Artist: HOUSE OF SHAKIRA
Album: RETOXED (CD)

Year: 2007
Media type: CD

Swedish melodic rockers House Of Shakira are back “Retoxed” and ready to freshen up the melodic rock scene with their potent trademark blend of lush vocals and contagious musical hooks. The bands trademark melodies and vocals lines are here “Retoxed” stronger than ever with the music created to support the vocals and carry the lyrics to the listener. Not just content with working the main vocal melody the band have taken great care to ensure the background musical and vocal melodies are there to support the bands trademark vocals, the band call this the “Abba inspiration”. The new freshness is attributed to the band being more positive than ever and this is reflected in the feel of the 11 tracks.

On the albums direction guitarist Anders Lundstrom states, “It seems like for every record we twist our idea of making music a notch. Not much, but still there is a difference through all our releases. We never got trapped doing a record that followed the trend of the day, and the return to the “original sound” of the band. We’ve just progressed and followed what happened in our lives. This is a pretty happy record and that reflects the period of the band and the member’s life’s”.

“Retoxed” freshness is also attributed by the band to them going back to writing as a collective unit (as they did on their melodic rock classic debut “Lint”) in the rehearsal studio instead of 5 musicians working individually on ideas as they had done for their previous 2 albums. The band state, “The album wrote itself when we finally agreed on how we were going to write this one”. Not only was the working practice influenced by the band going back to the “Lint” days, the band also revisited what made them inspired back then and what has happened in their life’s since to add a new perspective. This coupled with the bands continued ambition of writing a perfect song spawned the production writing sessions for what is now “Retoxed”.

Anyone expecting a remake of “Lint” will be surprised to hear the fresh new vigour prevalent in the bands music and House Of Shakira are ready to bring onboard a new generation of melodic rock lovers worldwide and hit the road in support of the new release.

TRACKLIST:

01. Retox
02. Small Town
03. No Faith
04. Crazy But No Fool
05. Life And Death
06. Gabon Viper
07. High Above
08. Red Alert
09. Bloodline
10. Angel Dancer
11. Turkish Nights

LINE-UP:

Tony Andersson - Drums
Per Schelander - Bass, keyboards, vocals
Andreas Eklund - Lead vocals
Anders Lundstrom - Guitars
Mats Hallstensson - Lead guitars, acoustic guitars, vocals

GUEST MUSICIANS:

Piano - Jorgen Schelander
Cello - Marcus Jidell
Percussion - Simon Rolnik
Vocals - Mikael “Zifa” Eriksson