Hardly worth the wait
The Vamps Night & Day (Day Edition) Universal
AFTER a year-long wait, The Vamps has finally released the second part of its two-part album, Night & Day.
The first part, the Night Edition, gave birth to catchy numbers like All Night, Middle Of The Night and Hands, which were met with significant success.
Unfortunately, its follow-up, the Day Edition, isn’t as memorable an effort. Don’t get me wrong, there are enough fun, toe-tapping numbers such as Too Good To Be True and Hair Too Long to sing along and groove to.
But the songs just don’t have strong enough melodic hooks to match its predecessor.
With the Night Edition, every track on it sounded like they could be released as singles and they would perform well.
The tracks on the Day Edition pale in comparison, though there are standouts like Just My Type and For You.
Despite the four-man band’s intentions to have two sets of songs with different musical directions, hence the idea to create the Night Edition and Day Edition, the differences between the two aren’t vast.
In fact, they sound quite similar, both sporting that carefree dancepop vibe. As such, both editions could’ve been just released at one go.
If the Day Edition had an entirely different quality to it – a darker feel, for example – it’d be more interesting and it’d make better sense to release them separately. And the difference between night and day could actually be felt. – Kenneth Chaw
Daughtry Cage To Rattle Warner
CHRIS Daughtry likes to take risks.
The rocker went after pop audiences on Daughtry’s last album, Baptized, in 2013. He tried his hand at musical theatre as Judas in Fox’s The Passion. But he is best at the meat-and-potatoes mainstream rock of Home and What About Now, leading to tours with Bon Jovi and Nickelback.
On Daughtry’s fifth album, Cage To Rattle, the band balances both his impulses and natural inclinations to create its strongest album since its multi-platinum debut following his American Idol run.
The first single, Deep End, is right down the middle of the pop-rock road, a sweeter version of the singalong rock of Imagine Dragons, while White Flag is closer to that band’s more thunderous side. The ballad As You Are is folk-tinged and poignant, but also easygoing.
Bad Habits is the album outlier, a dance-leaning number that could easily pass for the latest Nick Jonas single, where Daughtry declares he just wants to “kick it like my bad, my bad, bad habits,” though the hip-hop elements dropped into Back In Time are also an unexpected, pleasant surprise. — Glenn Gamboa/Newsday/Tribune News Service
Halestorm Vicious Warner
VICIOUS comes five years after Halestorm’s Grammy-winning hit Love Bites (So Do I) became the group’s standing claim to mainstream fame.
Produced by Nick Raskulinecz, who has worked with bands like Foo Fighters and Alice in Chains, Vicious is a jump in sonic variety since the band’s third full-length album, Into the Wild Life, topped the rock charts in 2015.
The new album stays true to the band’s long-standing creative elements. The cryptic but assertive attitude of Lzzy Hale’s diverse vocal range and raunchy guitar riffs team up well with her brother Arejay’s locomotive percussion, Joe Hottinger’s sharp guitar work and Josh Smith’s thumping bass walks.
On Vicious, the group takes their raw and abrasive guitar sound up a notch with more polished, virtuoso axe-playing.
It’s also worth noting that Lzzy’s vocals really dazzle on this one. The frontwoman’s ferocity seems to embody the vocal stylings of metal legends like Ronnie James Dio and Lemmy from Motorhead only with her truly distinct Halestorm touch.
The four-piece starts it out even-handed by summoning the forces of nature in Black Vultures, painting a sonic picture of flying scavengers circling the sky. The song rotates between its flashy modes of thrash to more melodic sensibilities while Lzzy unabashedly wails words of survival.
Uncomfortable may be one of the album’s strongest tracks. The song starts out as a shredder with a rhythm that chugs behind chunky guitar riffs before Lzzy spits her spiel like fire following an illuminated bridge that adds nuance to a catchy chorus. It’s an easy headbanger that doesn’t lose intensity even during its more pop-heavy parts.
But the band also knows how to change a pace when it comes down to it.
Conflicted is an ode to indecision, set by a grinding mood in a slower tempo while emphasizing the cleaner, rootsy-rock guitars. Lzzy gets outwardly sensual on Do Not Disturb, while the final track, The Silence, ends the album on an audibly lighter note as an acoustic ballad to a love lost.
While Vicious does contain a share of fillers, it doesn’t fall short of what a solid metal album should do – beat the heck out of traditional musical niceties with powerful sonic blasts and metaphorical fists of tough, lightning-fast rock ‘n’ roll. – Pablo Arauz Pena/AP