Artist: Speeder
Country: England / Sweden
Label: Self-released
Formats: Digital EP
Year: 2023
“A bunch of scruffy adolescent Hardrockers that claim they are bringing back the old school metal and killing any posers”. Speeder takes the words right out of your mouth in the intro of their self-titled debut EP. It’s one thing to make that claim, it’s a whole other thing to live up to the expectations they are setting. But the band proves there is more than just youthful bravado during the 25 minutes of thrusting Speed Metal mixed with plenty of over-the-top samples and lyrics.
On ‘Speeder’ the English/Swedish quartet takes influences from the likes of Razor, Exciter, early Metallica, Tankard, Motörhead and Twisted Sister into an alcoholic cocktail that sounds something like the Speed Metal version of Steel Panther: a very prominent tongue-in-cheek character backed up with authentic sounding Speed Metal that shows their glorification of the genre. The Punky attitude and joking character is something embedded in the genre since the 80’s and is still present in much later renditions like for instance Deathhammer, but Speeder certainly embraces the silliness in full in songs like ‘Speed Metal Bench’ and ‘Shut Up and Gimme a Beer’. Packed up in catchy vocal melodies and sing-along choruses, these are complimenting the strictly uptempo drums, bass and rhythm guitar with both shredding guitar solos and dual guitar harmonies. ‘Speed Metal Militia’ and ‘Speed Metal bench’ are more straightforward raging tracks, while for instance ‘The Great Mighty Jompa’ has more of a grooving character. Still uptempo, there is a much stronger Motörhead vibe present, and the dual guitar battle and bass solo makes you think a bit of Iron Maiden on steroids as well. But this is probably a case of overanalyzing, as we’re talking about slightly different nuances in an otherwise uncompromising uptempo Speed Metal landscape.
Four individuals who take their Speed Metal very serious and themselves a little less so come together on ‘Speeder’, a cool EP right up the alley of Speed Metal maniacs. At 25 minutes, it works just fine that the songs are rather in the same vein, and it’s also short enough for the youthful joking character to keep its appeal. It’ll be interesting to see how they will follow this up but for now, credit to the band for a very authentic tongue-in-cheek rendition of the genre.
