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Halestorm - Vicious review

Lzzy and the rest get their new album great, and rightly take their place as hard rock’s flag bearer. (This is a pretty short review - as I am pretty strapped on time)

I think a mainstay hard rock band is something we haven’t had on the radio or charts for years. And Halestorm is well on their way to being just that. They hired Nick Raskulinecz for this album, a famous and from what i’ve heard - extremely good producer. His track record is littered with greatness - and it’s easy to see, he’s worked from Korn to Alice in Chains to Mastodon.

What I really like about Halestorm is the themes in their thrash-pop sort of hard rock. Everything from sex and drugs to empowerment. They touch on a little bit of everything, and hey, I do enjoy some good lyrics. And god, do they have some good one’s here. I gotta say all of the songs are quite solid. From the fast paced and lead single Uncomfortable, to the EXTREMELY sexual Do Not Disturb, to the catchy and brilliant ballad Killing Myself To Live. Lzzy’s vocals are absolutely amazing throughout, her trademark scream and her high vocal range making the songs unique - and giving an extremely unique touch to the album, and making good songs better. Not to say this album is without fault. It has a few. For example, the lack of experimentation is a bit of an issue to me. There’s ballads - there’s exploring of themes lyrically - but there’s not much long songs - there’s not much proving that they can go beyond their thrash-pop boundries. And that’s what worries me - I think when the best bands experiment, usually good stuff comes out of it. But that’s just mainly me personally. Overall, I recommend this. Very much recommend this.

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BFMV - Gravity Review

The Nickelback of Metal falls yet again. This very well may be the worst album of the year.

Yes, it’s time to bash this newish album. Because bashing one of the bigger albums in an already shitty year for metal and hard rock in general was needed more I guess.

I never really considered BFMV a good metal band. Their first album - which a lot of fans say is their best - isn’t. I remember listening to it for the first time when I first got into metal - and I remember it sounded like a cheaper Trivium. And well, my opinion of that still holds. But there’s no denying that they went on a MASSIVELY downhill spiral from their okay heights. It progressively got worse, until this monstrosity of an album was released. And it could still get worse.

Listening to this album all the way through was a significant chore. I didn’t feel like i was listening to a metal album. And it doesn’t have the feel of one. Tuck has lost his trademark voice, and the solution the band had was Autotune. Autotune really doesn’t belong on a metal album to be honest. The drums are loud, the bass is quite minimal - it feels very overproduced. Synths CAN work on a metal album, but it didn’t at all here. But what does it sound like? It reminds me of Hybrid Theory slightly - although a hell of a lot worse at doing emocore radio rock. There’s almost no point in going track by track like i would on any other album - because all of them fail. You have emocore songs like Over It, and extremely generic “I don’t know what the hell to call this” songs like Peace of Me, Not Dead Yet, etc. Speaking of genericness, this whole album is exactly that. 90 percent of the songs follow the same structure - NOT unlike Linkin Park (which is why was put off Linkin Park for the longest time). What confused me is that BFMV is a metalcore band. They’ve thrown all their metalcore roots away in one swoop, and replaced it wth garbage. This band is absolutely terrible. This album is beyond terrible. Honestly, I see this band through the same eyes I see Nickelback, because the similarities between two unrelated bands are uncanny. All their albums are quite terrible, they’re both overrated and overplayed, and there’s only really a few decent songs by either band. I don’t know how either of them still sell out concerts to be completely honest. I cannot recommend this album to anyone. I think there’s one album which comes close to this as worst album this year - Machine Head’s Catharsis. And i will NEVER get close to either of these albums again.

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Don’t get your hopes up for Alice In Chains

I don’t see much reason to get your hopes up anyway - it seems much like The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here - not reason to get your hopes up. So after many many years of no Alice releases, they’re finally releasing Rainier Fog. And boy, does it seem like we’re in for a bad ride. Their single The One You Know didn’t really go anywhere. Nothing screamed “SLUDGE METAL” at me, like the best alice tracks (generally) do. Feels like they’re starting to leave their sludge roots behind. Not even the solo was good. :P So Far Under just feels like it will never end. Mainly because it’s five minutes of the same riff with extremely little variation apart from the chorus. It feels stale - predictable.  That being said, Never Fade I just listened to. I somewhat it personally, even though it’s clear the new vocalist has lost his trademark Black Gives Way To Blue style voice. Solo was pretty solid. I didn’t think “that’s a good alice song” though. Because it wasn’t. Compared to the tracks off Black Gives Way To Blue (which shows what the new band is capable of), it PALES HARD in comparison. So don’t get your hopes up.