With five tracks of riff-heavy and fairly trashy hard rock, The Hÿss sound particularly assured on their 2020 release ‘Extraterrestrial’. Although claiming stoner rock roots, this recording shows off much less of the genre’s typically fuzzy sound, preferring instead to latch onto several crushing, concrete infused riffs. Any stoner intents are more likely to come from the disc’s lyrical content; one that drops the listener straight into a self-made world of spaceships, alien creatures and disco monsters. Although not necessarily coming from the same musical roots, in terms of concept, this is an EP that would make the Misfits and The Groovie Ghoulies proud.
Tag Archives: hard rock
RATT – The Atlantic Albums: 1984-1990
Armed with the swagger of Motley Crue, the crunch of mid 70s Sweet and a bunch of great choruses, Ratt briefly became massive stars in the US during the mid 80s. With a couple of videos gaining heavy rotation on MTV and a best selling debut album, they were among the melodic metal/glam scene’s most successful acts.
None of that applies in the UK, even though Ratt got of lots of positive press from the rock magazines. With MTV Europe barely off the ground, they were without an outlet for their videos and a rock-averse radio system meant the singles got no real airplay. As a result, Ratt were unknowns outside of the keener rock fans’ community; the closest they came to a hit was having their second album scrape the top fifty of the album chart in 1985. It’s hardly a surprise that, for UK record buyers, most of their albums have spent most of their life in an out of print limbo. For those British fans, most Ratt discs – save for 1990’s ‘Detonator’ – were procured on vinyl, as cheap imports from cut-out bins.
GLENN HUGHES – Songs In The Key Of Rock
With the string of superb albums starting with 1992’s ‘From Now On…’ through to 1999’s ‘The Way It Is’, the legendary Glenn Hughes released his most consistent block of work ever. Moving into the new century, both ‘Return of The Crystal Karma’ (2000) and ‘Soul of A New Machine’ were enjoyable enough, but sometimes lacked the overall consistency of those 90s albums. In 2003, Hughes released ‘Songs In The Key of Rock’, an album that pretty much showed off his full vocal range on a collection of brilliantly constructed hard rock tunes.
JORN – Heavy Rock Radio II: Executing The Classics
Jorn Lande is no stranger to cover versions. In 2006, he released an album’s worth of covers in tribute to the legendary Ronnie James Dio. Ten years on, he released ‘Heavy Rock Radio’, a tribute to some of his other favourites and influences. Unfortunately, ‘Heavy Rock Radio‘ wasn’t very good at all. A couple of tunes might’ve just about passed muster in terms of hard rock reworkings and – predictably – the obligatory Dio-related song fared quite well, but overall, it was a bit of a turkey. Making things heavier doesn’t necessarily make things better (unless you ask a particularly unadventurous metalhead) and in a rocked up cover of ‘Hotel California’, Lande truly hit rock bottom by giving the world a reggae metal hybrid that no-one with ears deserved to hear.
Jorn obviously had fun making that record – terrible as most of it might have been – and he enters his fifth decade as a recording artist with a second volume of reworked favourites. ‘Heavy Rock Radio II: Executing The Classics’ is an improvement on its predecessor, but then, in many respecrs, it would have struggled to have been worse. It’s actually about fifty percent better, but still makes for an incredibly patchy record.
L.A. GUNS – Another Xmas In Hell EP
In the US, Christmas music is big business. You can find a festive album to suit pretty much every one of your holiday moods. There are countless Christmas albums from country artists; you can play it traditionally with the easy listening approach with She & Him’s retro pop or Lowen & Navarro’s world of log fires and woolly jumpers. You can opt for retro rock ‘n’ roll and a swingin’ yuletide with the brilliant Brian Setzer, or even funky festivities with James Brown. In a world where even Bad Religion – a punk band fronted by one of the world’s most outspoken athiest academics – have a Christmas album, the gloves are off. We live in a post-irony world.
In December 2019, L.A. Guns’ ‘Another Xmas In Hell’ appeared on streaming services with little to no fanfare. A five track release, it finds the US hard rockers putting their own slant on a couple of very familiar festive favourites and a couple of lesser known gems.