Album Review: Hellyeah – Band Of Brothers

The Texan supergroup, Hellyeah, have been around for several years so we’re probably all up to speed by now with who they are and where they come from, so for the uninitated, I’ll be brief. They consist of members from Mudvayne, Nothingface, Damageplan and Pantera and when I spied them first on stage at Download 2007 I loved every second of their high-intensity, groove-laden set. With cowboy hats, long leather coats and bandanas everywhere it set me in mind of a hard rock-backed Western movie and I found myself glued to the incredible stickwork of Vinnie Paul for most of the time they pistoned around the stage. They had, at times, an almost laconic, bluesy roll to their music, so when their latest opus Band Of Brothers landed on my desk I was taken aback by just how monstrously aggressive it was. It’s shedloads heavier than previous efforts with a real volatile kick to it.

The title alone hints at just how important the project has become to them and a clear willingness to reveal those close bonds they have formed over time. The component parts, from Chad Gray’s raucous howl through Greg Tribbett and Tom Maxwell’s crushing chugs and howling riffs, to the thundering bottom end of Bob Zilla’s bass and Vinnie Paul’s incredible percussive skills, all come together in a marriage of awe-inspiring assuredness in their ability to raise that collective flag into position time after time. Their impressive focus refuses to let them wander too far from their original design though, so the decision to “metal up” their sound is about as far as we will probably ever see them pushing the boat out.

Laying down the first marker, “War In Me” speed-chugs its way into oblivion with a dark fury, ingesting a solid beatdown and a fist-pumping anthemic quality, whilst for “Call It Like I See It” they slam down a foot on the accelerator and wind down the window to gob vitriol at passers-by. The vocals play just as big a role as the effortless selection of paced groove by rising from the spoken passage to a scouring yelp that scythes down all before it. Most menacing of all, “WM Free” (a reference to the metal-loving / “devil-worshipping” West Memphis Three, imprisoned for murder after a coerced, error-filled confession had been extracted) is a suitably hate-filled crush of a track that, musically, seems focussed on the exact point where Chimaira hits Lamb Of God.

Taking things down a notch the title-track sucks at the Pantera teat to swaggeringly ram its point home – “I got your back and you got mine, as long as we stand together, we’ll be fine” – and “Bigger God” lightens the rhythm, rocking itself up in the verses only to unload in the chorus. Oh, and they’ve still got time for a ballad – “Between You And Nowhere” submerges itself only to reappear at a point somewhere between Alice In Chains and Seether.

Never being ones to upset the applecart, they’ve always had a tendency to become a little predictable and there is an over-reliance on f-bomb fullstops and their rather obvious choices of subject matter. That’s the whole point of their bloody single-mindedness at sticking to their guns though, isn’t it? The alcohol-abusing, rabble-rousing “Drink Drank Drunk” is far less interesting than the introspective musings of “Dig Myself A Hole”, but it’s obvious which one you’re gonna be yelling along and fist-pumping to at their shows. Hellyeah are a riot and the colossal power within Band Of Brothers kicks your arse and hands it back to you on a bin-lid. They clearly have no intentions on slowing their roll at this time and I, for one, am right there with them riding the wave.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/07/hellyeah-band-of-brothers-eleven-seven-music/

Album Review: Lamb Of God - Resolution

This month Lamb Of God’s enigmatic frontman, Randy Blythe, launched a campaign via his blog, Randonesia, to be America’s next President. Considering the timing of the announcement, with the release of the band’s new album Resolution just days away, it’s quite clearly a tongue-in-cheek PR stunt. The question here though is will the album prove as determined as his campaign?

Historically, these Virginian heavyweights rarely fall short when it comes to honing real quality. As their album output has developed from sinister slabs of misguided anger into a study in the art of attack, they have built up a portfolio of killer material second to none. Following the raw bludgeon of their early efforts, including most notably As The Palaces Burn, where speeding cantankerous hardcore was doused in that signature cyclical death metal groove, they went on to hit the motherload when they also threw anthem-fuelled hard rock onto the flaming pile. Cue the utterly masterful assault course of Ashes Of The Wake which fed us neatly into the instant addiction provided by, first Sacrament with those half-spat shards and endorphin-loaded hooks, and then Wrath with its exploratory flashes of brilliance and swaggering ability to create memorable monsters. Consequently, the longing for Resolution and the continuation of discovery has become steadily unbearable.

Resolution divides its time between disconsolately hammering your brains out with spiked aggression and then piping through deeply-rutted rhythms that toss and turn themselves into yet more hook-in-mouth bloodlust. It takes the old, uncomplicated malevolence of As The Palaces Burn and combines it with the hands-to-the-heavens glory of Sacrament and Wrath. All this means yet more of those verses that jaggedy-jaggedy-jaggedy along, before rockstar-pausing to explode with a wham-bam-thankyou-mam into the colossus that is the chorus. Randy Blythe owns these parts with his earth-shattering whoops and throaty rasps that invigorate with their intensity, each one containing coherent, slick lyrics that demand repetition and naturally provide the opportunity for plenty of heartfelt hollerbacks. When they grubbily fall flat it is disappointing to find these sequences flooding a track to bursting point yet again but, when they shed the dirt and fire on all cylinders, there is nothing in metal today that gets the blood pumping faster. Such is the fine line that Lamb Of God now find themselves treading, though only a true hater would dare suggest that, given their history and the talent on show, they are a one-trick pony.

We always knew he was a legend-in-waiting but, by actually getting fully-involved in the whole process of making an album (i.e.; not nipping off to indulge in his other projects whilst the band lay down the backing tracks), Randy has finally revealed his true value to the band by injecting more haranguing invective and raw-throated intensity than ever before. He warms hugely to his lyrics here, tugging at themes of self-destruction and isolation, with the album title left implying something much wider than just the political statement that the cover and a couple of the tracks suggest, and he delivers them with the conviction of a madman. The other tour-de-force here is Chris Adler. His rampaging drums do the work of two; an army of machine-gun peppering kicks loaded into a world of polyrhythmic intersplicing that will leave you gasping for air. He is a machine and with Resolution he finds yet another level to impress at.

Dug in amongst all this we get yet more progressive elements to savour. They lurk in tracks like “The Number Six” and “King Me” and add something spicy to the melting pot. The former plumps for gang chants and half-whispered messages (redolent of Faith No More’s “Crack Hitler”) whilst “King Me” is on a whole other level. There’s more portentous, hushed vocal but here it’s given an operatic backing (producer Josh Wilbur’s suggestion which should be roundly applauded) and the soaring dark heart, where Randy turns himself into an anvil-topped storm cloud, boiling and bubbling into a destructive twister that threatens to rip the top of your head off and suck out the contents, is mesmeric. When he finally blows himself out, you can actually hear the man collapse.

Other more intuitive tracks like the thrashy rumblings (where Megadeth meets Agnostic Front) of “Guilty” and “Visitation”, the hunk of molten metalcore that forms “Cheated”, or the jerky, bawled punk of “Invictus” provide solid, if unspectacular, padding to absorb the smack of the money-shots like “Desolation”, “Ghost Walking”, “The Undertow” and “Insurrection”. They may be the album weak points, but they aren’t those obviously jarring dips in quality that your average album carries around as bulk.

In fact, considering the quantity of variation within, from the long doomy opening blast, via the snatch of acoustic riffing, to the snippet of clean vocal harmony, there is much keep you coming back for further listens over and over again. In fact, you’ll be amazed to hear they’ve even managed to Crowbar in (pun intended) some bluesy stoner rock with “To The End”.

All this and yet the flow of the album is superb with parallel tracks linked together with re-worked riffs or just fiendishly simple wordplay and, with fourteen songs to run through, there’s plenty of bang for your buck. Okay, there is still the sense that they’ve held back, yet again, on really twisting our melons with something from left-field, and pound for pound it’s not got the star quality of say Ashes Of The Wake or Sacrament, but then it’s not lagging too far behind. An essential purchase, though? Well, put it this way, if I was an American citizen, I’d be voting for Randy!

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/lamb-of-god-resolution