Diesel and Power

Diesel and Power is the raw early-impulse record on which Backyard Babies mixed punk roughness, glam flash and hard rock riffs. Started in Nässjö in 1987 as Tyrant, the four-piece renamed itself in 1989 after bringing in Nicke Borg, and after a 1991 self-released EP signed to Megarock and put out this first album in 1994. Heard backward from the polished later image, roughness shows — but that unsettled quality is precisely the appeal. There's momentum from before riffs, vocals and rhythm settled into one fixed mold, and the band's core emerges from the trial and error of each song. Following the opener “Smell the Magic,” the mood-shifting “Fly Like a Little...” and the late “Heaven in Hell” makes each song's role and temperature easy to see. It appeared when grunge's headwind was at its strongest, and commercially it struggled. Afterward the band went on hiatus as Dregen formed The Hellacopters. Debut-era records get overlooked if measured on polish alone, but they're important evidence of what a band was trying to make its strength. Both the line toward their later signature works and a rough shine unique to this period remain here at once.