Caesers - '39 Minutes Of Bliss (In An Otherwise Meaningless World)' (Virgin) Released 21/04/03

Fresh from supporting garage rock c-listers the D4, Swedish rockers Caesars release their UK debut, '39 Minutes Of Bliss'…, a compilation of the best bits of the three albums released in their native land in a similar fashion to fellow Swede's The Hives 'Your New Favourite Band'. Thankfully for the cause of originality, the comparisons stop there. Far from the parody of The Hives, Caesars are far more scathing and derisive. "I wanna smoke crack/ coz your never comin' back" sneers founder and vocalist Cesar Vidal, with the whine of Buzzcocks Pete Shelly. They fuse 60's garage with 80's posturing, and have been influenced by the likes of the Ramones and Bowie, to the styled and suited Duran Duran.

They also remain as infectious as The Dandy Warhols, or Smash Mouth's 'Walking On The Sun', a fact which has seen advertisers across the country jump straight onto the Caesars bandwagon. Wire style openings, with Stooges-esque chug along quality, and snarling lyrics delivered clad in leather, it beats the shit out of a toga any day. The Velvet Underground and The Stones provide the stimulus for the EP's regrettable and only weak point 'Fun And Games'. There's no fun and games here, and for all their iconic influences they just come of sounding marginally better than The Burn. However, tracks like the freshly released 'Jerk It Out' and 'Sort It Out', (as similar in greatness as they are in name) show that the Caesars are a punk-pop fuelled, sardonic, and driving force to be reckoned with. They may have quoted from the same book of Farsifa as so many other bands, but defiantly add some 80's ostentation and glamour to a scene which needs a lot more than Jet to make it appealing. Leave the meaningless world behind, and hail Caesars.