Review: Sloper – Changing Colors
Sloper – Changing Colors
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Warner Music Benelux
Release: 2024
Text: Tom Wouters
Sloper, the band of the Flemish-Dutch two-man destruction company Goossens-Zuiderwijk is back! The band that was founded in 2018 by drummers Mario Goossens (Triggerfinger) and Cesar Zuiderwijk (Golden Earring) immediately developed the hard steel classic rock sound, which can be found on the debut album ‘Pulverised’ from 2021.
A sound, for which the foundation was laid by the destruction company Goossens & Zuiderwijk, supplemented with heavy guitar work by Fabio Canini and over which the voice of Peter Shoulder flew. It resulted in an album full of hard steel and angular rock. After extensive tours to promote ‘Pulverised,’ singer Shoulder apparently left the band devastated. At the end of 2023, Sloper recruited two new musicians. In bass guitarist Bas Soetens the band found its own John Entwistle, who further strengthened the foundation of the band with rock-solid bass riffs, which guitarist Canini and the new singer-guitarist Jan Bas had to hold their own on.
In this line-up Sloper has now released a second album, ‘Changing Colors.’
‘Changing Colors’ has a clearly more produced sound than the straight forward classic rock sound of ‘Pulverised.’ The hard steel sound has been thickened up with the arrival of Soetens and there is extensive use of studio production techniques such as reverb, sound layering and distortion.
This results in thirteen rock-hard songs that vary from classic rock to 80s and 90s rock with the highlights being the songs Tightrope Dancer and Dirty Heart, which lean heavily on rock-solid bass riffs, but also Queen-like hard steel songs such as Frozen Memories, which with a bit of imagination you could even call a ballad, and Nothing But A Heartache. Therapy is the only slightly less heavy song on ‘Changing Colors,’ in this case you could almost hear melodic rock with singer Jan Bas and guitarist Fabio Canini prominently present.
The most hard-hitting hard steel songs however, are Hold On, in which the band sounds like the hard steel version of The Who, in which the two drummers effortlessly outshine Keith Moon and Bas Soetens shows himself to be a true Entwistle adept. Even more intense is The Last Time, in which Canini’s guitar sounds like a true low-flying kamikaze fighter jet.
With ‘Changing Colors,’ the destruction company Sloper has sharpened its hard steel rock sound considerably.
Tracks:
01. Never Alone
02. Tightrope Dancer
03. Changing Colors
04. Eye Or No Return
05. Dirty Heart
06. Muffled Drums
07. Undertow
08. Frozen Memories
09. Square The Circle
10. Therapy
11. The Last Time
12. Hold On
13. Nothing But A Heartache
Website: https://www.sloperband.com/