Sandness

Hair metal, that era of music which bands seemed to follow a nice, formatted formula that helped throw further chaff into the hearts and minds of pubescent boys and masses of hairspray coated females.  Hair metal WAS a very important time in music whether we agree or agree to disagree, but you might ask "Wasn't that killed off by grunge?", uhm no and I can prove it even.

Sandness, an Italian band has made a concerted effort to create a tribute band of sorts whereby they have created a band based on '80's Glam Metal (hair metal in my world).  The band made the correct decision by not remaking dozens of easily identifiable songs from the era rather creating all original songs.  By listening to Sandness I can assure you that their interpretation of the music of the era would fit oh so well in said era. Everyone that reads this article has an era of music that they associate with (not necessarily a genre) and as for myself, that era would be the '80's.

The '80's was one of the most eclectic eras for music, there was bubblegum pop, supergroups for causes, alternative bands, punk, heavy metal (and so many others) and although I listened to all of it I think the hair stuff was probably really high on that list.  Hair metal had a serious following, and it seemed that 99% of all of the young women I knew at that time were into the "hair bands", therefore I was too.  Despite all of that, the music really did have its day and it became apparent that when it began to wane, it was like Dorothy tapped her heels together and "poof" we awoke to a hair metal free world.

Before I get tons of angry comments, I can assure you that it didn't and my interest was always captivated by those bands of my youth and although many of the bands of that classification (hair metal), appear to be reborn (every band from the '80's seems to be), for some time it appeared that hair (or glam) metal was indeed dead.  So imagine my surprise when I heard of the band Sandness and their brand of glam was a live and well in 2011.

I started off my Sandness experience by listening to seven of their songs today and I really was impressed by the way they grasped the whole genre of hair (or glam) metal.  As I listened it was very interesting to have this massive flood of bands inundate me with every song.  It was fascinating to be able to hear bands like Britny Fox, Poison, Faster Pussycat, Michael Monroe and Europe in the music so after I heard each song, I decided to listen to the lyrics as I wanted to see if they too stayed in character.

Understand that lyrics of that era seemed to follow a fairly common script of "sex, drugs, rock and roll" as well as fast women, cars and the police and to seem to follow the genre closely, the lyrics should follow the same script, right?  I really think they did, and it was fascinating to see how the band stayed true to the genre by including a ballad "Waitin' Your Smile" as did all of those they have chosen to emote.

Each song is original in lyrical form and is so familiar to the hair bands of the era so I was lost a little by comparing the bands with this band however as soon as I stopped doing that I was able to hold each song to its own merits.  Each song is very good, solid and really fun, I think that the purists of the genre might get a little swamped by the music (as I did) because of the huge similarities between the the present and the past but they can get past all of that (as I did).

Sandness is definitely a band to hear and become a fan of (as we all seemed to have done in the '80's with oh so many bands).  They will evoke nostalgia, they will entertain and they will let you hear how they have become masters of their craft.