Portrait: Bombshell Rocks

Anyone who describes his own style as "high energy punk rock" raises expectations which are hard to fulfill. Still hardly any band fulfills this promise better than Bombshell Rocks from Sweden, which counts as one of the initiators of the street punk revival at the beginning of the 90s. A fast tempo, melodic guitars and catchy, multipart vocals are the recipe for success for this band which has been active for over 10 years. Energetic, aggressive and innovative, the songs from BR make you want to dance. While their first recordings remind one very much of the style of Rancid, as time went on, the Swedish boys developed their own, unique sound, which includes ballads and acoustic guitar campfire songs in addition to the fast, raw street punk tracks.

Although the band clearly belongs to the tradition of the Scandinavian skate and fun punk, most of their texts deal with serious themes:
"We were never really involved with this fun stuff. I write songs in order to deal with everything. It's like a therapy for me," said Mårthen Cedergran in 2001, explaining his method. Besides their use in coming to terms with personal experiences, the lyrics of the band deal primarily with political themes. The band demonstrated its antifascist attitude, among other ways, when they canceled a concert with the Boehsen Onkelz (the "bad uncles") after they had been informed of the career of the latter group.

In 1999, the four boys demonstrated with the release of their debut album "Street Art Gallery" that they deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as their models, Bad Religion, Stiff Little Fingers and Rancid. This album brought the band to the Scandinavian top label, Burning Heart, which is responsible for bands like Millencolin, Turbonegro and The Hives. Consequently, Bombshell Rocks had the chance to tour Europe and the USA with major bands like Anti-Flag, the Dropkick Murphys and the US Bombs. Shortly after this tour guitarist Richard Anderson left the band and was replaced by Ola Hjelmberg. But Bombshell Rocks would only play in this formation for a good two years: In 2002, Ola Hjelmberg left the band and the former guitarist Richard returned. The third studio album "From here and on" appeared in October 2002 and showed that the band could also produce harmonic and melodic sounds. The album presents itself as much cleaner and more versatile than the earlier, rawer works.


Shortly thereafter, Mårthen Cedergran, who had been responsible for vocals, left Bombshell Rocks to establish himself as a tattoo artist. The departure of Cedergran, whose unique singing provided the band's style with individuality and a great deal of recognition value, nearly brought about the end of Bombshell Rocks. But the remaining band members decided to continue in spite of resistance from the label and a good number of fans. Instead of looking for a completely new singer, guitarists Richard Anderson and Crippe Määttä replaced Cedergran at the microphone and the band continued to play as a quartet.

The band published "Conclusion", their fourth full-length album this year. Following the appearance of the EP "Love For The Microphone", which was widely criticized for the vocals, the "new" singers" have finely found their way in their new task and are convincing with multipart lyrics and choir-like refrains. High-quality song writing on "Conclusion" combines with the earlier, dirty sound of the first BR albums and the band finds just the right mix of bellow-along hits (Golden, Truth), slow pieces and up-tempo dance songs (Listen, Downsize), which will probably excite fans again on the coming tour as well. It can only be hoped that, in the coming years, Bombshell Rocks will remain true to their motto:
"But our intention is still (and will always be) to play high-energy punk rock."
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