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 44-2022: Alter Bridge – Pawns & Kings
Alter Bridge albums are always a careful balancing act between hooky modern rock songwriting and the crushing, precise riff work of contemporary metal. Too much metal and Myles Kennedy’s incredible voice doesn’t get the space it needs to soar, but too much rock makes the songs a bit too predictable…
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Album of the Week 40-2022: Erja Lyytinen – Waiting For The Daylight
Honorary monikers can be compliments for musicians. But they can just as easily be too limiting to properly describe what they are doing. Case in point: Erja Lyytinen. For a while now, she has been known as Finland’s blues queen. But if her new album ‘Waiting For The Daylight’ proves…
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Album of the Week 38-2022: Seikima-II – Bloodiest
Kabuki rock demons Seikima-II are back! In accordance with their silly mythology, the band split up on new year’s eve in 1999, claiming the world was conquered. Apparently there were more worlds to conquer, as there have been occasional reunion tours since and now there is a new album in…
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Album of the Week 37-2022: Daida Laida – Issen
Despite featuring musicians from prominent Japanese rock bands, Daida Laida always felt more like a hobby project than a record company sanctioned supergroup. Solid, fun, but unspectacular. In a way, their sixth studio album ‘Issen’ is exactly that, but the addition of former Gargoyle guitarist Kentaro to the line-up did…
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Album of the Week 33-2022: Living Colour – Stain
Back when Living Colour’s third studio album ‘Stain’ was released, critical reception was generally lukewarm. Stylistically, the band’s characteristic blend of hardrock, heavy metal, funk, alternative rock and hiphop-inspired rhythms is still going strong on the album. In hindsight, however, it seems like the album’s darker, more cynical tone failed…
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Album of the Week 28-2022: Onmyo-za – Hoyoku Rindo
Occasionally it happens that a band with a somewhat lengthy career has one album in their discography of which it keeps surprising me how good it is. An album that is not necessarily one of their highlights, but every time I put it on, there is a realization that there…
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Album of the Week 26-2022: The Gazette – Division
‘Division’ has been poorly represented on The Gazette’s live sets for nearly every tour after its tour cycle ended. Personally, I don’t really understand why. When it was released, it was their best release by a significant margin. And though it has since been surpassed – and then some –…
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Album of the Week 15-2022: Merry – Strip
What would Merry sound like without their founding guitarist Kenichi, who quit the band about two years ago? As it turns out, not all that different. Given the fact that he wrote increasingly fewer songs on the Tokyo band’s recent albums, that should not be all that much of a…
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Album of the Week 11-2022: The Black Crowes – Lions
Upon release, The Black Crowes’ sixth studio album ‘Lions’ was met with reviews that were significantly less positive than the ones its predecessors received. Being fifteen years old and not having a lot to spend, I ignored it at the time, thinking there had been an unwelcome stylistic shift. Years…
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