For all their positives, Huntress have historically been slated by the press and fans in regards their previous two releases, so why does this continue? Are you not actually evaluating the releases objectively and just trolling and joining the witch hunt? To slate them completely is really unfair, ok, this music is not rocket science, but there are some decent quality tunes on offer.
On the downside, ‘Static’ has some weird artwork, it’s well-known that front-women Jill Janus is the focal point, I suspect with such an album cover it intensifies these feelings a touch more. Admittedly, going with the flow of negatives, I do feel this when I listen to the release for the first time that the vocals are mixed a touch loud and noticeable, as if taking the focus from the music. I would suspect this is just a coincidence based on the presentation of the release, something that needs to be reeled in a little perhaps in the future. Jill is a show person that is a fact; her vocals are very good so I don’t see what the general issue is with other folks. They are much less strained on this album than on their previous encounters, a touch stronger in terms of melody, but still gnarly at the flick of a switch, but still not quite there with projection and power of extended higher vibrato intended notes.
On the positive, the song writing itself is still basic metal, a little bit of showmanship in the solos and some riffs; there is nothing that should lower the tone too much. With that, take a gander at ‘Four Blood Moons’ which is a rabid metal attack and marginally akin to some Hellion I feel, certainly of a similar stance with some strong rhythm guitar work and vocals. ‘Flesh’ also strikes a metallic balance perfectly with its chugging melody which is followed by a few filler tracks for me with ‘Brian’ and ‘Mania’ being a little dull often straying into 90’s metal here. That is all restored with the aforementioned ‘Four Blood Moons’ however. It is the latter part of the album that fits more to my pallet, a touch more classic metal but still holding onto a modern touch, but not strikingly obvious at first listen. You could be forgiven for comparing ‘Raise Your Hands’ (Bon Jovi) when the opening riff to ‘Fire In My Heart’ starts, although not the same per say, a similar phrasing occurs (but it was also common in many US metal bands from the 80’s also to be fair). With such a similar style, the band are really opening themselves up to scepticism, but I think that won’t matter one bit in the long run as the band clearly love what they are doing, but it needs to be more of a band rather than focusing on the front woman for me to make Huntress gel more with the wider metal community. That said, the harsh tones of ‘Fire In My Heart’ show another dimension to the Huntress sound, there’s still fire in the belly for sure!
This is a perfectly acceptable third album, but is nothing too out of the box to cause a disturbance in your brain patterns. But it’s certainly not static in the broadest sense of the phenomenon.
(7/10 Paul Maddison)
Leave a Reply