A guitar guru in his own right, Antti Warman (also in thrashers The Scourger) complimets his big brother’s style like only a sibling can. In his usual manner Janne enlists an impressive array of friends to accompany his yet another adventure to the vasts of virtuosity. It’s a side project, yes, but it’s not just Janne Warman who shines here. To further befuddle the listener, the group rounds out the effort with a scorching renditions of the Journey stadion rock anthem “Separate Ways” and Janet Jackson rock’n’roller “Black Cat”. On his fourth “solo” outing, curiously entitled “Japanese Hospitality”, the Children Of Bodom keyboard prodigy has put together another impressive and eclectic collection of songs, portraying the man’s diverse matrix of influences ranging from “Switcharoo’s” blingingly virtuosic instrumental metal that we’ve all come to recognize and appreciate already on Warmen’s previous albums, to chunky and pesky in-your-face groove metal attack, as displayed here on the track “High Heels on Cobblestone”. Their Unknown Soldier -debut was exactly that, but already on their second effort Beyond Abilities (2002) Warmen was already more of a real band.Īfter having a huge radio hit in their native Finland with their deranged version of the Rockwell song “Someone’s Watching Me”, taken from their previous album “Accept the Fact”, Janne Warman’s Warmen are at it again. Fieger, however, died in 2010 after battling lung and heart cancer.Warmen may have started out in 2000 as Children Of Bodom keyboardist Janne Warman's solo project with a bunch of hired guns helping him to put his musical inspiration to life. Still, the bandmembers hoped that a whole new generation of music fans would get the Knack with the release of 2001's Normal as the Next Guy, an album that found the group at its best when discarding old formulas. Bruce Gary temporarily returned to the fold, but by the time the Knack released their second "reunion" album, Zoom, during the summer of 1998, the drum stool had been filled by Terry Bozzio (formerly of Missing Persons and Frank Zappa's band). The appearance of "My Sharona" on soundtracks and compilations caused the Knack to be thrown in the midst of a revival of sorts, reuniting and playing the occasional show in L.A. Due to their continuing underground popularity, the Knack resurfaced almost a decade later (minus Bruce Gary) and recorded the abysmal Serious Fun before hiding out once again to lick their wounds. Their third album, Round Trip, was adventurous and daring and received favorable reviews, but the band decided to split up soon after the album was released. The Knack then began a quick spiral downward that they were never to recover from. But the Little Girls Understand, less than a year after the debut, the backlash had already begun ("Knuke the Knack"). Their refusal to do interviews turned critics against them, and by the time they released their second album. The Knack's image, or lack thereof, was often unfavorably compared to the Beatles, but their music relied on the rough punchiness of the Kinks and the Who rather than the Fab Four.
With its leadoff single, "My Sharona," the Knack climbed both the album and singles charts (eventually selling millions of copies around the globe), gained wide commercial acceptance, and regenerated the power pop scene that had laid dormant for half a decade. Signing with Capitol after a feeding frenzy of label offers, the Knack released their debut, Get the Knack, in 1979. Forming in Los Angeles in the late '70s, the Knack (Doug Fieger, vocals/guitar Berton Averre, lead guitar Prescott Niles, bass and Bruce Gary, drums) were neither punk nor rock, but pure simple pop, standing out among the musical dross that littered the Sunset Strip.