Sparzanza – Circle

Releasedate: 28-03-2014; Label: Spinefarm Records
By: Gamze Öyünc

Swedish hard-rock band Sparzanza is back with their 7th album “Circle”. They have been formed in 1996 and released their first album Angels Of Vengeance in 2001. Back then they were a stoner rock band as a genre and now at least for their last three albums, they have been doing more of a catchy, mainstream, rock radio-friendly but still hard as rock-type-of-music.

I’ve been especially hooked on their last two albums “Folie A Cinq” & “Death Is Certain, Life Is Not” since I discovered them two years ago. These albums were both death and damnation-of-the-self themed albums and they were lyrically daring, melodically catchy and succinct but impactful songs. That’s what attracted me most besides Fredrik Weileby’s awesome vocals. He has such a wide range of vocals from belting-out clean singing to scream vocals and they just sound so good and rocking.

It took me three or four full rotations to like the album, I have to admit, but the more I listened to the new stuff the more they grew on me. This album might be considered the continiuation of the previous album “Death Is Certain, Life Is Not” both in style and theme. For example, when we look at “DICLIN”’s album cover, we see Devil’s and God’s hands, they’re playing chess on a checkered board. On “Circle”’s album cover art, we see the band members standing on a checkered floor as if they are on a trial in court. Pretty telling, isn’t it? “Circle” is extremely melodic and has so many great songs and no fillers whatsoever. I don’t have the track “Bradycardia” on my version so the album kicks off with “Pine Barrens”. It immediately gives the sign of that this will be a rocking album and you’re up for a greatly dark ride. It is a great track, do I need to say more? Let’s move on to a greater tune that is my absolute favorite off the album. It is “Underneath My Skin” it has this extremely catchy refrain and heavy riffs. I loved this one’s lyrics so much. As for the other songs, there seems to be an ongoing theme that is “a deal made with the devil”. It can be heard on tracks “Breathe” and “The Contract”. Maybe it’s a shout out to all the poppy commercial singers who are rich and famous but without any real talent. Or maybe it’s just a theme of the album. Who knows?

“Into the Unknown” is an impressive piece of ballad because it is very up-to-date Sparzanza and it’s a display of their evolution as musicians and song-writers. “As I Go Away” is also a touching ballad. So the album slows down for only these two. The rest rocks the hell out of you. On “Do What Thou Wilt” -which means “do what you want”, the band seems to follow the trend of the recent years by picking this title for the song. It might very well be a shout-out to the infamous Occultist Aleister Crowley whose motto was “Do What Thou Wilt”. But then again. maybe I’m wrong and it’s just a mere coincidence.

If you like to rock out to great new kind of hard rock, I suggest you give a listen to Circle. If you happen to like other Swedish bands like Mustasch and Soilwork, you will most probably like the band’s work and join the fandom of Sparzanza. If you want to catch up with their live sets in this summer, since Circle has come out Sparzanza have been performing around Northern countries and will be continuing to rock in numerous summer rock & metal festivals mostly up in Finland and Sweden.

Line-up:
Fredrik Weileby – Vocals
Calle Johannesson – Guitars
Anders Åberg – Drums
Johan Carlsson – Bass
Magnus Eronen – Guitars

Tracklist: 1. Bradycardia (cd only) 2. Pine Barrens 3. Underneath My Skin 4. Breathe 5. Into The Unknown 6. The Contract 7. Enemy Of My Enemy 8. As I Go Away 9. Black 10. Death Don’t Spare No Lives 11. Do What Thou Wilt

Links:
Sparzanza Facebook
Sparzanza Official