Andersson Mills Project – Crank It Up(2006)

A couple of weeks ago this cd landed in my mailbox thanks to a good friend of mine. The reason it took so long to review it is the fact that I had to get used to it. The 2 main members of this project are namely Linkan Andersson of Zoodrive- whom I had never heard of to be honest- and Mr. Tony Mills (TNT, Shy, Siam, …).If you have never heard of the latter then I assume you must have been sleeping under a rock the past 20 years.
Anyway if you think you can predict how this album will sound like based only on who’s handling vocals, you couldn’t be more wrong. This album rocks, rolls, grinds & will strangle you from beginning to end with super heavy, yet (more or less) melodic hard rock anthems.
As I mentioned before, I had to get used to this platter. More specifically to the drum sound which I still don’t like very much, but it fits the overall sound so who’s complaining?
And then there was the to me noble unknown, Mr. Andersson. I wasn’t sure what to expect exactly but I quickly warmed up to him as the dude can obviously play a mean guitar & write a decent tune (and you can call that a bit of an understatement). His influences are not to be found within the melodic rock genre and this is obvious throughout the entire album.
The album offers a mix of sleaze, plain hard rock, some vicious rock ‘n’ roll & more contemporary rock (The Cult, U2, Placebo, …).
I especially like the way Tony Mills is singing on this one as it shows a completely other, rawer side of the notorious melodic rocker.
Top songs, and TOP can be written in capital letters, are ‘Head On Collision’, the title song, ‘Kill For Love’, ‘Anyone’ & the awesome ballad ‘Bleeding Heart’ which closes the album. Worth mentioning also is the Iggy & The Stooges cover ‘Search And Destroy’. Way cool tune, guys!
So if you don’t have as much of a problem with the sound of the drums like I do, you can easily add at least half a star to the end quotation. Anyway, it took balls for these gentlemen to record an album like this and I sincerely hope they will be rewarded for it