I was on my way out of the office the other day when my boss threw me the keys to his new car,‘See how you like it!’ he said smiling.

Outside I slowly walked around the pristine new Mercedes, lazily dragging my hand over the machine-polished silver curves. I headed straight for the motorway, to give the brute a good run, and as I cruised along at soundless160km per hour, I flicked on the blaupunkt radio.

HALLELUYA. I had a revelation.

A song was halfway through and it dawned on me that I had found the answer to a problem I had been wrestling with for a week or so, namely writing a review for the band Kesseteens. Now the song that was playing on the radio was not Kesseteens (to be honest I thing Mercedes have a ‘GutMusikFilter’ or GMF which stops any music, with the exception of ex-Genesis members being played).

The song that was playing on the radio (no names here because I hear that XXXX now has a small army of assassins working full time for him) was exactly like the Mercedes; well produced, fast, sterile, and expensive, and ultimately, nose-pick inducingly uninteresting. Let’s face it, nobody’s ultimate dream car is a large silver Mercedes.

And this was my revelation. I couldn’t smell the leather seats!

Pause and contemplate. Apparently Mercedes in their Tutonic wisdom, have spent a fortune removing the odor from the leather hide they use in their interiors. And that, my friends, is what’s wrong with music today, someone, has spent millions dollars taking the smell out of rock.

OK, Calm down, things aint that bad yet. Take a look out the backyard, past the rusted pickups and floored out caravans, past the balding dog staked out in his mini bone kingdom, past Eugene all hollow headed and open jawed in his faded dungarees. What we know as Kesseteens is tucked away in the shed like a brooding evil Hotrod. You can smell the leather from here.

The Teens brandish the musical equivalent of slick shiny black lacquer with rude sunburn flames down both sides. They’ve got cut down A-pillars and smoking chrome side rail exhausts. They got fade-a-ways and a dirty big overbore. You can smell the oil, and is that a hint on nitrous oxide? Jump inside and you’ll feel the leather cling, this baby’s got pilot seat belts, and YOU WILL NEED THEM. And the dollar bit in the bottom of the bag of coke is when you look down and see an ornate ivory skull stick-shift-top with red diamond eyes.

That’s the Teens; beautiful, powerful, raw, and slightly self mocking.

They’re a Frankenstein’s monster of music, built from the remains of a hundred wrecks. The chassis looks like a 79 Cramps, the engine’s a supercharged PJ Harvey and the interior could just be original Stooges. Sure this band have influences, and they taken them, added an ejector seat and spayed them all two tone glitter purple and black. There are no airbags, no ABS, and no child locks, but isn’t that what music should be about? Beauty, speed, and danger.
If I’m gonna crash, then this is what I want to crash in, because I know she’s gonna burn.
You don’t take this band for a test drive, you steal them, rob a few gas stations and go on a killing spree.