Disguised Vultures

The follow-up to 2011's well-received Hated, Disguised Vultures finds Swedish sleaze-rockers Sister mining familiar veins of American hard rock history with hammers of fjord-forged ice. Closer to Danzig than the Misfits, more L.A. Guns than Guns 'N' Roses, and kissed with the greasepaint lips of black metal, the success of this ten-track sonic assault largely depends on whether or not the listener is willing to forgive the group their trespasses. This is classic Sunset Strip junkie metal with a Viking-punk twist, and it invokes names like Faster Pussycat, W.A.S.P., Mötley Crüe, T.S.O.L., Ratt, and even Redd Kross in the same way that listening to fellow regional '80s metal revivalists like Hardcore Superstar, Nasty Idol, Crashdiet, and Vains of Jenna does. The one-two punch of "My Enemy" and "Sick" sets the tone, offering up the opening haymaker in what is essentially a 40-minute bar fight that pauses only to allow the occasional fist-pump ("[Stop The] Revolution," "We Salute 'Em," and "Please Kill Me"). Hair metal-era Los Angeles may be the band's Valhalla, but even the requisite power ballad, the dense and churlish "Naked," feels somewhat grimmer and more in tune with the long winters of Stockholm, which helps to chip away at some of the chicanery. Sister are a little like their Norwegian brothers Kvelertak. They're jamming a loaded syringe into a genre that ruled the world and then collapsed under the weight of its own buffoonery, and they're doing it with the benefit of hindsight.