1167. Halestorm / Back from the Dead. 2022. 4/5/

Prior to the covid pandemic hitting the scene, Halestorm had built a reputation for being one of the hardest working bands out there, known for their constant touring and releasing of singles and EP to keep their fans entertained. It has been four years since the release of the previous album ”Vicious”. Over the course of the next two years, Halestorm, consisting of brother and sister combination of lead singer guitarist Lzzy Hale and drummer RJ Hale, lead guitarist Joe Hottinger and bass guitarist Josh Smith, had risen to arena headline status in UK and throughout Europe and were growing bigger than ever in the US. Then the COVID pandemic struck. Almost immediately, the band set up a campaign called #RoadieStrong, in order to help out the roadies and crew whose incomes had dried up almost immediately overnight. In isolation apart from each other, like all other bands on the planet, there must have been doubts as to what would come next, and just when that would be able to happen. The band had begun to dabble in new songs before the pandemic hit, and in January 2021, they announced that they were beginning to write and record a new album, in a socially distance setting which no doubt was not a perfect situation. Lzzy again paired with composer and producer Scott Stevens to pen most of the songs. In August of last year they released a new single, “Back from the Dead“ to dip their toes back into the music world. And as the world began to poke its nose out from behind the curtains once again, the new album, also titled “Back from the Dead“, was released on May 6.

The album kicks off with the title track and first single from the album. Immediately dominated by the screaming vocals of Lzzy Hale and a bombastic beat, it’s a great way to open the album to announce their return. The band seems bigger, harder, more alive than you necessarily expect. It’s a great start, and is extended into “Wicked Ways” with RJ’s pounding those drums with ferocity, Lzzy giving it all vocally and some nice guitar work between herself and Joe. I love the aggression shown in these two opening tracks, showcasing the absolute best this band can produce, and getting close to the way they appear on stage as well. More of this please!
“Strange Girl” dials back that just a little, allowing Lzzy’s vocals to show their soaring skills without losing any of their intensity. A number of the songs here deal with mental health, the battle of light versus darkness in the mind, none more so than “Brightside” where little is left to the imagination in lyrics such as “Fake a smile and self-destruct, count it down, four, three, two, one, I'm over it, all the bullshit, and this fucked up world I'm living in”. It’s another terrific song, with a great rhythm that is perfect for the rant that Lzzy goes on. The second single “The Steeple” follows and keeps up with the power of the vocals driving the drums and guitars in the same fashion. This is followed by the acoustic driven “Terrible Things”, the quiet interlude of the album that not only showcases Lzzy’s amazing vocal range, but separates the first half of the album from the second half.
I’m not sure the second half of the album can match the first. In places in feels more forced than what has come before it. Or perhaps, like in “My Redemption” and “Bombshell” and “I Come First” and “Psycho Crazy”, the style of track that it is has just been done better earlier on the album. Or is it just too similar to better tracks earlier on the album? Make up your own mind on that. The closing track “Raise Your Horns” has some pertinent thoughts in its lyrics, but finishing with what is a piano driven ballad for me just hurts the excellent tracks that have come before it.
If I have a real bone to pick with the album is that I think it could use a few songs where the tempo is picked up and given a bit of speed to allow the band to really break out. This album sticks in that hard hitting drum tempo most of the way through, and it is effective and bludgeoning in the same breath. Just somewhere I would like to have seen a faster song or two, just to offset the balance between that hard mid-tempo and then the softer slower tracks.

I have flirted around Halestorm for a decade, occasionally listening to an album, occasionally watching video clips on YouTube or even a live gig, where they seem to be at their best. I enjoyed their cover version of Dio’s “Straight Through the Heart” on the “This is Your Life” tribute album to the great man. So I cannot and do not claim to be an expert on their music, just a casual fan of what I have heard and seen. But since the release of this album I have listened to it quite a bit, enjoying it more each time I put it on. The band sounds great, and the four piece has a booming sound to their music. The star attraction is not doubt Lzzy Hale herself, and her vocals are a revelation in a world where female hard rock singers seem to come and go fairly quickly. But she shows here that she can sing those ballads well while also blowing your socks off with her harder and tougher songs.
With 11 tracks, and the album just pushing 38 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome which is always a good thing in this day and age. For me, despite the excellent singing on the two tracks, for me if “Terrible Things” and “Raise Your Horns” were substituted for two harder, faster songs this would be an epic album. Their inclusion for me halts this, but I’m sure the true fans of the band love these two tracks and in the long run they are the ones who will dictate their inclusion. And that’s the way it should be.

1166. Def Leppard / Diamond Star Halos. 2022. 2/5

Like the rest of the world, Def Leppard has been in covid isolation for the better part of the last three years, and while they rested up in their own parts of the world, there was no doubt a need for a reflection on where they stood in the world, and just where they wanted to head once the pandemic had receded. This is the band’s first new album since their self-titled effort in 2015, after which a world tour playing “Hysteria” in its entirety took greater precedence. Well, they know what is going to sell tickets.
We could have a whole new entry started up to discuss how the music in Def Leppard’s discography has progressed from 1979 up to the present day. And while the band has never strayed from the fact that they wanted to be a rock band, not a metal band or any other type of band, it seems as though even that statement has changed over the years. The further infusing of less heavy styles of music in their songs and albums over the years has been obvious. But through that, there appeared some hope of a recovery. “Songs from the Sparkle Lounge” actually had some really good songs on it, and a recovery of sorts stating their wish to infuse the music of their heroes from the 1970’s in their current day music, and the well-received early single released from this album, seemed to indicate that this might be the album that saw the band give us a really good hard rock album for the first time in years.

The album kicks off with the excellent rock groove of “Take What You Want”, an early indication of what style of songs this album is going to produce. It is a very 1970’s glam rock AOR beginning, in perfect Def Leppard style which gives it its relatability to the modern time. Rick Savage co-wrote this track with Joe Elliott, and also wrote the closing track on the album “From Here to Eternity” which also references that age with the same feeling of T-Rex and Queen. “Kick” is a typical Phil Collen penned track, maintaining a familiar structure of song and riff, while allowing both guitarists to showcase their exceptional solo skills for a short space of the song set aside for it. It never ceases to amaze me on Def Leppard albums, with two such fabulous and highly credentialled guitarists in the band, that on the albums at least there is not room for more soloing between the two. I know they want pop rock songs, ones that are basically radio bites, but surely the occasional break out of guitar feuding would be a great addition.
The album contains a lot of harmless songs of that same calibre that I spoke of – the Def Leppard pop-rock. “Fire it Up”, “SOS Emergency”, “U Rok Mi”, “Open Your Eyes”, “Unbreakable”. And then you have the quieter ballad-style Leppard tracks, such as “Liquid Dust”, “Goodbye for Good This Time”, “All We Need”, “Gimme a Kiss”, “Angels (Can’t Help You Now)” - the ones that scream radio airplay... well, in the late 80’s and into the 90’s at least. I’m not sure they will work the same way in this day and age. Two of them, “This Guitar” and “Lifeless”, feature guest vocals from Alison Krauss, which also brings in the country and western style onto the album. It’s all very easy listening stuff, the kind of tracks that can crossover for the band to draw fans from several genres of music loving folk. You know the drill. Def Leppard aren’t going to be re-inventing the wheel at this stage of their careers. The band knows, and the two principal writers in Elliott and Collen know, that their bread is buttered very much on one side now, and that’s what brings in the cash.

I haven’t purchased a Def Leppard album since “Slang”, and I haven’t done so again here, instead utilising the streaming music service to listen to the album. And there is a very simple reason why – because now that this review is done, and I am about to publish this review, I see no reason to ever listen to this album again. Now that isn’t a statement about its quality, or the skills of the musicians involved. It is simply that the style of music that Def Leppard has played for almost the last 30 years just doesn’t excite me at all. They have gone their own path, and I most definitely went on a different one. And the sugar coated soft metal ballads are ones that by now, when it comes to Def Leppard, you become immune to. But I must admit, when we have these country and western ballad songs, such as the duets with Alison Krauss, I really am in a quandary as to what is going on. This is where they cross over another line that surely no one ever thought they would. To be honest, I’m not sure there are any further lines they can cross.
If I am in the mood to listen to a Def Leppard album, I will always head to any of those first five studio albums. They are the ones that sit proudest on my CD shelves. Those albums and the songs are what I love about the band. Everything from that point on has been a completely different style, and not one that appeals to me much at all. And given the excitement and burst of tingling sensations I got when I first heard the two singles the band released off this album before its release, the end result is a little disappointing. But as I said, with Def Leppard, you know what you are getting, and if you enjoy what it is they are releasing then you will probably love this album, and if you are of my vintage and grew up with a different band, you will probably sigh and nod knowingly as you move on to the next band and album being released, and never look back.

1165. Rainbow / On Stage. 1977. 5/5

By the time this album was being thought of and considered, Rainbow had already built themselves up to being a hugely massive band. Led by virtuoso guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, and featuring the amazing vocals and writing talents of Ronnie James Dio, the band was rounded out by other amazing musicians of the era – Jimmy Bain on bass guitar, Cozy Powell on drums, and Tony Carey on keyboards. Touring on the back of the ground-breaking and simply incredible “Rising” album, with the band now in the groove, it was decided to record some of the shows with the idea of releasing them as a live album, to showcase the band at its best in its element. As a result, several dates in Germany and Japan were recorded in late 1976.

 
Some of the things that, in my opinion, make it difficult to release a truly representative live album of the band at this time must surely have been the same things that producer Martin Birch came up against in his battle to have this done and released properly. The first issue was the length of the songs as they were played in the live environment. Now, Rainbow was already renown for longish tracks when it came to their albums, but in the live environment it was even more prevalent. As was often the case in the 1960’s and 1970’s, bands played extended length version of their songs live, which allowed the musicians to showcase their wares. The guitars and keyboards would often please themselves for what they were playing, with the drums and bass holding the rhythm of the background until such time as they broke back into the song again. Now this was all fine (although, if you ask me for my personal preference, I would rather hear another 6 songs being played than have several songs extended into freeform experimentations that may be okay for awhile but in the long run just a little bit boring), but when it came to trying to put them on vinyl, it made it difficult for Birch to fit them on one side of an album without cutting the songs in half! Birch eventually solved this by having the songs on the double album out of sequence that they were played, and had them such that they could fit snugly on their section of the vinyl. This we had the songs, but not in the order they were played. Probably not a big deal, but one that could cause annoyance for some fans. The length of the songs also prevented Birch from being able to have all of the songs played on the two LPs, which meant that “Stargazer” and “Do You Close Your Eyes” were both left off the album, as it was felt that having this set as a three LP collection would have been too costly and overpriced for the fans. It also meant that one of the band’s most amazing tracks “Stargazer”, was ditched for two cover songs, Deep Purple’s “Mistreated” (which of course Ritchie had co-written) and The Yardbirds’ “Still I’m Sad”. This seems like an injustice, though to be fair I love both of those songs and the versions that appear here.
Apart from this, check out the majesty of the songs here. The amazing “Kill the King”, opening each gig on the end of this tour even though it had yet to be laid down in the studio – it didn’t appear until the next studio album, “Long Live Rock and Roll”. The awesomeness of “Man of the Silver Mountain” in its best habitat, the live version. “Catch the Rainbow” and “Sixteenth Century Greensleeves” just terrific. The best ever version of “Mistreated”, with Ronnie on vocals and Ritchie brilliant on guitar. And then the best ever version of “Still I’m Sad” with Ronnie on vocals and Ritchie on guitar. I still cannot believe that the version they did of this on the debut album was done just as an instrumental without Ronnie providing the vocals. What the bloody hell was Ritchie thinking of?!

If you’ve been here before, then you’ve heard me say this before. Live albums should be good, because they show a band in their natural environment, and they should also contain the best songs of the band. So in essence live albums should always be awesome, and if they aren’t the band has stuffed up big time.
I first had a copy of this album after high school, and always enjoyed it but was more interested in listening to the studio albums than this live album, for the reasons already mentioned – not enough songs, and the songs here are too long and have too much improvising to stretch them out. Eventually though, this grew on me to the point of amazing obsession. And the main reason for this is the quality of Ronnie James Dio’s amazing vocals. Seriously, check them out, listen to how he carries himself and the songs, and you’ll know what I mean. And that’s not to put down the other musicians here because all of them are also brilliant. Ritchie’s guitaring is at the top of his game, Jimmy Bain is bossing the bass, and Cozy Powell’s booming drums again showcase his great talent.
I think it’s amazing that a band used to play a song live that it hadn’t yet actually recorded in the studio. Imagine turning up to a gig now and having a band open their gig every night with a song you didn’t know. But I love this version. And listening to Dio singing “Mistreated” is just brilliant. But not as good as him singing “Still I’m Sad”. This is such a scintillating version of this song. Listen to the original Yardbirds version, and then what Rainbow has done on this album. Chalk and cheese. It is such a shame they never did a studio version of it (with Dio singing at least), but this version on this album will always be one of my favourite things that Rainbow and Dio did.
This live album is top shelf. It’s one of the best out there, capturing that moment in time for this band when all members were at their very best, and although it would have been great to have the whole show from start to finish (which, if you are interested, you can now get on the “Live in Germany 1976” that was released in the 1990’s), it is still one of the greats. Only one of the band remains alive, and I miss all of them every time I put this album on.