Release Date: 6 December 2011
Song Count: 11
Rating: 6.7/10
Description:
Today's album is from a hard rock band who has made what may be one of my all-time favourite albums I've ever listened to, that being Chevelle and their 2009 album, Sci-Fi Crimes. As the Albumthon requires new listens of albums for the sake of its challenge rather than letting one revisit albums already familiar, Sci-Fi Crimes will unfortunately not receive its own page on this site, but long story cut short, it is an immaculate, marvelous album full of hard-hitting songs and a shining testament Chevelle's talent and brilliance at their best. The album I am instead reviewing today is the one they released right afterwards, that being Hats Off to the Bull towards the end of 2011, and while it keeps a lot of the core elements of what constitute Chevelle in their field intact, it generally fails in living up to the impossibly high bars set by it preceding album.
Hats Off to the Bull features the band's signature style of bold and bulky riffs, guitars heavier than giant cubes of lead, and a general melodicism woven into every part of the music, with clean yet heartfelt vocals singing above all. A lot of the tracks follow this successful formula in a way that firmly distinguishes them as pieces from the band behind them, and though only few of them captivate the listener in a way that goes beyond this, the consistency in sound for most of the songs solidifies a decent baseline for an overall lasting impression during listening - to the point where the song that strays away from it the most, "Prima Donna", actually becomes the lowest point in the album due to its more simplistic nature with its acoustic guitar droning out the listener further rather than peak any interest.
It, however, does not help that said song follows after a series of serviceable yet not impressing songs in the second half of the album. A lot of the songs with the most things going for them are placed towards the first half instead - with one major exception, that being the biggest highlight of the album and the closing track, "Clones". After a series of less captivating songs, "Clones" emerges with guns blazing, blasting the listener with a series of some of the heaviest and hardest-hitting guitar riffs and sounds they may ever hear, picking the energy of the album right back up at the very end, and serving as an excellent closer that far exceeds almost anything else that came prior.
Though Hats Off to the Bull may not strike me as Chevelle's very best work out there, it nevertheless is a worthwile listen for dedicated fans of the sound, and can very much hold up on its own as an irreplaceable set of pieces of hard rock music.