedish heavy metal album, not an insignificant career footnote when one takes into consideration the massive wealth of bands that have exploded from that country, dominating numerous sub-genres in ensuing decades of accelerated extremity. Siblings Ragne and Styrbjörn Wahlquist formed the band in '76 and clearly drew upon the popular sounds of the day, so it's not surprising that the writing often hovers on the margin between the hard rock sounds of KISS, Led Zeppelin or the Scorpions, but there's also a heavier edge redolent of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Judas Priest to the point that Full Speed at High Level might be seen by some as somewhat of an also-ran, if not for the general novelty of the sound and the distinct timbre of Ragne's vocals; the latter of which ironically provides a crippling detriment to this album's potential success, if not an absolute obstacle to its appreciation.

The riffs on the record tend towards memorable rocking, in particular the driving Priest-like "Full Speed at High Level" or the punctuated grooves of "In Two Minds" or "Midnight Crawler", and as early as this debut they were pulling off spicy dual melodies and psychedelic atmosphere worthy of darker 60s or 70s prog rock influences. The third member of this power trio, and their second bassist, Dan Molén would appear only on this record, but he's got a plunky tone to his lines that creates an almost danceable mood to the more serious strain of the guitar licks. But probably my favorite performance here is by drummer Styrbjörn who proves himself a dynamic and skilled rhythm keeper with a sense for dramatic fills and grooves. Heavy Load was unquestionably ambitious here. From the "Barracuda" goes surf rock inauguration of "Moonlight Spell" to the synthesized proto prog-metal epic "Caroline", to the 11 and a half minute leviathan "Storm" which might best be categorized as a Swedish "War Pigs" with its Iommi phrasings, no two songs sound quite alike and that plays to the record's infinite refreshment.

Unfortunately, the vocal performance on the album all but ruins it for me. Strained, unsettling and very often slovenly, Ragne doesn't seem to have the range or the talent for structuring individual lines to really sell the hooks here. I'd compare him to a lower range Osbourne or Rob Halford dowsed in a minute reduction of Robert Plant's whine, with an undeniably dark edge to his style that would later transform into a more potent and polished tone. While I can forgive the guy's obvious accent to a degree (often I find such a thing an advantage), the delivery through numbers like "In Two Minds", "Rock 'n' Roll Freak" or even the title track opener feels forced, frivolous and all over the board. Not to the extent that it entirely destroys the atmosphere of the album, because there's some thriving, theatrical charisma about Ragne despite his faults, but enough that I've just never been able to enjoy it as much as their later full-lengths.

I should also note that Full Speed at High Level features one of the premiere 'Viking metal' tunes of the 70s. Perhaps a pale shadow of Led Zeppelin's titanic "Immigrant Song", but certainly worthy of Canadian Thor and well ahead of Germans Faithful Breath who would adopt that whole image around the dawn of the 80s. "Son of the Northern Light" is far one of the heaviest and most memorable pieces here, not only for the feel good grooves in the faster paced riffing (at least on this album), but the explicit Christian stomping Nordic worship. Pretty intense for its day, when Quorthon was just hitting puberty and Venom had yet to punch their tickets to Eternal Damnation. Alongside "Full Speed..." and "Midnight Crawler" this is one of the tracks I've always found myself returning to, even if the 1982 sophomore Death or Glory takes precedence whenever I feel the need to scratch this particular, archaic itch.

In summation, Heavy Load's debut is a decent piece tempered by variation and personality, but the limited distribution and the flimsy vocals just weren't doing the music any favors. We're not talking "Exciter" or "Saints in Hell" here, but it flows well enough through its colorful cover art and compositional contrasts to appease anyone with an interest in such formative sounds. Fans of harder 70s music with clear psychedelic and bluesy overtones would do well to at least check this out, though the later efforts are admittedly more robust and distinct.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

“…you fight so hard to reach your heaven, nevertheless you’ll end in hell…”

“These guys...really kinda suck,” was my brother’s initial reaction to Heavy Load’s pre-war debut, an off-hand, eavesdropped comment made while doing laundry in the next room, and the funny little smirk he wore turned mine into a laugh. Normally I would’ve felt those few minutes he spent lingering there shouldn’t have validated his judgement, but you really don’t have to sniff any farther than Ragne Wahlquist’s vocals that wobble, waver, and ultimately unravel before your ears. A quick-to-dismiss comment, sure, but he was just as ‘kinda’ right. No, he didn’t know the year the disc was hatched, nor did he know of its cellar-pressed status, or its unlikely origin, all of which matter when dissecting an album that looked out over the bow of its ship and thought it saw land way out the distance, yet decided to break ground right there in the ocean floor and didn’t have the first guess it was getting wet.

While not a great album by any stretch of what defines ‘greatness’, I can at least sit here just a little mystified at how a three-piece from Abba country pulled this off. In 1978. Sure, there was punk in Sweden, somewhere, and no I’m not going to sling some diatribe about what was going on that year because by Ymir’s sleigh, there isn’t much I’ve heard from that yawn of a year that’s as funny, fresh, and fatalistic as what the Wahlquist brothers scraped from their collective brainpan, and I’ll tell ya why.

Full Speed at High Level spans years. It could’ve been released as late as ’82 and wouldn’t have sounded out of place, yet there’s stuff on here that could’ve found a home four years earlier. And it’s all intertwined with a strange and innocent intention that, to my mind, attempted to create something over the top without beheading the thing altogether with wayward abandon. Regardless, eight tracks shiver with a hard rock din that’s part isolation, part experimentation, and part lust for a style that’s grown with them like a schoolyard buddy, to me an album spiritually reminiscent of the 1971 eccentric one-off from countrymates Asoka, or more closely, the ‘73 semi-screwy iceball from Iceland’s favorite snowplows, Icecross. Meanwhile there’s this unprescribed pre-metal daydream going on, a floating Euro-metal spirit that anxiously waves us toward a place called England about two years into the future. FSAHL, with its rickety musical foundation, bottomless mix, endearing amateur nativity, and inevitable collision of styles, just sounds like an ‘80s album, and that’s the disc’s big picture.

You want that bouncy ‘feel good’ ode to rock (with clandestine hand-clapping) to get the joint shaking? It’s here, saluting. You want that even more commercially rock-thrown song that’ll never smell the wind of radio success? It’s here, dreaming. How about that melancholy power ballad with the long heartfelt solo that whispers harshly to your girl in the moonlight? It’s here, warbling. Something blues-driven, complete with a lengthy unexpected interlude that’ll make non-blues enthusiasts want to wilt? It’s here, fighting for survival. But these rather unremarkable characteristics justify the decade the album lives in, which isn’t exactly a feat of strength. It’s the decade Heavy Load can’t see (but foretell anyway) that makes the lp’s autumn jacket of browns and oranges a more likable offense.

However unsteady and inexpert, you’ll find many a riff and shred of the nwobhm/Euro style here, fueled by inexperienced eagerness - that wide-eyed enthusiasm and appeal of doing something that, whether it’s new or not, makes you feel golden on the inside, and is why some of these rhythms and choruses actually hit the edge of epic. Then there’s the chronically off-key and wrong-for-the-job singer who somehow wins you over anyway. Probably because he’s trying like hell and it’s damn hard not to notice, like with many of the fresh-faced ‘80s style. Hell, even some better-than-borderline speed metal rips a shirt flexing here (and I know what speed metal sounds like).

The brothers Wahlquist – vocals, guitars, keyboards, and drums – are the ship’s manpower, smearing blister blood on every oar except Dan Molen’s bass, a suitable and seemingly confident guy who sits nearer the vessel’s front thanks to the natural three-piece-ism of a lone guitarist and maybe an eight-track mix that lost the extra guitar track overboard. Collectively they’re green but durable enough, lead by a guitarist that can adequately entertain a solo and despite a set of pipes - oh Ragne’s poor deaf n’ dumb voice - way up front in the mix…let’s just say we’re all thrilled there’s no near-a cappella ala Candlemass’ “Darkness in Paradise” stinking up his output further. I said something about being won over. Yeah, Ragne, while indeed precarious and very off-Broadway (and the accent doesn’t help), can be a fervent singer, bringing goofily fired-up ire to a few songs’ tables (the lyrical blurb above gets some of that glory), often adding to whatever epicness this album manages to unsheathe, and is the main reason I find myself smirking whenever this thing takes a whirl.

A writer who can’t quite convey his messages struggles with many of these lyrics, most of them quasi-mystical ideas rambling to the point of ambiguity, though less surreal elegies are (tremblingly) crooned about rock n’ roll, heartache, anti-religion, and finally what is often the popular belief (of those who know this lp even exists), Viking lore, which there is very little. Funny thing is that within this lyrical confusion, the lopsided toddler steps of poetics can be heard trying to jog down a dimly-lit corridor, though proof of this doesn’t come from the two serrated excerpts above and below.

A term like ‘ahead of their/its time’ gets bounced around quite a bit in music, often a bit too freely, but here I believe it is truth. It’s really hard to thoroughly dislike this, being just a little too heartwarming and unwittingly comical, but like my bro said, it inevitably kinda sucks.

For some reason I always trip all over this poor lp’s title, wanting to call it either High Speed at Full Volume or Full Volume at High Speed even though I’ve had it for about seven years now. (ed. - and somehow another eleven years still hasn't drilled it into my brain).

“…the pope in his blood will crawl, Jesus' head is going to roll. The Christian warriors raped the earth, and I've been crying since my birth…”

Heavy Load is a lost gem in heavy metal and a definate rare but rewarding find for a metalhead. Hailing from Sweden and debuting in 1978 - this is a band that played epic heavy metal before the bigger bands such as Manowar,Manilla Road and Cirith Ungol took the forefather title. Full Speed At High Level is a must buy for all epic/heavy or power metal fanatics.

Full Speed At High Level is essentially a primitive Manowar, except for the vocals, which are not as high as Eric Adams but more of a semi-motorhead style. Lyrics here and themes are based mostly on viking mythology, fantasy and barbarians or warfare. The music being very anthemic heavy metal, very epic at parts like Manilla Road and yet still having the traditional heavy metal sound in most places. The only criticism to be made is the overall rawness of this cd, indeed very similar to Manilla Road's debut Invasion, but you can understand how bands start off and improve the quality of their music as they progress - which is exactly what Heavy Load does with their later releases Death and Glory and Stonger than Evil.


Overall 95/100, yes i am rating this high, simply because it's bloody good!