What some bands, or rather labels, are thinking when they send their demo or cd to Metalrage.com sometimes is puzzling. As our URL reads, we are a metal zine. We write about hard and tough rock groups, not because we think we're too cool for pop, or that we are too tough for that sort of music, but because we have a passion for aggression. We like it loud, no matter what the hype of the moment is, and regardless of our diverse musical tastes. But one thing we all have in common, we just don't like pop.

 

The Swedish band Casino 66 isn't a pop group in the stigmatic sense of Backstreet Boys or Shakira, but it still unmistakably is pop. Happy pop tunes for the whole family. With Glam. Okay, so there's a little street knowledge here and there, and maybe it's the kind of pop that classic car owners play whilst checking out their very cool fuzzy dice that's dangling at their front mirror, but it is pop.

 

I really cannot give you an objective review on this mini cd 'Deliver Light', as it is too far away from my personal taste to tell you if it's good or bad. In my personal opinion it sucks, but then again it is catchy (in a horribly predicable kind of way) and it will appeal too hundreds of thousands around the globe. And if Casino 66 plays it right, I wouldn't be surprised to see them on main stages at big festivals around Europe in the coming years. It is - no question there - music for the masses.

 

Just like heavy metal can be one-track minded on negative emotion, pop can do the same for the positive end of the emotional spectrum. Just like not every day is a shitty day that makes you want to stab random people, not every day is a day you fall in love with a beautiful girl with a miniskirt and flowers in her hair. Life just ain't like the neither, but my life and my head have always hung towards the negative part. On that bombshell, I cannot write a review about this other ways slick and professional pop-rock album.

 

It just doesn't make sense to me. Buy it, download some shit and check it out for yourself, like you should do regardless of what any journalist or webzine reporter says in the first place. I just can't help you with this one.