When a band is named after the first Bugs Bunny cartoon you would expect some crazy musicians making some weird music, but this prejudice isn’t justified by Harem Scarem. Hailing from Canada, these guys make mature hard rock since the late 1980’s. Now they came up with their eleventh album, Human Nature.

 

The trademark of Harem Scarem, their classic melodic sound, is still very much incorporated on this release. It’ll give you a nice nostalgic feeling as if we still live in the beginning of the nineties. Hasn’t the band changed over all those years then? Well, they do sound more modern, but all the Harem Scarem ingredients are still present: the sweet harmonies, the gentle vocals and flowing guitar solos.

 

Harem Scarem always sounded very soft and accessible, which is a great thing about the band and nowadays they’ve taken that element even further. The whole album has this great positive feeling and you really get cheered up by it, but sometimes they exacerbate it too much. It’s an awful comparison, but I just can’t help thinking of The Backstreet Boys when the song ‘Next Time Around’ starts and this is definitely where I draw the line concerning the cheerful sound of an album. Also the next song’s sound ‘Caught Up in Your World’ has a too high dose of this cheerfulness and my nostalgic feelings are wrestling with the ‘The Backstreet Boys feeling’, without a clear winner standing out. Luckily some fine solos are making up for this. However, when I hear the chorus of ‘Give Love/Get Love’, which really reminds me of Queen, I must come to the conclusion that overall I just miss those stronger, sturdy riffs like in ‘Die Off Hard’ from the Karma Cleansing album, released in 1997.

 

All in all this record really entertained me well and I gave it quite a few spins, but it’s too bad that there are some parts that sound too smooth. However, all the Harem Scarem fans will definitely dig this album and it should be praised that they hang on to their classic sound, which still manages to awaken a positive and nostalgic feeling, though with a little twist.