Chemia: Let Me

That’s your Zloty.

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Hotly tipped Polish rockers Chemia tapped the talents of top producer Mike Fraser (AC/DC, Aerosmith, Metallica) for this, their second album, and as you’d expect the results are sonically faultless.

A shame, therefore, that the band’s musical approach – densely rendered post-grunge commerciality in the style of Creed and Alter Bridge – is so dated and lacklustre.

Wojtek Balczun’s lumpish guitar dominates proceedings but singer Lukasz Drapala is the primary source of irritation; he’s a tortured tonsil-wrangler in the Chris Cornell vein but with none of the Soundgarden man’s commanding presence or storytelling skills.

Chemia can deliver a lighter touch – as the breezy vocal harmonies on I Love You So Much and Don’t Kill The Winner prove – but as the album progresses their unyielding mirthlessness proves too much to bear. Our advice? Get a quart of Wyborowa down your neck and stop listening to Mad Season.

Geoff Barton

Geoff Barton is a British journalist who founded the heavy metal magazine Kerrang! and was an editor of Sounds music magazine. He specialised in covering rock music and helped popularise the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) after using the term for the first time (after editor Alan Lewis coined it) in the May 1979 issue of Sounds.