Airstream: Kingdom Of Isolation

Swedish supergroup blends AOR with rock opera.

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Formed by ex-Sky Of Rage singer Stiff Karlsson and former Thunder bassist Micke Hoglund, these Swedes don’t stand on ceremony when making their opening statement to the world.

They launch straight into the does-what-it-says-in-the-title anthem The Power Of Music, which features a kitchen-sink approach to arrangements featuring fret-shredding, synth-washes, hyperactive drums and Karlsson’s epic bellow all competing for attention.

Such bluster sometimes threatens to drown out tidy tunes such as Hold On To What We’ve Got, before Oh Mother Oh Father suddenly thrusts into rock opera-style staccato prog passages and a him-and-her vocal spat.

It’s all slightly bonkers stuff but, hey, there are no prizes for subtlety at this end of the rock spectrum./o:p

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Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.