It is something of a relief in these electronic days to find out that good old fashioned guitar led rock songs can still find favour with both musicians and audiences and, while Swedish band Rivhers do indeed favour the guitar throughout the four songs that make up their self-titled EP, they add in a fair degree of melodrama as well.
As you might therefore expect, power chords are present aplenty but, in fact, they do not actually define the sound of this band. Their influences, likewise, seem wider than any one musical genre and, in consequence, Rivhers manage to seem more inventive and more honest than so many of their contemporaries. Much of the credit for that goes to the ever present and ever dramatic vocals of Filip Burman and he duly brings a near theatrical intensity to a song such as “Stargaze” and even in a song where the guitar is the motivational force – “Depth” for example – he still takes control of the song as if it were his only purpose in life.
Successfully providing the listener with a mixture of the muscular and the melodramatic is not an easy task but, from the evidence on this EP, Rivhers have managed to do so and that will, in all likelihood make them new friends on the festival circuit.