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.....

Red Kyte - 'Look To The Sky' (self released) 3.5/5

Red Kyte are a five piece indie type pop-rock outfit based between Brighton and Oxford, and this is their debut album.

Now as indie rock type stuff this isn't too bad. there are eight tracks on offer, most of which follow the fairly safe indie rock formula of big walls of fuzz guitars with a chiming lead, Aled Phillips style plaintiff vocalisations, big hooky choruses etc. It is a tad generic, but fortunately not too annoyingly so; this band are no Tiger Please or Kids In Glass Houses, but they are mercifully several cuts above the likes of My Extraordinary and Street Fight Silence - mainly due to the fact this lot can, when they put their minds to it turn out a good tune.

Don't get me wrong. not everything on here is top notch, the best material on offer here is is placed towards the end of the album, meaning the listener has to struggle through a couple of fairly uninspiring indie rock by numbers cuts like Hearts Of Stone and You Are My Gold before they reach the good stuff.

And the good stuff IS worth looking out for. You get the chilled and laid back Not Letting Go which has a certain Radiohead vibe about it. Safe Side which is a bit of rock that hints at the aforementioned Tiger Please. Sharks is a great anthem with a catchy hooky chorus, that has fan fave penned all over it. Then we have the mini epic closer of ...But Where Do We Go From Here? that smacks of Kids In Glass Houses jamming with The Verve and features a very nice Hammond organ chord at the very end.

Over all this album isn't earth shattering, but its a competent and promising debut from a young band that if they started to develop their own sound and move away from the well worn indie rock pathways could turn into an outfit of note.

For Fans of... Tiger Please, Kids In Glass Houses, Lost Prophets, Radiohead etc...