Sandness – Higher & Higher

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Sandness’ Higher & Higher give us a lesson of how to distinguish heavy metal from hard rock, in this particular case, heavy rock to be said, but nobody uses this term anymore. I’ll tell them in few words trying to avoid common places. In a nutshell, modern hard rock uses lots of rock influences, sometimes even country, heavy metal wiped them away; melodic and harmonic structures for modern hard rock are taken from rock and blues, those in metal are much more classical structures than anything else. That said we can go on with this nice piece from Sandness. Figure this out: forget those bluesy/country parts from Poison, the best exemple I get now, and you’ll get Sandness. Knowing just a little from italian metal bands, take out the keyboards from Vanadium, and you’ll get Sandness.

The great merit of “Higher & Higher” is that it sure is a modern hard rock piece, but it doesn’t make us cry out for the good old times. Hard rock is alive and well. It is fresh, sounds fresh and delightfull. Straight ahead riffs, catchy choruses, pulsing beats, without the excesses that killed their peers. To me, Sandness is much more a heavy rock band than hard rock, “Promisses” is there to prove my point, and so does the cover art. Thick acoustic guitar intro, tempo growing staedly, alternating from slow to fast, catchy melody, and much more. It would easily play on 1970’s radio station (hum, what is this?). Bands like Sandness are extremely important to rock/metal. They bring to the new generations the sounds of the past, they keep and share traditions, they bring old bands to life. Come on guys, a little boogie won’t kill anyone! It’s “Sunny Again”!

Track listing:

  1. You Gotta Lose
  2. Street Animals
  3. Hollywood
  4. Promises
  5. Sunny Again
  6. One Life
  7. Light In The Dark
  8. Heat
  9. Perfect Machine
  10. Monster Inside Me
  11. Play With Fire
  12. Will You Ever

You can Youtube them at