Hard Rock Reviews
As much as I like to call myself and this site Kevy Metal, my journey into music actually began with hard rock. Seventies and nineties hardrock – plus contemporary bands inspired by these styles – are still a significant part of what I listen to, and therefore, Album of the Week reviews on hard rock bands are published frequently. You can find all of them right here. Overlaps with my heavy metal reviews inevitably exist.
Looking for something specific, but can’t find it by browsing the reviews? Searching by artist name or release title using the search bar might bring up some Album of the Week reviews I have written before I started tagging my reviews properly.
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Album of the Week 35-2020: Aerosmith – Get Your Wings
When I was a kid just getting into Aerosmith, their sophomore album ‘Get Your Wings’ just did not click with me, despite having a strong preference for the band’s rawer seventies material. About twenty-five years later, it has become one of my favorite Aerosmith records. While the self-titled debut includes…
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Album of the Week 31-2020: Richie Sambora – Stranger In This Town
It would be tempting to think that Richie Sambora’s first solo endeavor outside of Bon Jovi would be a guitar-heavy rock affair. However, thinking so would overlook two of Sambora’s best qualities. First of all, he is a guitarist who always plays in service of the song and secondly, he…
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Album of the Week 30-2020: Jehtro Tull – Minstrel In The Gallery
Unlike most bands whose heyday was in the seventies, there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on what the classic Jethro Tull album is. If anything, this is a testament to the band’s versatility. ‘Aqualung’ appears to be the most popular one, but fans of the band’s progressive side tend…
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Album of the Week 28-2020: Hedvig Mollestad – Ekhidna
What Hedvig Mollestad does with her own trio – blending Sabbathian stoner rock grooves with jazzy improvisations – is already impressive, but I was not prepared for the genius of ‘Ekhidna’. While the seventies rock riffs are still everywhere, Mollestad and her five companions dial the jazz factor way up,…
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Album of the Week 26-2020: Turbo – Dorosłe Dzieci
While ‘Dorosłe Dzieci’ isn’t necessarily my favorite Turbo album – that would probably be the more thrashy ‘Kawaleria Szatana’ – it is one of the most accomplished debut albums of all time. It largely foregoes the flaws debut albums tend to suffer from, such as still being in search of…
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Album of the Week 25-2020: Takenori Shimoyama – The Power Of Redemption
‘The Power Of Redemption’ is the second solo album Saber Tiger singer Takenori Shimoyama has released in less than six months. It is however, significantly different than ‘Way Of Life’, released in November. While Shimoyama’s raw, impassioned vocals worked surprisingly well with the largely acoustic music on that record, ‘The…
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Album of the Week 16-2020: Accept – The Rise Of Chaos
Despite liking the Mark Tornillo-fronted era of Accept, ‘The Rise Of Chaos’ kind of passed me by initially. Looking back, the inconsistency of its predecessor ‘Blind Rage’ combined with the promise of a somewhat more straightforward album and a few bouts of extreme lyrical simplicity in the preview tracks probably…
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Album of the Week 15-2020: Dool – Summerland
Three years ago, debut album ‘Here Now, There Then’ by the Rotterdam-based band Dool took me completely by surprise. While it’s not uncommon for dark rock bands to nail the atmosphere associated with the scene, Dool actually has the songwriting chops and the exquisitely arranged guitar tapestries to completely ditch…
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Album of the Week 14-2020: Saxon – Lionheart
Following the departure of original guitarist Graham Oliver, Saxon gradually grew into too much of a German-styled power metal band. This is not to discredit his follow-up Doug Scarratt, who is probably the best musician to ever play with the band, but the beefy, modern production jobs on their later…
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