There are
some intriguing aspects of Band of
Brothers from Hellyeah, some that made me sit back and think that this was
going to be a decent album. Among those
that piqued my interest was the Pantera-sounding guitars on a few of the songs
as well as the overall heaviness of the album.
However with the good must come the bad, and with this particular album
there is quite a bit of bad thrown in that made me realize that this, in fact,
was not going to be one of those quality “keep it in the car” albums.
The
songwriting is pretty sad. While the
music is heavy (though fairly similar) throughout, the lyrics, when
understandable, are pretty ridiculous. “Raising
hell like a murder of crows”?
Really? That’s the best you can
come up with? So the “Band of Brothers”
will go around shitting on stuff? I
realize that the guys from Mudvayne are basically pulling double duty, but if
your songwriting abilities are going to be burnt out to the point where this is
your best output, time to hang up the mic on at least one of your
projects.
The previous two albums; Stampede and their self-titled debut did
a good job of mixing heavy music with more accessible (and dare I say radio
friendly) hits. It looks like they
decided to avoid that mold altogether on Band of Brothers. I can imagine how that conversation went:
“Let’s be
even more metal on this record”
“Yeah, none
of that pop shit from the last few albums “
“ok, how do
we do that”
“Screaming,
lots and lots of screaming, and garble the words as much as possible”
“Yeah and
try and take all of the Southern Rock out of it”
“This is
going to be so cool”
This is
really all this album is, similar sounding music with screeching,
unintelligible lyrics over the top for every song. It does not let up for the entire album,
unlike the previous two albums that had slower, more melodic sections to break
up the ear-pounding monotony. This may
be ideal to some people but if you can’t show a little variety in your music in
terms of tempo or style then it is hard to take you too seriously.
This seems
more like a Mudvayne album than a Hellyeah album. I am not a big Mudvayne fan so maybe that is
what I dislike about this album in general.
Any Mudvayne fans out there? Is
this a good album? Is this a Mudvayne
album with a couple songs that sound like they could (musically) be included
with Pantera’s work?
I am not
saying that this is a terrible album. If
you are a fan of Pantera, Mudvayne or Damage Plan it would be right up your
alley genre-wise. However I would
suggest just listening to those older albums, and even the first two Hellyeah
albums, instead of bothering with this one.
It is a bottom the rotation CD at best.
Sorry if this review seems half-hearted, it is fitting though since the album itself feels so half-hearted as well.
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