HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: The Strength/The Sound/The Songs – Volbeat

Picture if you will, a fusion of METALLICA riffs, ELVIS PRESLEY vocal stylings and JOHNNY CASH outlaw country attitude played by former members of a Danish death-metal band and lyrics spinning tales of love, death and hell. Sounds frankly mad in concept, but that’s exactly what the metal world was introduced to all the way back in 2005 when Copenhagen’s VOLBEAT released their debut album, The Strength/The Sound/The Songs. 

Initially emerging back in 2001 from the ashes of death-turned-groove-metal outfit DOMINUS, vocalist/guitarist Michael Poulsen, guitarist Franz “Hellboss” Gottschalk and bassist Anders Kjølholm, along with drummer Jon Larsen, would go on to form the first core lineup of a new project, adapting their new moniker from the 1997 DOMINUS album Vol.Beat and self-releasing a pair of well-received demos, VOLBEAT and Beat The Meat, in their native Denmark, much of which would then be reworked for the debut album proper a few years later.

Teaming with Dutch independent record label Mascot Records and producer Jacob Hansen (who would continue on to helm every one of their studio albums to date), the resulting The Strength/The Sound/The Songs essentially set out the blueprint for what would end up a now twenty-plus-year-long career for VOLBEAT, over the course of which they’d go from small-time club act to the upper ends of festival bills around the world, collaborating with metal artists as celebrated as KING DIAMOND and Barney Greenway of NAPALM DEATH, and even becoming the first Danish band in history to sell out Parken Stadium in their native Copenhagen in 2017.

Even at this initial formative stage in their career, what perhaps stands out best in retrospect is just how fully-realised the band’s sound already seems on The Strength/The Sound/The Songs.  Where some bands can take a little time to find their sound – see MINISTRY’s brief synth-pop beginnings and PANTERA’s initial hair-metal phase for example – it’s not difficult to imagine fans who discovered the band through their slightly more commercial-leaning newer material like 2013’s Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies easily being able to connect with the huge array of catchy material on display here. A huge part of that is of course down to Poulsen and his unique vocal stylings that fit somewhere between a gritty James Hetfield snarl and Elvis Presley croon, with some almost yodel-like moments thrown in for good measure.

From the almost the moment the record opens on Caroline Leaving, he’s right up in listeners’ ears bellowing typically metal-sounding lyrics of heaven, hell and death atop a crunchy guitar tone that would become the band’s calling card for much of their career to come, but there’s a distinct undercurrent of melody that allows VOLBEAT to truly attain that most important of musical tenets – accessibility. Pretty much every moment across the entirety of The Strength/The Sound/The Songs is led by either a hulking guitar riff or earworm vocal hook (something they’d arguably go on to perfect later in their career), and in many cases both at the same time – as evidenced in the melding of soaring vocals and massive groove on cuts such as Another Day, Another Way and Always, Wu in a manner they’d certainly improve upon by the time of later fan-favourite anthems like Evelyn and The Devil’s Bleeding Crown, but nonetheless display well here.

For fans of the heavier side of things, tracks such as Rebel Monster and Fire Song are there, flurries of chugging distortion at breakneck pace that you can’t help but headbang to; while fans of the more melodic side of what Poulsen and co. do can find refuge in the dramatic balladry of Something Else Or… and the gorgeously melancholic Soulweeper – one of the record’s many highlights.

Lyrically, The Strength/The Sound/The Songs also saw the start of a long-running storytelling trend for the band as well, with the tracks Danny & Lucy (11PM) and Fire Song acting as the first parts of a narrative that would take 11 years and appearances on three more VOLBEAT albums to conclude, spinning a long and winding tale of the former’s titular protagonists, their deaths and the subsequent tearing apart of Lucy’s family. A rare deviation into straight-up narrative storytelling, the two tracks here demonstrate an impressive knack for character and world-building for such an at that point young band.

It wasn’t just well-crafted originals that made up The Strength/The Sound/The Songs either – a masterfully-reinterpreted cover of I Only Wanna Be With You, as made famous in 1963 by Dusty Springfield, displayed the band’s more playful nature and gifted them the record’s sole single in the process. VOLBEAT would of course go on to cover many more songs both live and on record over the next 16 years, with artists as diverse as HANK WILLIAMS, YOUNG THE GIANT and THE GEORGIA SATELLITES all receiving the VOLBEAT treatment at various points on record, and covers of Angelfuck by the MISFITS and JOHNNY CASH’s legendary Ring of Fire finding comfortable spots in their live set over the last decade and a half, but it was here where that trend began. Perhaps less obviously to casual listeners though, is that The Strength/The Sound/The Songs specifically features an entire track dedicated to one of Poulsen’s biggest influences, the King of Rock & Roll himself, Elvis Presley; Caroline #1 was part-credited to him and its lyrics being comprised entirely of references to his various songs, with such lines as “I just can’t help believin’/I got suspicious minds” and “At Heartbreak Motel/We’ll make the world go away” providing direct reference to the legendary singer.

Despite releasing in September 2005, The Strength/The Sound/The Songs initially failed to make a commercial impact, missing out on the Danish charts entirely; though it would later finally entering almost a year afterwards in July 2006 and go on to peak at at #18, subsequently remaining in the charts for 21 non-consecutive weeks. It would be a number of years yet before the band would see any success outside of Denmark, with their big break in the US in particular not arriving until fourth album Beyond Hell/Above Heaven hit the Billboard 200 five years later, by which point they’d already racked up several #1 albums at home.

For proof of the record’s lasting impact though, one need only look at the band’s setlists. Whilst it’s true that much of the record hasn’t been played live in many years, the majority of songs only making cameos for odd shows every few years, both the band’s aforementioned I Only Wanna Be With You cover and Pool of Booze, Booze, Booza, their self-described track about “booze, whores and fucking” both still appear from time to time having made over 400 and 500 appearances respectively over the last decade, remaining in the live set as recently as the 2019 touring for seventh album Rewind, Replay, Rebound.

Whilst it might not have been the world-shattering, instantly-conquering debut record that their status today might suggest, what The Strength/The Sound/The Songs did do at the time of its release was serve as an incredibly promising introduction to a band who would go on to become one of modern rock music’s most surprising success stories, bringing listeners in with a core sound that’s remained mostly the same for the almost two decades since they first formed.

Whether it’s been a while since you last checked in, or indeed you never have for whatever reason, The Strength/The Sound/The Songs remains an incredibly worthwhile listen years after it brought the members of VOLBEAT to their first taste of prominence, and anyone with the slightest inclination towards its unique metal/rockabilly/country stylings is sure to find themselves swept up in these brilliantly crafted songs. With a new vinyl re-release set to come out imminently, there’s truly never been a better time to get reacquainted with the early days of VOLBEAT, and when said material is this unique, it’s impossible to not find something to love.

The Strength/The Sound/The Songs was originally release September 26th 2005 via Mascot Records. A limited edition vinyl repressing of The Strength/The Sound/ The Songs is out now via Mascot Records.

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