 
Lzzy Hale and co have really let their heavier
side rear its head on their highly anticipated
second album. The impression their self titled
debut left on the rock community has drawn them
a huge following, pushed even further by their
energetic live shows. The main draw here is Lzzy
Hale’s outstanding vocals, as a female singer
in a hard rock band she opposes the stereotypical
booze and sex related clichés providing
the same issues from a women’s point of
view.
Their great debut focussed on issues involving
sex, relationships and other assorted topics common
with this genre but from a woman’s perspective;
this follow up branches out to various other topics,
there is still the sex/relationship themed material
present but the progression to include other topics
shows tremendous growth. Looking at “Freak
Like Me” in particular as a more universally
relatable song globally, they even let slip an
extremely dark side that up till now they seem
to have managed to do a great job of hiding; “Daughters
of Darkness” shows a slight gothic feel
amongst the heavy chord sequences but “Mz
Hyde” really takes it to another level with
the sinister backing, eerie vocals and dark theme,
still god damn heavy as hell though.
You can’t ignore how heavy the whole record
is, me and our Alternative Vision editor Trigger
have discussed it at length, we both expressed
a feeling that it was a surprising yet amazing
progression (check out “Love Bites (So Do
I)” and “You Call Me a Hitch Like
it’s a Bad Thing” if you need convincing);
that’s not to say they’ve lost that
gentle side of them though because there are still
some beautiful little tunes on here. “Break
In”, “Beautiful With You” and
“In Your Room” take the lighter toned
acoustic approach giving the album range, proving
they can still write the songs to make you weep
at night when you feel alone, where as “American
Boys” is a bouncy little bugger that proves
they can wrote a God damn amazing southern rock
riff, erm more of that in future please?
What a freaking album! You couldn’t ask
for anymore from them, they’ve given a thick
chunk of the extensive range in their material
proving to the world that they can go places nobody
would imagine they would ever go to, not only
that but do it freaking well. I cannot wait to
see this new stuff live I really can’t,
I’ll go absolutely ape shit and if you’re
a fan of rock music you will acquire this album
and be alongside me also going ape shit.
5/5
Review by James Webb
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