BANDS:

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80's New Wave/
Post-Punk/
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90's & Beyond
Virginia, North
Carolina, & DC

Hell's House Band: Dozen Lies
[Hard Soul]

This album, Hells House Bands Dozen Lies, was a bit of a struggle for me. After listening to it for a bit, I went ahead and deemed it as striving too much for 90s alternative. The production was a little behind, the songwriting was a little too formulaic from the past, and the lyrics were a bit shifty. I couldnt really understand the reason for these guys trying to capture that mid to late 90s sound.

While jotting down some notes, I went into this whole spiel about how they were ahead of their time really about ten years to be exact. We still have another decade left before people start rehashing the alternative scene; hell, were not even out of the mid-80s bug thats been going around recently. I was a bit perturbed that they jumped the gun on the twenty-year repeat cycle. Then I did my research and discovered that this was actually recorded in the fall of 99 and quickly became lost, only to resurface for some reason six years later. I feel they missed the scene on this one a bit of bad release timing. I still stick to my guns on the alternative speech though.

Hells House Band is a tried and true bar band. I feel that their desire to break out of the bar scene with this time-capsuled album might be a little futile. Here we have those sustained, wavery vocals with a hint of crackly anguish, and the soft, easy-stepping verses leading into the heavy, grandiose choruses, complete with some one-foot-forward-rock-pose soloing. The most touching song comes at track ten, Two Angels, a solo acoustic performance focusing mainly on the vocals. The next track, Come on Out, picks up the pace too, as a good punchy and wild semi-country rock song. We crash again after that, though. Theres some good barroom piano on the album too, but it still seems to fall a bit short.  Its a bit hard to figure, because this seems it should be an all-star lineup a bassist from the Lemonheads, a guitarist from NoFX (??) and a singer/songwriter whos been recording with Virgin Records for almost ten years. Hmm.

This album can be purchased at Amazon and CD Universe

Hard Soul Records Official Website

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