Since their 2013 inception, Aktor has prided themselves on making weird music for weird people. Being that I wasn’t exactly captain of the football team in high school myself, I guess I’d fit this demographic. It isn’t often we get new music from this Finnish-American supergroup, consisting of veteran frontman Professor Black and Circle instrumentalists Jussi Lehtisalo and Tomi Leppänen. However, when we do, it’s always a worthwhile trip: A word I use here both figuratively and literally speaking (see our review for their sophomore album, Placebo). This remains the case when it comes to their long-awaited third full length, Professori (Season Two).
This latest effort sees Aktor not just dipping their toes into the concept album pool, but cannonballing their way in. True to their quirky ways, just as the title foreshadows, we’re thrusted headfirst into “Season Two” of a narrative inspired by Professor Black’s recent fascination with Scandinavian mystery programs. In this latest “season”, the protagonist, a detective named Professori, goes missing. The album’s narrative is centered around his assistant’s trek to not just find her crimefighting partner, but enact justice upon anyone who might be responsible for Professori’s said disappearance. Like many of these tales go, she uncovers a web far more complex than she ever could’ve imagined.
From a musical perspective, Professori expands upon Aktor’s usual “anything goes” hybrid of classic hard rock, ’80s new wave worship, and all around freeform weirdness, yet perhaps with an even clearer focus this time around. In a soon to be released interview with Professor Black (Keep your eyes out this Friday!), he explained to me how the band sought out a stronger sonic attack for this album, a production in which the guitars were always at the forefront, sharp and metallic in delivery. As far as those intentions go, mission accomplished. Lehtisalo channels the spirit of legendary Cars guitarist, Elliott Easton, with his trick bag of anthemic riffs, unusual solos, and idosyncratic spunk. Black, on the contrary, serves as Lethisalo’s Ric Ocasek, his vocals far more brooding and bizarre here than on any High Spirits release.
Besides The Cars, other acts who can be heard in Aktor’s abnormal sound are Angel Rat era Voivod and Fire of Unknown Origin era Blue Öyster Cult, yet at no point does any given song sound like a rip of either. No, Aktor do perfectly fine concocting their own singular brand of thinking man’s metal madness, each song glimmering in its own unique light. On cuts like “He Never Came Home”, “Nemesis”, and “Politics, Politics”, the band hones in on ’80s new wave at its most pulsing and frenetic, conveying the urgency of the narrative at hand. Contrasting these are more riff-driven “metal” songs like “Idiot Brother”, a lost NWOBHM bruiser littered with retro synths, or “Too Close (Still Not Close Enough)”, whose lead riff screams Mercyful Fate. Heck, there’s even a synth-laden training montage outburst in “Back On the Case”, and no, Frank Stallone doesn’t lend his vocal talents here.
I guess what I’m trying to get at in a roundabout way is that Aktor can do damn near anything on an album and still manage to be compelling and stimulating in their delivery. There’s far more cohesion here than your run of the mill, “avant-garde” Bandcamp release, in which a bedroom muso will pretentiously hop from death metal to jazz to prog rock, sometimes within one song, and in this modern age, it’ll only leave us saying, “Devin Townsend did this 20 years ago.” Aktor, on the other hand, pays homage to the sounds of the past, but mutates them in a manner that’s purely futuristic, and they mean every bit of it. Don’t let their name fool you; this ain’t no akt!
8 out of 10
Label: High Roller Records
Genre: Hard Rock/New Wave
For fans of: Blue Öyster Cult, The Cars, Voivod