By now you can't have missed The Rasmus. The band's breakthrough album Dead Letters received great reviews and ensured these four now 24-year-old Helsinki guys Top 10 spots in over 11 countries. They were almost buried in awards and sold over one and a half million copies of the album. Now it is time to do it all over again! Their 6th album Hide From The Sun was recorded in Stockholm's Nord/Hansen Studio with the same producers as on "Dead Letters", Martin Hansen and Mikael Nord Andersson. The Rasmus stick to their guns and make a better, harder, tighter and catchier Dead Letters. The formula is present throughout - big riff, softer verses, big overblown sing-along choruses - but it's their formula now, and it's well executed. The Rasmus are like a giant musical sponge that seem to have spent years absorbing everything about overblown soft metal, synth-pop, the new romantics - heck the entirety of the 1980's Top 40 - and it feels like they've finally managed to squeeze the crap they don't want back out of the sponge, leaving them with their own defining sound. It's a bit like Hysteria-era Def Leppard with haunted house atmospherics, fronted by Morton Harket of A-ha, but it's more just like The Rasmus.

From the opening salvo of Shot, this is a much more assured affair. Dead Letters took until Time To Burn for the big riffs to come in, but they're here from the word go, as is all the gothic melodrama and atmosphere we've come to expect. Yes, it's definitely heavier than most of Dead Letters, and it's also even more assuredly infectious with an audacious sleigh-bell chorus that will have their haters screaming in agony. Night After Night (Out Of The Shadows) is next, a deliberate follow-up to last year's catchiest single and, although not quite as dangerous, it's a better song. The flimsy disco groove that underpinned In The Shadows is gone for good on this record, replaced with yet another huge riff and perfectly judged chorus. The real sequel, however, is the single No Fear - it's almost as catchy and it will be on the radio forever. Dead Promises has Finnish heavy-metal-cello-band Apocalyptica ramping up the atmosphere, which builds up nicely to Immortal. This is probably the nearest Hide From The Sun goes to courting traditional metal-heads, and then only due to the splash of Iron Maiden guitar harmonies in the middle.

There's no real denying that this is The Rasmus' best album to date and it's very good indeed. Hide From The Sun is pop music, and rock music, that's utterly lacking in cynicism, egotistical posturing, sarcasm or irony, replacing all of the above with big emotion, bittersweet romance and dreams of better days. This record will be huge, and you won't be able to avoid it without serious strategic planning. If you're a Rasmus fan, then start celebrating now because Hide From The Sun is as good as you could possibly want it to be. The Rasmus don't need to hide from the sun - they are here to rock the world.

30.09.2005