H.E.A.T reach for the Sky……
After a bit of line up hokey-cokey, Eric Rivers has left and former six stringer Sky Davis is back, H.E.A.T are no doubt happy to be back.
Some three years have elapsed since their last album “Tearing Down The Walls”, and if the 18 months they spent making this follow-up appear – judging by the lyrics – to have not been too pleasant, then the album itself bursts with electricity.
The opening “Bastard Of Society” is as strident a beginning as you can imagine. And if fists aren’t in the air in their thousands when the hook hits then we’ll be amazed.
MV can remember reading an interview with Joe Perry in which he said that during the making of “Pump”, Aerosmith worked on the maxim of “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” and some 18 years later that mantra is in use here too.
These Swedes have always been in the thrall of bands like Journey and Foreigner. “Redefined”, though, is most aptly named. They have rebooted and – yes redefined – AOR for the new century in a way that few have. The track itself has the same feel as John Farnham’s “You’re The Voice”, all that’s missing here is MV trying to find a girl to dance with a the school disco.
“Shit City” in contrast, feels like a statement. It shakes the foundations and observes wryly “My father told us to reach for the sky/ we ended deep underground.”
The single “Time On Our Side” pulses and throbs like some lost Sonata Arctica song, but on the occasions that H.E.A.T move into the Euro power metal thing, it suits them to do so. Largely because singer Erik Grönwall is in astonishing form throughout.
“Best Of The Broken” is an interesting track – in many ways the central theme of the album. It borrows the riff from “Enter Sandman” (yes really!) before condemning the music industry for “leeching on your coked-up brain”. It is a real highlight.
“Eye Of The Storm” comes on like a track that is so epic that it wouldn’t be out of place on an Avantasia” record, but it does this epic feel with admirable brevity – indeed nothing here outstays its welcome by dragging on.
There is a prog metal element to this too. As if H.E.A.T wouldn’t mind exploring this area a little more in the future. “Blind Leads The Blind” has a real echo of the mighty Symphony X, up to and including the soaring chorus.
If “soaring” is a good word to describe most of this, then it is never more true than “We Rule” which sees the soaring and raises it to stratospheric. Whatever it does, though, it does with a polish and a class. “Do You Want It?” manages to come back from the line “like a sex train off the rails” and still be a pretty good song – no mean feat to be fair. The title track – the longest thing by some way – starts off like it wants to be on the Game Of Thrones soundtrack, but manages to seethe with genuine rage over a heavier riff than most here.
It is fitting that the title track is big, because Into The Great Unknown” is a colossal record. Absolutely huge. It is unashamed, unabashed and resolute in the thought that it wants to get in arenas and it wants to get there damn quick. The H.E.A.T is most certainly on here.
Rating 7.5/10
