By Jonny Bakes
Normally Über Rock steers clear of cover versions of songs, so I was surprised to find that an album consisting entirely of covers dropped into my inbox. But when I realized that the songs being covered were so obscure that I’d not heard of a single one of them, I figured that it was worth a bash! The band in question, Sator, are certainly no strangers to the music scene with the Swedish quartet clocking over 30 years of noise in their current guise. They’re also no strangers to performing covers either, in fact this latest release is their second foray into punk covers after a couple of decades to cool down after the 1994 release ‘Barbie-Q-Killers’.
That 1994 release set forth with the intention of putting Sator’s spin on punk songs that they felt needed to be rescued from obscurity. Well, they enjoyed it so much that here, in 2022, they decided it was time to have another bash at it and relish in the ‘Return of the Barbie-Q-Killers’ to bring you covers of songs by The Go-Go’s, 999, Screamer and much more! I bet there’s a few aficionados out there screaming at their screens to tell me that these bands aren’t obscure at all, but if that were genuinely the case then they wouldn’t be included in this album! Maybe obscure isn’t the right word then, let’s call them “less mainstream” instead, but regardless, this album is an hour jam packed with covers of songs that I’ve likely never heard (hell, I wouldn’t necessarily know they were covers if I hadn’t been told so!).
Putting the covers aspect to one side, this is an album full of energetic rock n roll heavy punk songs. Think about the likes of The Ramones and The Clash and you wouldn’t be all that far off, it’s not particularly heavy as such and is certainly heavily based in the “classic” era of punk (before it split and evolved into thrash, pop punk, etc.). We’re talking simple structures, fast guitars, minimal chords and a general vibe of bending the establishment over and giving it a good rogering. It’s certainly a fun album to listen to though, and one that shows just how much of an appreciation Sator has for the classics through their entertaining renditions of each of the 24 songs.
Not being overly familiar with the source material, it wouldn’t be fair of me to try and pick out one of the tracks that stood out so instead I’ll pick one of the tracks that I was able to pin down the original. ‘Brown Eyed Son’ was a hit for Katrina and the Waves that faded into obscurity in favour of ‘Walking on Sunshine’ which you’re bound to remember from adverts or just being bombarded by it over the years! Well Sator takes the relatively mellow original, speeds it up and gives it some extra guts to form something that sounds like it could have been a Green Day original (of the Dookie era) and, to be honest, I think I prefer it that way!
There’s plenty to unwrap with this album, especially if you manage to track down all the originals and play them side by side. But even if you don’t do that, ‘Return of the Barbie-Q-Killers’ is still a really fun album to listen to and is something you can take in its own right and leave yourself blissfully unaware that it’s an album full of covers!
- ‘Return of the Barbie-Q-Killers’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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