Mustasch - Ratsafari

*=Staff's pick	Stinger Citizen Black City* Unsafe At Any Speed Ratsafari* 6:36* Deadringer* Fredrika Alpha Male Mareld* Long Song Monday Warrior

Genre	Heavy Metal	Ralf Gyllenhammar	Vocals
Tracks	11	Ralf Gyllenhammar	Guitar
Runningtime	42 Min.	Hannes Hansson	Guitar
Label	EMI	Mats Johansson	Bass
Release	24 Sept. 2003	Mats Hansson	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	The Cult, Danzig, Monster Magnet

Everytime that you read something about the band Mustasch it is practically always mentioned repeatedly about how similar vocalist Ralf Gyllenhammar's voice is to Ian Astbury from The Cult, ok I can see the similarities but if you are to compare him with anyone I think it ought to be Glenn Danzig in that case. In their music that is a mixture of seventies groove, Black Sabbath riffing and with a straightforward stoner-flirting hard rock 'n' roll attitude you can find traces of Danzig there as well as in the vocals.

The album starts with the song that I like the least on the album but it gets repaired fast with the first video released, Black City, a straightforward diesel-smelling track that bares similarities with Dirty Black Summer from Danzig and I don't think that I am just mislead by the word black that is in the title of both tracks. The slow and mighty titletrack Ratsafari and Fredrika with a serious Black Sabbath riffing intro also ranks as good songs worthy of mentioning. Deadringer stand as my favourite of the album and has guitarharmonies at the end of the song that is to die for, if only they could have lasted for a bit longer. Monster Magnet is another band that you can at some points compare Mustasch with, here it becomes most apparent in the track 6:36 that is a low-tempo track that goes kind of in the same style as Monster Magnet's Dopes To Infinity (1995).

The production by Jacob Hellner has given the album a "fat" sound that suites their music like a hand in the glove as well as the guitarwork on this album feels improved compared with their earlier works. The thing that I miss the most are the real "killer track" like Down In Black and I Hunt Alone from Above All (2002), even if Black City and Deadringer are the "killers" on Ratsafari they are not as good as those two tracks.

I also like the calm acoustic short track named Mareld, it makes at least my mind wander out towards the glittering sea, maybe it just the title that has that affect on me but it has that watery feeling over it.
If you translate the Swedish word Mareld it means "Phosphorescence of the sea" which is a phenomena that appears at the surface of the sea produced by plankton that is luminous.

Finally I'm not that certain about how to think of this album, it is definitely better than their previous Above All, and even if it feels like they have grown as a band and Ratsafari is a more even album in general it is not much better than the average. That is if you are not listening to it, as long as you pound out the heavy riffing through your stereo Mustasch's Ratsafari is an amazingly great album but when the music ends after 42 minutes it has made no impression on me, it leaves me with an empty void until I push play the next time, and then it is great once again.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	7	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Thomas