“Relax Friends” is a fantastic punk rock collection of songs that’ll take you back to the 2000s, your adolescence, hanging out with your friends, booze and boosting your favorite songs all the way up. Melodic, pure, fierce and raw. Listen right now to Still Shaking’s new album.
It’s a new day my friends! And we are back here yet again with another review that’ll hopefully make your day a little bit better. Today is the turn of Norway’s Punk Rock band, Still Shaking. A band that first saw its light in 2011 and they are, in deed, still at it! And today they present to us their new full-length album.
Inspired by acts such as The Flatliners, The Menzingers, Direct Hit, The Dopamines, Red City Radio, The Copyrights, Iron Chic, Hot Water Music, and Dead To Me, this band’s music is highly energetic and with a lot of anthemic elements in each of their songs. Super cool and super nostalgic.
Someone once said that Still Shaking’s music “sound like they could’ve been part of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 soundtrack”. The one who said it didn’t meant it as a compliment, but I think it is a great one and couldn’t agree more. In fact, whoever doesn’t mean that as such is just an a$$hole and an idiot… moving on!
“Relax Friends” is comprised by 12 very unique tracks, each one with a very specific message in it. Some songs talk about love, some about anxiety, some about never losing yourself, but ultimately they all have their own beauty and should be added to your favorite punk rock playlists!
There is a lot to cover on this album and if I write about what I think about each song, well, this review would be eternal. I did love all of them! Instead, let me show you what the band itself wanted to convey with each of “Relax Friends” tracks:
- Anxious And Airwaves – is about anxiety and feeling like you’re a failure
- Whole Lotta Trouble – is about being yourself, and not letting people change you
- Back In 02 – is about Mats hearing Sum 41 – Does this look infected? for the first
time. - Lifeboat – is about feeling lost.
- Stay Young Forever – is about going to punk rock shows without a care in the world.
- Never Ending Bottle – is about drinking with friends.
- DKWTGOA – is about a legendary bar and concert venue in Bergen that closed a
couple of years ago. - Last Time (feat Jon Lewis) – is about being done with someone.
- I Remember You – is about past lives and experiences.
- Panic Jerks – Is about social media, the world going to shit and Stephen Hawking
saying we need to flee the planet at some point. The song title is a play on our album
title (which is a joke from a famous TV show). - Like A Rocket – is about being high on life.
- Alone At Last – is just a cheesy love song.
Let me just add to that final track, it is not just a cheesy love song, it’s quite a great track and a great ending for the album.
With heart-felt vocals, heavy drums and blasting guitars all the way through, “Relax Friends” carries a great sound achieved not without complications. COVID and production setbacks saw this album re-written and re-recorded a couple of times but ultimately being for the best. The result is outstanding!
“We started out as a skatepunk band, but over the years we’ve mellowed a bit and have been influenced by a lot of newer bands since then. And a lot of the songs on this album have been written during this period of being influenced by new bands. A bit of backstory on the recording process – we recorded the guitars twice for this album.
In doing some early pre-production/demos of songs at Stian’s place, we decided that we were going to try to record DI of all the guitars ourselves. After recording the drums in Tune Park Studio we started recording guitars and bass. There was a bit of learning while doing, but after a while we were decently happy with the result, and went to 777 Studio to reamp the tracks with our friend and producer Esteban Munoz.
Turns out, we should’ve edited the drums a bit more than we originally did, and we had some not very audible noise on some of our DI tracks. The noise became very apparent when reamping through big tube heads. So late at night Esteban and Stian agreed that we needed to edit the drums, and record all the guitars again.” – Still Shaking
Still Shaking is:
Mats Gjelsvik – guitar and vocals
Lasse Vetaas – guitar and vocals
Stian Johannesen – bass and vocals
Simen Årdal – drums
Don’t forget to support them on Instagram, Facebook, SoundCloud, and Spotify. It also helps to stream and share their music; you can obviously find it in the following Playlists: Less Than 1,000 Followers, Fresh Singles, Alterindie State Of Mind,12 New Songs This Week, Only Punk, and Sickest & Dopest.
Remember that you can always find me here Linktree MadZen for all my social media and music.
P.S. If you enjoy discovering new artists and fresh new music you can subscribe to this blog Less Than 1,000 Followers and follow the Playlist with all the artists that we have presented here!
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