Back From the Dead

Product Information

The emotive, piano-led Raise Your Horns is a decent closer, but if your skin doesn’t prickle when Lzzy sings the opening lines of The Steeple – a song made for crowds, the stage, the very things we’ve missed – then you should probably check a few of your other vital signs. It is a journey of navigating mental health, debauchery, survival, redemption, rediscovery, and still maintaining faith in humanity. We carry a broad range of CDs and vinyl (7”/12” singles and LPs) and specialise in indie, alternative, rock, punk, metal plus a few other genres.

Two years later we made the move to our present address, 35 The Headrow, where we have remained ever since. According to Ed Ford of Rock N' Load, "If people wanted to know what the perfect rock album sounds like, give this a blast, you won’t hear much better. Many of the album's lyrics are informed by singer/guitarist Lzzy Hale's experiences of self-discovery as a musician disconnected from fans and bandmates during the pandemic. With Strange Girl, you’ll be met with a wall of sound but that’s far from a bad thing, especially for this style of music.From the introductory salvo of crashing guitar chords and screamed-from-the-guts vocals, it’s clear that this is a new Halestorm. When you find the musical elements that speak most to you, Bombshell quickly becomes a wonderful addition to the album and Halestorm’s expanded catalogue of music. It’s as if the album was recorded for stereo and then mixed to the surround format as an afterthought. While I’ve yet to pick up a release on vinyl, the Hi-Res Lossless Apple Music stream, an Apple Digital Master, is simply exquisite. It’s Halestorm 101 and while it may not break new ground, you know exactly what to expect and Halestorm delivers.

Give or take a Floor Jansen, Lzzy Hale owns the best voice in modern rock – but even she’s never sounded quite this enflamed.That said, as it pertains to the Dolby Atmos surround sound mix, also on Apple Music, it isn’t as hard-hitting and rocking as the stereo mix and sounds a little muddy in places. Their response could have been a flailing mess, but it isn’t – it’s Halestorm in totality, an already great act building new rails to replace the ones we all ran off.

Produced by Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Mastodon, Alice in Chains) with co-production by Scott Stevens (Shinedown, Daughtry, New Year’s Day), Back From The Dead quickly evolved from songwriting exercises into a matter of survival for the band, taking the listener through ‘a journey of navigating mental health, debauchery, survival, redemption, and rediscovery, while still maintaining faith in humanity’ says frontwoman Lzzy Hale.

Lzzy and her brother, drummer Arejay Hale, often site the towering, arena rock sounds of the '70s and '80s as inspirations, and that comes through on the release. As for the deluxe portion of "Back From The Dead: Deluxe Edition", the new songs on the album should appease HALESTORM fans who are already gunning for a follow-up. The treble is dialled back and is, subsequently, a little less pronounced, but Hale’s vocal is also a little distant in the surround mix. While bands with strong vocalists sometimes sound as if they're competing against the guitars, in HALESTORM, the two are perfectly married, not clashing but instead working together, supporting one another.