Kadavar - Rough Times album review

Teutonic retro-metal makeweights rev their engines

Cover art Kadavar - Rough Times album

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The endless stream of Mittel-European bands that have rolled off the stoner metal production line in the last decade puts Volkswagen to shame. Berlin’s Kadavar have always been the equivalent of a VW Golf: reliable but dull.

Until now. Where its predecessors were as thrilling as a Sunday drive to the seaside, the trio have souped up their engine on album number four. The loud bits are louder, the fuzzy bits are fuzzier and, in the case of Die Baby Die and Tribulation Nation, there are tunes that have the good grace to actually stick around in the hippocampus. They’ll still never win a Grand Prix, but at least they’ve got off the starting grid.

Dave Everley

Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.