Wanderlust & Hardships – Saturday’s Heroes

Wanderlust & Hardships is the fourth full-length album from the Swedish punkrockers Saturday’s Heroes. The band was formed in 2008 in Finspång and has released a bunch of EPs and singles on top of the albums.

Musically the band are, in my ears, influenced by acts such as The Briggs, The Generators, Blisterhead and Bombshell Rocks. It’s often mid-tempo and a bit above that, but never furious. It’s played with that type of confidence that comes with well over a decade in the business. There’s no need to shout or win the fastest drumming of the Year Awards. That makes the album nice and almost relaxing to listen to.

That said it doesn’t lack energy in any way. The band is good at infusing energy in the tracks throughout the album, and there is a well developed sense of melody in all of the tracks. Lyrically it’s often sticking close to the themes outlined in the title of the album. The wanderlust is described in songs like the immigration-themed Bastard Son, through the restless Compass and ending in the simple question about where the party continues. Hardships are strewn in between, such as in the emotional stuck-in-a-rut How You Feel and the life-tale told in One Way Ride. Other songs deal with more universal matters such as the nostalgic friendship song By My Side.

The thing that ties it all together is a lot of heart. It’s easy to hear that Saturday’s Heroes are burning for this and are really pouring their hearts and soul into the album. Mixing the American and Swedish punkrock traditions together into a nice and pretty timeless sound that is easy to get engaged by. The only thing I might miss a bit is some more straight forward gang-chorus tune in the middle of the album, such as the closer Afterparty, but that’s just a minor thing. Wanderlust & Hardships shows that Saturday’s Heroes is a band on the, so far, peak of their career, any fan of good old classic punkrock shouldn’t miss this one.