Mensen

Album number two from these Norwegians sees them in the same mode as their debut record, still cranking out uber-simple Kiss/Ramones riffs with nursery rhyme-level vocal melodies thrown over top. This three-quarters female combo has good production and mixing courtesy of Hellacopter Nicke Andersson but songs like "Keep Up" and "Twenty One" lack energy, excitement, charisma, personality and danger. Yes, the Ramones wrote simple songs, but they also had interesting arrangements, good melodies and over-the-top lyrics about serial killers and sniffing glue. This bunch of Scandinavians, however, seem content to slap bland cliché tales of guys "telling lies" and "taking pieces of my heart" over incredibly generic rock riffs and completely unremarkable/identical song structures. While there aren’t any laws (yet) against being so bland you make the Donnas sound like free jazz, Mensen and the four or five groups that currently sound identical to them are hardly worthy of the international push hot labels like White Jazz and Gearhead are giving them.