Halestorm - 'Hello, It's Mz Hyde' (roadrunner) 4/5

Pennsylvania outfit Halestorm are a prolific lot, they only issued their first album and single in 2009, but since then they have clocked up a studio album, a live album a clutch of singles and no fewer than five EP's of which this is the latest. Now this five tracker is in all intents and purposes a sampler for the bands second studio album which is due out in April, and I gotta say if the album is half as good as the tracks on offer then I can't wait to hear it.

Now the first three songs on offer here are real balls out rockers. We kick off with Love Bites (So Do I) a storming slice of dark and deadly kick butt rock that sounds a little like Lesbian Bed Death on a Megadeth trip. Elizabeth "Lzzy" Hale has a voice to die for, sounding a little like the great Doro Pesch, full of gutsy hard rock attitude and gritty attack and here she shows it off in fine style. Rockshow is a little more restrained and commercial, but as a slice of hard rock it is still more than enough to make the likes of Paramour look like the third rate pop band they really are. Daughters Of Darkness by contrast is  storming anthem that fuses tribal drumming, air punching chorus and bang and bludgeon riffage into a tastefully vicious hard rocker that sounds like Within Temptation striped of the prog rock and faux-operatic trappings.

The final two tracks are a couple of slightly different versions of Here's to Us (the original album version and a cleaned up radio edit). Now this isn't really my bag, its a lighter waving ballad, a tad Nickleback or 'Bad Animals' era Heart, but its not that bad a track over all, and I suppose you've gotta include at least one track to keep Kerrang fm happy.

Over all this is a pretty good release with three great songs to counterbalance the one pretty ordinary one, and its really whetted my appetite for the album when it comes out.

Worth a look

for fans of... The Dirty Youth, Lesbian Bed Death, Psycho Kiss, Six Hour Sundown.....