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Vicious by Halestorm – Review by Hannibal
Music is fun so lets review some more of it in the form of Vicious by Halestorm.
Introduction
Vicious is the follow up to 2015 In To The Wild life and the fourth album by Halestorm.
Halestorm fans are rarely pressed for new music from the band. Over the past 10 years they have dropped 4 albums. a live DVD, a live EP and 3 covers EPs.
So like Halestorm let us waste little time and dive in.
Vicious
First I will go through track by track. Than we will talk about the full album so lets do it.
01 Black Vultures:
So apart from opening this track by using what I can only think was a broken Darth Vada voice changer. This song isn’t to bad. Musically it has a solid performance and while it might be lacking in the energy openings on older Halestorm albums had it is a decent start.
02 Skulls:
Now this song is clearly about the negative effects of drugs. This might hold more wait if it didn’t feel like it was written by a band that were high as fuck!
03 Uncomfortable
This is probably the best track on the album. It hits hard from the first second and feels the most like a real rock song.
04 Buzz
Your love is like a drug to me. This is a truly original concept. No pop act or rock band has ever had a song with this exact idea. Yes I know plenty of bands write songs with the same concept but fuck this one just feels lazy. Also remember these comments in a few songs time.
05 Do Not Disturb:
Does sex sell? Probably but what about 1 night stands and getting slightly kinky? These are not new concepts in Halestorm songs. However usually they are good songs. This is not that, at best this just feels like a band trying to be cool.
06 Conflicted:
I don’t have words to describe this song. It is the worst performance on this album.
07 Killing ourselves to Live:
This is the best song musically. Sadly the lyrics let it down because it sounds like they are trying to say so much more than they actually do. The idea behind this song is awesome and I can imagine this song performed live would be allot of fun. But as a studio track leaves something to be desired.
08 Heart of Novocaine:
If you don’t know novocaine is a numbing agent. Because nothing says rock and roll like a song title you have to look up to determine what it means. Basically this is your sad song for when you have gone through a shitty break up.
09 Painkiller:
Your love is like a drug to me this stop! I have already listened to this song. This is buzz just again. It is the exact same concept. This is just lazy song writing now.
10 White Dress:
This probably should have been the sound track to the second hunger games movie. Fitting because this song is from a disappointing album and that was a disappointing movie. That is right topical references that are not out dated at all and shots at movies and musicians in one go.
11 Vicious:
title tracks can do so much. This title track fits the album perfectly. It is disappointing and thinks it is allot more than it realy is.
12 The Silence:
This song while I have very little issue with the actual performance being the last track on the album feels disappointing. I honestly thought this song was leading to the big finish of the album and in the end it was the end so it felt like a build up to nothing.
The Album all together
Taking this album purely on the performance of the instruments used it is an album that I would describe as not half bad.
The instrumentals for these songs are fine and while at times perhaps lacking some of the energy or skill that some more early Halestorm stuff had I have no real issue with the musical performance on the album.
However this album is with out a doubt let down by the lyrics and in some cases the vocal performances themselves.
Most if not all of the songs feel lazy and very shallow. In so many cases it feels like they want you to hear more than they are actually saying.
Apart from that they have also decided to use so many layers of vocals in some places all I can wonder is how they are going to translate these songs in to live performances.
This is also ignoring the few places they have decided to use stupid vocal effects which don’t do anything good for the songs.
Over all I would say this album is disappointing more than anything else.
Rating
I don’t want to seem overly critical but I personally don’t think this is a good album.
4.5 out of 10
Conclusion
If you have anything that you think you’d like to see a review on from the rock or heavy metal world let me know.