They are Pristine, and they are the hottest band north of the Arctic Circle!
Hailing from Tromsø in Norway (in case you don’t know, that’s very far to the north, folks!), they are becoming veterans at their game now. Road Back To Ruin is their sixth studio album, and they just keep getting better.
Pristine first got together in 2006. In 2010, they won the Nordic blues championship and Union Blues Cup. This led them to travel to Memphis, Tennessee in 2012 to participate in the International Blues Challenge. This was a knock-out competition where bands competed against each other with jury and audience voting.
During this competition they were given the nickname The Arctic Blues Band and quickly became an audience favourite. They even won over some of their competitors with their down-to-earth and friendly demeanour. Pristine made it all the way to the semi-finals, being let down by the jury vote in the end. The experience was very positive for them and led them to become a full-time band.
Since those early days, Pristine have expanded from their initial blues-rock expression. Still bluesy at the core, they have definitely moved toward a harder guitar-driven sound.
The new album contains solid hard rockers, epic ballads with tour-de-force vocals, and plain catchy songs built on irresistibly melodic riffs and high energy. The material will burrow itself into your chest and tug on every heartstring you might have in there. If you don’t have any, it may even build them for you to give itself something to tug on.
Pristine were always more than competent musicians. Heidi Solheim on vocals is particularly the star of the show. I have written this in previous Norselands pieces about the band, but it bears repeating: she is the heart and soul of the band, her voice reaching the highest peaks and the furthest plateaus. Her performances are full of personality and with the heart that only the very best vocalists possess.
The fact that Heidi seems to shine that much more on this album, as does the performances by the rest of the band, is simply down to the quality of their material. They are getting better at composing material that plays to their strengths.
The songs on Road Back To Ruin are of a high and consistent quality. The material is varied, sparkling, and often contagiously good-natured. It covers the entire range of emotions, from the bouncy, energising, and good-natured to the soothing, longing, or just plain heart-breaking. Even though the album has achingly sad moments, the album itself is full of positive energy.
It starts on a high note (and high energy!) with Sinnerman. It is always good to begin with a shot in the arm, but the best is yet to come. The title track follows, and Road Back To Ruin starts slower with a huge-sounding riff. Halfway through it changes pace from slow-burning blues to a hard-edged rocker.
Bluebird is another highlight, featuring even more catchy riffing by guitar and organ alike. The band hits a mighty groove in the chorus as Heidi wails away on top. The album sounds huge from the start, and contains many epic rock-out moments.
Landslide starts with something strongly resembling a Stones-riff, but it was never going to stay there. It morphs into a bouncy soulful rocker with a steady backbeat. Pioneer and The Sober delivers even more tasty rockers in the same vein.
Aurora Skies is another Heidi song. It is filled with sad melancholy, feelings of isolation and quiet despair. It is possibly the most heart-breaking ballad of 2019.
This song could only come from someone familiar with the region which has no daylight for months at a time during winter, where snowy, ice-clad landscapes and darkness truly can amplify feelings of loneliness and abandonment, making you feel as dark and alone as this song conveys. “I forgot I was someone too” Heidi sings, and her emotional delivery gets me every time.
Blind Spot – the album’s longest track at over 7 minutes – is a slow-building rocker turning into epic wailer. It builds from a tasty acoustic guitar part and a hypnotic drum groove into a huge-sounding epic and ends up in a very interesting place, with keyboard effects and sound effects taking it suitably off-centre.
In an alternative universe, Pristine performs the title track to a James Bond movie called Cause And Effect. While this is not likely in our timeline, we do at least get the song on this album. We just have to close our eyes and imagine the movie.
The track is magnificent, majestic, and with all the cinematic flavour we have come to expect from the good Bond themes. This would have been – if I dare say so – one of the better Bond songs from the 1990s onward. But, as it is, instead it was destined to “just” be a stand-out track by Pristine. Written by Heidi, who is emerging as the main songwriter on this album.
The album closes with Your Song – no, not the Elton John song. Instead this is a straightforward, acoustic-based, Heidi-penned tune. Unusually enough this is typical singer/songwriter-fare, which isn’t what we usually get from Pristine.
It is sung to a loved one after them coming to terms with an inevitable desire to stay together from here on out. After a few songs of doubt and heartbreak on this album it feels good to end it like this.
Give this album a chance. Add it to your playlist and have it running in the background for a while. Before too long, you will find yourself humming just about every song from the album in various situations. That is the hallmark of something that will stay with you a very long time. Rocking in the arctic, indeed!
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