“Supermen” by Richtaste. Song produced by Pat Aeby. Video produced by Don Lichterman, shot on GoPro Hero.

Rock and roll has been declared dead so many times that the obituaries now outnumber the records. We don’t buy it. Never have. And if you need a single piece of evidence to wave at the next person who tells you guitars are finished, press play on “Supermen” by Richtaste. It is loud without being dumb, polished without being sterile, and built on the kind of conviction you simply cannot fake in a studio. The Swiss band has delivered three new tracks to Sunset, “Supermen,” “Night of a 1,000 Dreams” and “The Sea,” and all three are streaming exclusively here. “Supermen” is the one that kicks the door in.

What makes this release different isn’t only the songs. It’s the lineage. Richtaste made these recordings with Pat Aeby in the producer’s chair, and anyone who knows Swiss rock history understands what that name signals. This is a band that went looking for someone who had lived inside big, muscular rock music at the highest level, and found him.

The Krokus Connection, and Why It Matters

Switzerland has produced plenty of fine musicians. It has produced exactly one Krokus. Formed in Solothurn in 1975, the band became the most popular hard rock act the country had ever seen once Marc Storace took over lead vocals in 1980, and their brand of riff-driven, arena-sized rock carried them onto stages across Europe and America. For a lot of listeners outside Switzerland, Krokus was Swiss rock, full stop.

Patrick Aeby joined that institution in the early 2000s. When Storace returned to the fold, he brought Aeby and guitarist Dominique Favez with him from his solo band, and Aeby took over the drum throne. He played on 2003’s Rock the Block alongside Storace, Fernando von Arb, Favez and Tony Castell, and he anchored the band through those years of touring before an amicable parting in November 2005. Krokus itself put out word that the whole family wished him well. Stefan Schwarzmann, formerly of U.D.O. and Accept, filled the seat the following January. That’s the kind of company we’re talking about.

Aeby didn’t disappear after Krokus. He ran his own facility, Soundlake Studio, and moved decisively into production, recording and producing the New York band Atomic Brother in 2006. His reputation behind the console grew out of the same instincts that made him valuable behind the drums: feel, precision and an ear for how power actually translates through speakers. Drummers who become producers tend to hear records from the foundation up. They know a song lives or dies on its groove. You can hear that philosophy all over “Supermen.”

“Supermen” Hits Like Classic Rock and Breathes Like Indie

Here’s our take, and we’re not pretending to be neutral. Too much modern rock gets sanded down until there’s nothing left to grab. Too much retro rock sounds like a costume party. “Supermen” threads that needle. Its riffs carry an adrenaline charge you’d expect from a band raised on the classics, but the production stays clean, punchy and present, closer to the clarity of contemporary indie than to the cavernous reverb of the hair metal era. Aeby gives Richtaste weight without burying them. Everything hits. Nothing smears.

The title tells you something about the band’s intent, too. Calling a song “Supermen” is a bold move, the kind of swing that can collapse into self-parody in the wrong hands. Richtaste plays it with enough heart that it lands as a rallying cry rather than a boast. It’s anthemic in the old sense of the word, a song built for a room full of people shouting along, yet it never loses its emotional footing. Massive and personal at once. That balance is rarer than it looks.

Three Songs, Three Different Moods

If “Supermen” is the punch, the other two tracks in this collection show the reach. “Night of a 1,000 Dreams” leans into haunting melody, trading some of the voltage for atmosphere and letting the songwriting carry the load. It’s the track we suspect will sneak up on people. First listen, you notice the hooks. Third listen, you can’t shake them.

“The Sea” goes somewhere else entirely. Cinematic and deeply moving, it was inspired by the fight to protect the world’s oceans, and it gives the collection a conscience that elevates the whole release. Plenty of rock bands sing about freedom and rebellion in the abstract. Fewer aim that energy at something concrete. We’ll say it plainly: a band willing to put its craft behind ocean conservation, and do it with this much musicality, is a band worth championing. Listen to all three in sequence and you get a full portrait of Richtaste, their muscle, their melancholy and their sense of purpose.

Shot on GoPro Hero, and Better for It

Every Richtaste video streaming on Sunset was filmed entirely with GoPro Hero cameras, and the “Supermen” clip, produced by Don Lichterman, shows exactly why that choice works. Big-budget music videos have a way of draining the life out of a band. Glossy lighting, endless takes, a director’s vision that has nothing to do with the songs. Small rugged cameras do the opposite. They get close. They move with the musicians. They catch the sweat, the motion, the little unplanned moments that make a performance feel alive.

The result is raw and immersive in the best sense, a visual language that matches the energy of the music rather than competing with it. Bold, fast-moving, authentically independent. We’ve built Sunset’s entire video approach around that conviction, and Richtaste is one of the clearest demonstrations of it yet. These aren’t overproduced studio pieces. They’re living moments of music and motion, captured by people who care about the band in front of the lens.

Why We Believe in Richtaste

Independent rock has never needed permission. What it needs is craft, conviction and someone willing to put the music in front of listeners without sanding off its edges. Richtaste brought the first two. Pat Aeby sharpened them. Sunset is proud to handle the third. When a band from a country best known abroad for one legendary hard rock export teams up with a member of that very legend and comes out sounding modern, purposeful and entirely their own, that’s not nostalgia. That’s continuation.

Start with “Supermen” at full volume. Move to “Night of a 1,000 Dreams” when the sun goes down. Save “The Sea” for a quiet moment when you can actually listen. You’ll find all three streaming now on Sunset, alongside the rest of the catalog at Sunset Recordings, and more GoPro-shot music videos on Sunset TV. Rock isn’t dead. It just moved to Switzerland for a while.