IN REVIEW: Halestorm - "Into the Wild Life"

With their second record The Strange Case of... in 2012, Halestorm was finally rewarded for years of hard work; the massive hooks and hard rocking thump of singles like Love Bites (So Do I) and I Miss the Misery got them tons of rock radio airplay, while the profane and wildly fun ballad Here's to Us even got the Glee treatment (albeit in cuss-free fashion).

The attention that Lzzy Hale commanded with her mix of raw talent and sexual energy eventually found her performing as a guest with country star Eric Church at last year's Country Music Awards. That experience looms large over third album Into the Wild Life. They recorded it in Nashville with Church's producer, and the results unsurprisingly sound like a direct result of the country connection. A handful of them (especially Amen, New Modern Love, What Sober Couldn't Say or I Like It Heavy) are fine, well written songs that come across like templates for eventual country crossover remixes.

That's only a small piece of the pie, though; perhaps even more alarming is the sudden dependency on keyboards and programmed beats. It's not a subtle shift, either; opening song Scream is bursting with cheesy keys and flat, mechanical drumming while burying guitars so deep into the mix you hardly even notice them. For a band who took pride in their second record for better capturing their live show, it's a disturbingly jarring about face. It's like leaving Joan Jett for Pat Benatar; and, to get the full effect of what I'm trying to convey, you can listen to I Hate Myself for Loving You and Love is a Battlefield back to back.

The end result to all the synth and slick overproduction is a net deficit of the edge that helped them earn bigger and bigger crowds at their shows. Even the heaviest tracks, like Mayhem and Sick Individual, are spit-polished and fussed over to the point where they're pale imitations of the songs they are live, coming across on record as manufactured aggression.

It's not my place to say they shouldn't branch out, and I'll always respect artists who choose to explore new paths after success, but Into the Wild Life ventures too far away too fast. It's an abrupt change that some fans won't be able to come to terms with and, while I can't fault them for going after a new audience, such a drastically different record makes it feel like they're running away from the one they already have.

April 14, 2015 • Atlantic

Highlights Amen • New Modern Love • I Like It Heavy