It’s hard to fault The Rasmus on their own terms – Rise is akin to a properly functioning dry-ice machine.
It features Jezebel, which finished an unjust 21st in the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest and makes sense in that context. This is music that should be played out to a giant hall of cheering fans waving the flags of Europe, with Graham Norton muttering wry noises of appreciation. In other contexts, it jars like a hotel guest arriving for breakfast in a gold lamé suit.
Tracks like Be Somebody are big, galvanising, tidal, just not very subtle or organic. There are moments of nuance, as in the opening of Endless Horizon, but this is almost immediately drowned by a tsunami of processed guitar.
The album is conceived as a fightback against covid, and certainly beats wearing a mask on a crowded train, but its single setting of defiant cheer can jar.
