BOOM! From slow burning small town players Audrey Horne exploded into the consciousness of the rock cognoscenti with the 2012 release of Youngblood, a hard rock album that refined hard rock, defined its future and gradually snowballed to more and more success.

Now, in 2014, the Norwegians have pumped up their chests, slung the axes

_{Evergrey are another band from Sweden, although their sound is more removed from the usual melodic rock inspired bands which have been the subject of many of my recent album recommendations. We know of course that the Swedish rock scene consists of more than melodic rock bands, although it does produce those in great quantity and quality. As I’ve said before, I’m not a big fan of music genre labels and it’s interesting to note the varying labels applied to Evergrey online – from “dark progressive metal” through “progressive metal” to “melodic metal” depending on which website you access! For my purposes, all that matters is that I like what I hear! Evergrey’s “Hymns for the Broken” is released through AFM Records on 29th September and is the band’s ninth studio album since their debut in 1998.}