VINNIE PAUL RETROSPECTIVE, PART VIII: Hellyeah's "Stampede", "Band Of Brothers", "Blood For Blood" and "Unden!able"
Back in July of last year, I set out to review every album recorded by the late Vinnie Paul, in tribute to a man who made some seriously influential music. I then dragged my feet when I got to this part because I've never been into Hellyeah, and I started getting bombarded with new releases to blog about. But here we are at last, ready to put this thing to rest. Let's take a listen to:
STAMPEDE (2010) * and 1/2
Stampede contains the only Hellyeah song I ever even kind of liked before taking this deep dive, and it kicks off the record: "Cowboy Way". Listening to it now, I'm stone bored. The lyrics don't do it any favors either. Part of me liking it in the first place was 2010 was such a dead zone for music, especially rock, that this jumped out at me and well, any port in a storm, I guess.
"Debt That All Men Pay" is already so much better. This song actually slams. The lyrics hit a little too close to home as I feel like a coward who can barely leave his house anymore but hey, at least they're not singing about cowboy bullshit, right? (Heh heh...)
Jesus FUCK does "Hell Of A Time" change that in a hurry. It's everything you stereotypically think of Hellyeah being (if you think of them at all), the chorus is a re-tread of the lead single from the last album, it's about being a drunk cowboy blue collar guy and...it's meh. But then he cracks a beer as the song fades, and I incredulously groaned "Really?!"
The title track is a half-as-good redo of "Debt That All Men Pay". Actually no, it's "Debt" mashed with "Cowboy Way" with the cowboy shit replaced with generic metal lyrics. I have a feeling we're in for a solid 2.5 out of 5 at this point.
"Better Man" is the pre-requisite slow song about problems with your father, "It's On!" is forgettable, but then we get to..."Pole Rider".
Fucking really.
I knew rock was dead as soon as I heard the song "Porn Star Dancing" by the band My Darkest Days; it was the most cynical, lifeless, joyless endeavor ever laid to Protools (by 2010 anyway). This is the same year. It's better than that pile of shit, but it's definitely Pantera Jr. Also, IT'S FUCKING CALLED "POLE RIDER". What the hell am I doing with my life?
The best I can say about "Stand Or Walk Away" is it reminds me of a better band: Damageplan. I think Chad Grey is a better voice for this song, so it's just as well it's on a Hellyeah record, but it definitely reminds me of a touchier-feelier version of the back half of "New Found Power". A standout in this pile of dreck known as Stampede.
The last two tracks are...serviceable but not even worth naming. "Debt That All Men Pay" and "Stand Or Walk Away" are the only songs worth a shit in this morass; the rest is competently made and boring. It's the Bud Light of music; if it's all you have laying around, it'll get the job done, I suppose.
BAND OF BROTHERS (2012) ***
I actually listened to this album before it came out. AOL had Spinner.com back then, a site that previewed albums the week before they were released (which is why my 2012 list is so gargantuan compared to surrounding years; it was my first access to streaming music), and this was one of the offerings. I didn't make it all the way through, and I can't remember anything about before clicking play here in 2019. Let's see if my impression changes:
Holy SHIT the production is bad. All midrange has been sucked out of the recording. It sounds SO pinched off and cheap. Which is a shame, since this first song is trying to be Pantera. It's not getting there, but it's a step in the right direction. But yeah, I'm not one to harp on bad production, but this sucks all the life out of the recording. Any and all oomf this heavy record should have is gone.
"Band Of Brothers" reminds me of heavier Nonpoint, which most people would scoff at, but I loved "To The Pain" more than was reasonable so I count that as a positive. This album is such a step up in the songwriting department just in the first two tracks, but sonically it still sounds like ass.
Yeah. The theme of this album continues to be the midpoint between Nonpoint and Pantera. "Rage / Burn" has a beat like the former, but chugs, bends and tone like the latter. I could maybe get into this...
Then "Drink Drank Drunk" hits and gives me pause. It's not bad necessarily, but it's a slower version of the first three and I don't know if this goodwill will last for seven more tracks. The lyrics are dumb, but it's not offensive or anything. And yeah, the build up in the middle to the line "We're only here for two things; we're here to kick some ass...AND WE'RE ALMOST OUT OF BEER!!!" is pretty fun. And the screams of "FUCK THIS SHIT UUUUUP!!!" at the end must be something to behold live, especially with the crowds they draw.
"Bigger God" at least has a different rhythm to it, going for a more straight forward rock beat. I suppose you'd call it double time, which kind of illustrates the problem with most nu-metal: It's stuck in a molasses groove playing dumb chugging riffs or maudlin arpeggios. This climbs out for a bit, though it does fall back to half time for the choruses, but that honestly makes it refreshing in context.
By the time "Between You And Nowhere" comes in with the acoustic guitars this album has racked up enough goodwill to earn the respite. Also the lyrics aren't the usual knuckle dragging faire of nu-metal balladry; they're not poet laureate material either, but they're doing better. The production's even tolerable by this point; I've sort of gotten used to it. It's still not good when I pay attention to it, but it isn't actively making me want to hit stop anymore.
Of course now that I'm think about that, the snare hits sound like a Casio keyboard on the intro of "Call It Like I See It". It undercuts what's a pretty good build. The song itself is fine. Might have been better in a vacuum, but I'm starting to get a little fatigued on the sound.
"Why Does It Always" has a handful of moments, like the bridge and the solo it leads to. The rest of the song is kinda standard faire, but again it's a cut above your average Hellyeah.
The rest of the album is along this same vein. Overall, the production is a minus but you get used to it as it goes along. The songwriting and lyrics are much less corny and it feels like they're trying to write real music. "Band Of Brothers" is certainly a step up for this band and a solid nu-metal record overall. (Belive it or not, a "solid nu-metal record" is a thing that can actually happen.)
BLOOD FOR BLOOD (2014) **
The drum sound is a little better on this, but the guitars sound as bad or worse. It almost sounds like the production on an industrial metal album and it's really out of place.
The opener is the title track, and it's not doing it for me. It's trying to lead a call to revolution but it doesn't have enough energy. The production certainly doesn't help, but the song is just a hair too slow to achieve its aims. "Demons In The Dirt" is a better song, but the vocals are kind of annoying, the lyrics are dumber and I get the feeling they were trying to be Drowning Pool on this one. "Soul Killer" tries, but it's pretty generic.
It's at this point that I read the Wiki and find out between Band Of Brothers and Blood For Blood is when Greg Tribbet (Mudvayne, guitars) and Bob Zilla (Damageplan, bass) both left the band. The producer replaced Zilla Bob Rock style in the studio and they didn't replace Tribbet until the tour, so this was recorded as a four piece. I have no idea how the songwriting breakdown worked in this band, but they lost something between 2012 and 2014. (The cover of Band Of Brothers also only has four arms on it and it was a five piece band. Make of that what you will...)
This batch of tunes is a lot more generic 2000's metal than Band Of Brothers; I could tell those songs apart and wanted to. The only person that feels like they're doing anything to stand out is Chad Grey; he's yelling his ass off on this record. But it feels like its for a lost cause, trying to make songs that felt about six or seven years past their sell-by date work for the mid-2010's.
And then "Hush" happens. Rhythmically, it was more in step with the music of the day, but it's still a 00's radio rock song so...points for trying? At least it's different than the rest of the album. Then "Say When" gets all thrash metal and takes off at 300 mph. It's like they heard me talking shit, went back in time and put some new material on Schrödinger's Blood For Blood to prove me wrong. This is the band's fastest song by a mile; it's twice as fast as anything else they've ever done. The mid-section hits hard as well, grinding to a halt and dragging nails through the flesh.
"Black December" is some pretty serious whiplash after that, going back to mid-paced nu-balladry. These two songs do not go together. They can be on the same album, but not right next to each other. Still, "Black December" is better than most of the other dreck on the first half.
"Feast Or Famine" is unremarkable, but at least it's peppy. It's weird, but this album starts to try after track 8 (which is a shame, because a) that's more than halfway through and b) I realize now tracks 11 and 12 were bonus tracks). The last song is an "acoustic" version of "Hush", which starts with an electric guitar but then goes into a drumless unplugged rendition that's not bad; probably better than the original.
This album is a mixed bag, and I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts the departures of Tribbet and Zilla had something to do with it. So what do we get when the band gets back up on its feet and has a running start?
UNDEN!ABLE (2016) * and 3/4
Holy shit, the exclamation mark in the title plays into the track listing. The intro is called "!". Like most intros in album history, it's not much to talk about: some ambience, some drums, a shout here and there. It leads into the first real song "X", which then changes BPM after four bars and the entire thing seems a bit pointless. "X" is a hard charger though, thrashing through the frame into your shit without hesitation. Then there's a weird bridge before the last chorus that slows down to "!"'s tempo again, as does the outro after the end.
"Scratch A Lie" chugs on through, keeping the toughness at head bobbing levels. But it's basically a rap metal song and not a particularly good one, so...your mileage may vary. It has a solo that's trying to get Dimebag-y (without much of the technique) and we'll get to why later.
The production is better than Blood For Blood, but it's still kind of chintzy. Everything sounds flat and overproduced.
Oh hey, more rap metal on "Be Unden!able". Greeat. (And I say that as someone who likes some rap metal.) This sounds like an album that could have come out in 2002 and sounded out of date then.
"Human" has some bog-standard lyrics, but at least it goes for an atmosphere. It has energy, it has bounce, it's probably as good as a nu-metal radio single from 2005 could get from this group, churning it out in 2016.
SPEAKING OF WHICH..."Leap Of Faith" has been done seven million times. I can not take this seriously. Are they trying to rip off a KoRn knockoff band here? They all added the pop choruses to claim palatability, but had the "demented" delivery in the verses to still try and sound dangerous. Then they got the fucking nerve to use synthesizer string sections and bust out a decent guitar solo? The fuck is going on here? Do they even know what they're doing?
"Blood Plague" starts like something from earlier Black Label Society, but goes double time which makes it more interesting than mere rote recitation. The chorus is bog standard hard nu-metal though; just melodic enough to perk the ears of radio playlist makers, just hard enough to make people classify it as "metal, I guess". In a vacuum it actually wouldn't be so bad, but as the sixth track on the fifth Hellyeah album it feels a tad tired. (Though major points for the solo; it rips shit.)
Oh hey. SPEAKING OF NU-METAL TROPES...there's a cover song!!! A re-worked version of "I Don't Care Anymore" by Phil Collins (because Nonpoint beat them to "In The Air Tonight" by twelve years). To be fair I like the original and this, again in a vacuum, might have been fine. But then there's the neon goateed elephant ghost in the room: this features leadwork by the late Dimebag Darrel (who was also twelve years gone by this point). It's not a solo, it's just some leads that you can tell are demo quality and have been buffed as much as they could be to almost but not quite blend in with the rest of the track. I don't have too much of a problem with this; if Hellyeah were desperate to get popularity or notoriety, they would have updated their sound. But it still feels shoehorned in and at least a little like a publicity stunt.
The overall problem I have with "Unden!able" is fatigue. This is all old. "Live Or Die" is one of the band's better songs, but surrounded by the songs on this album it feels more cliché than it actually is. The lame parts drag the decent ones down. "Love Falls" is definitely different for them, but it's melodramatic hard rock love song #736; striking in context here, but wholly unremarkable. (They should of called this album "Speaking Of Which" because speaking of wholly unremarkable, don't even get me started on "Startariot".)
The last album Vinnie Paul put out in his lifetime ends with "Grave". It's got more attitude but it's kind of formless except for the outro, where the strings come back in and things fade out on a melodramatic note unearned by either song or album. This is better than Blood For Blood, but it goes for tropes no one is nostalgic for yet in ways better executed by its predecessors. Also, I liked like three songs on Blood For Blood in spite of itself; I came close to liking like four here but none of them quite got there.
So WHOOO is that a load off. I set up these reviews almost a year ago and I'm finally getting them out the door. (I had to listen to five Hellyeah albums and 80's Glam Pantera; can you blame me?) Final verdict: Hellyeah were just as bad and not quite as bad as I was expecting all at the same time. Thank fuck I...
What? They're putting a new album out in June? Fuck!
PART I: The 80's
PART II: Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display Of Power
PART III: Far Beyond Driven
PART IV: The Great Southern Trendkill
PART V: Official Live 101 Proof and Reinventing The Steel
PART VI: Damageplan
PART VII: Rebel Meets Rebel and Hellyeah (2007)
STAMPEDE (2010) * and 1/2
Stampede contains the only Hellyeah song I ever even kind of liked before taking this deep dive, and it kicks off the record: "Cowboy Way". Listening to it now, I'm stone bored. The lyrics don't do it any favors either. Part of me liking it in the first place was 2010 was such a dead zone for music, especially rock, that this jumped out at me and well, any port in a storm, I guess.
"Debt That All Men Pay" is already so much better. This song actually slams. The lyrics hit a little too close to home as I feel like a coward who can barely leave his house anymore but hey, at least they're not singing about cowboy bullshit, right? (Heh heh...)
Jesus FUCK does "Hell Of A Time" change that in a hurry. It's everything you stereotypically think of Hellyeah being (if you think of them at all), the chorus is a re-tread of the lead single from the last album, it's about being a drunk cowboy blue collar guy and...it's meh. But then he cracks a beer as the song fades, and I incredulously groaned "Really?!"
The title track is a half-as-good redo of "Debt That All Men Pay". Actually no, it's "Debt" mashed with "Cowboy Way" with the cowboy shit replaced with generic metal lyrics. I have a feeling we're in for a solid 2.5 out of 5 at this point.
"Better Man" is the pre-requisite slow song about problems with your father, "It's On!" is forgettable, but then we get to..."Pole Rider".
Fucking really.
I knew rock was dead as soon as I heard the song "Porn Star Dancing" by the band My Darkest Days; it was the most cynical, lifeless, joyless endeavor ever laid to Protools (by 2010 anyway). This is the same year. It's better than that pile of shit, but it's definitely Pantera Jr. Also, IT'S FUCKING CALLED "POLE RIDER". What the hell am I doing with my life?
The best I can say about "Stand Or Walk Away" is it reminds me of a better band: Damageplan. I think Chad Grey is a better voice for this song, so it's just as well it's on a Hellyeah record, but it definitely reminds me of a touchier-feelier version of the back half of "New Found Power". A standout in this pile of dreck known as Stampede.
The last two tracks are...serviceable but not even worth naming. "Debt That All Men Pay" and "Stand Or Walk Away" are the only songs worth a shit in this morass; the rest is competently made and boring. It's the Bud Light of music; if it's all you have laying around, it'll get the job done, I suppose.
BAND OF BROTHERS (2012) ***
I actually listened to this album before it came out. AOL had Spinner.com back then, a site that previewed albums the week before they were released (which is why my 2012 list is so gargantuan compared to surrounding years; it was my first access to streaming music), and this was one of the offerings. I didn't make it all the way through, and I can't remember anything about before clicking play here in 2019. Let's see if my impression changes:
Holy SHIT the production is bad. All midrange has been sucked out of the recording. It sounds SO pinched off and cheap. Which is a shame, since this first song is trying to be Pantera. It's not getting there, but it's a step in the right direction. But yeah, I'm not one to harp on bad production, but this sucks all the life out of the recording. Any and all oomf this heavy record should have is gone.
"Band Of Brothers" reminds me of heavier Nonpoint, which most people would scoff at, but I loved "To The Pain" more than was reasonable so I count that as a positive. This album is such a step up in the songwriting department just in the first two tracks, but sonically it still sounds like ass.
Yeah. The theme of this album continues to be the midpoint between Nonpoint and Pantera. "Rage / Burn" has a beat like the former, but chugs, bends and tone like the latter. I could maybe get into this...
Then "Drink Drank Drunk" hits and gives me pause. It's not bad necessarily, but it's a slower version of the first three and I don't know if this goodwill will last for seven more tracks. The lyrics are dumb, but it's not offensive or anything. And yeah, the build up in the middle to the line "We're only here for two things; we're here to kick some ass...AND WE'RE ALMOST OUT OF BEER!!!" is pretty fun. And the screams of "FUCK THIS SHIT UUUUUP!!!" at the end must be something to behold live, especially with the crowds they draw.
"Bigger God" at least has a different rhythm to it, going for a more straight forward rock beat. I suppose you'd call it double time, which kind of illustrates the problem with most nu-metal: It's stuck in a molasses groove playing dumb chugging riffs or maudlin arpeggios. This climbs out for a bit, though it does fall back to half time for the choruses, but that honestly makes it refreshing in context.
By the time "Between You And Nowhere" comes in with the acoustic guitars this album has racked up enough goodwill to earn the respite. Also the lyrics aren't the usual knuckle dragging faire of nu-metal balladry; they're not poet laureate material either, but they're doing better. The production's even tolerable by this point; I've sort of gotten used to it. It's still not good when I pay attention to it, but it isn't actively making me want to hit stop anymore.
Of course now that I'm think about that, the snare hits sound like a Casio keyboard on the intro of "Call It Like I See It". It undercuts what's a pretty good build. The song itself is fine. Might have been better in a vacuum, but I'm starting to get a little fatigued on the sound.
"Why Does It Always" has a handful of moments, like the bridge and the solo it leads to. The rest of the song is kinda standard faire, but again it's a cut above your average Hellyeah.
The rest of the album is along this same vein. Overall, the production is a minus but you get used to it as it goes along. The songwriting and lyrics are much less corny and it feels like they're trying to write real music. "Band Of Brothers" is certainly a step up for this band and a solid nu-metal record overall. (Belive it or not, a "solid nu-metal record" is a thing that can actually happen.)
BLOOD FOR BLOOD (2014) **
The drum sound is a little better on this, but the guitars sound as bad or worse. It almost sounds like the production on an industrial metal album and it's really out of place.
The opener is the title track, and it's not doing it for me. It's trying to lead a call to revolution but it doesn't have enough energy. The production certainly doesn't help, but the song is just a hair too slow to achieve its aims. "Demons In The Dirt" is a better song, but the vocals are kind of annoying, the lyrics are dumber and I get the feeling they were trying to be Drowning Pool on this one. "Soul Killer" tries, but it's pretty generic.
It's at this point that I read the Wiki and find out between Band Of Brothers and Blood For Blood is when Greg Tribbet (Mudvayne, guitars) and Bob Zilla (Damageplan, bass) both left the band. The producer replaced Zilla Bob Rock style in the studio and they didn't replace Tribbet until the tour, so this was recorded as a four piece. I have no idea how the songwriting breakdown worked in this band, but they lost something between 2012 and 2014. (The cover of Band Of Brothers also only has four arms on it and it was a five piece band. Make of that what you will...)
This batch of tunes is a lot more generic 2000's metal than Band Of Brothers; I could tell those songs apart and wanted to. The only person that feels like they're doing anything to stand out is Chad Grey; he's yelling his ass off on this record. But it feels like its for a lost cause, trying to make songs that felt about six or seven years past their sell-by date work for the mid-2010's.
And then "Hush" happens. Rhythmically, it was more in step with the music of the day, but it's still a 00's radio rock song so...points for trying? At least it's different than the rest of the album. Then "Say When" gets all thrash metal and takes off at 300 mph. It's like they heard me talking shit, went back in time and put some new material on Schrödinger's Blood For Blood to prove me wrong. This is the band's fastest song by a mile; it's twice as fast as anything else they've ever done. The mid-section hits hard as well, grinding to a halt and dragging nails through the flesh.
"Black December" is some pretty serious whiplash after that, going back to mid-paced nu-balladry. These two songs do not go together. They can be on the same album, but not right next to each other. Still, "Black December" is better than most of the other dreck on the first half.
"Feast Or Famine" is unremarkable, but at least it's peppy. It's weird, but this album starts to try after track 8 (which is a shame, because a) that's more than halfway through and b) I realize now tracks 11 and 12 were bonus tracks). The last song is an "acoustic" version of "Hush", which starts with an electric guitar but then goes into a drumless unplugged rendition that's not bad; probably better than the original.
This album is a mixed bag, and I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts the departures of Tribbet and Zilla had something to do with it. So what do we get when the band gets back up on its feet and has a running start?
UNDEN!ABLE (2016) * and 3/4
Holy shit, the exclamation mark in the title plays into the track listing. The intro is called "!". Like most intros in album history, it's not much to talk about: some ambience, some drums, a shout here and there. It leads into the first real song "X", which then changes BPM after four bars and the entire thing seems a bit pointless. "X" is a hard charger though, thrashing through the frame into your shit without hesitation. Then there's a weird bridge before the last chorus that slows down to "!"'s tempo again, as does the outro after the end.
"Scratch A Lie" chugs on through, keeping the toughness at head bobbing levels. But it's basically a rap metal song and not a particularly good one, so...your mileage may vary. It has a solo that's trying to get Dimebag-y (without much of the technique) and we'll get to why later.
The production is better than Blood For Blood, but it's still kind of chintzy. Everything sounds flat and overproduced.
Oh hey, more rap metal on "Be Unden!able". Greeat. (And I say that as someone who likes some rap metal.) This sounds like an album that could have come out in 2002 and sounded out of date then.
"Human" has some bog-standard lyrics, but at least it goes for an atmosphere. It has energy, it has bounce, it's probably as good as a nu-metal radio single from 2005 could get from this group, churning it out in 2016.
SPEAKING OF WHICH..."Leap Of Faith" has been done seven million times. I can not take this seriously. Are they trying to rip off a KoRn knockoff band here? They all added the pop choruses to claim palatability, but had the "demented" delivery in the verses to still try and sound dangerous. Then they got the fucking nerve to use synthesizer string sections and bust out a decent guitar solo? The fuck is going on here? Do they even know what they're doing?
"Blood Plague" starts like something from earlier Black Label Society, but goes double time which makes it more interesting than mere rote recitation. The chorus is bog standard hard nu-metal though; just melodic enough to perk the ears of radio playlist makers, just hard enough to make people classify it as "metal, I guess". In a vacuum it actually wouldn't be so bad, but as the sixth track on the fifth Hellyeah album it feels a tad tired. (Though major points for the solo; it rips shit.)
Oh hey. SPEAKING OF NU-METAL TROPES...there's a cover song!!! A re-worked version of "I Don't Care Anymore" by Phil Collins (because Nonpoint beat them to "In The Air Tonight" by twelve years). To be fair I like the original and this, again in a vacuum, might have been fine. But then there's the neon goateed elephant ghost in the room: this features leadwork by the late Dimebag Darrel (who was also twelve years gone by this point). It's not a solo, it's just some leads that you can tell are demo quality and have been buffed as much as they could be to almost but not quite blend in with the rest of the track. I don't have too much of a problem with this; if Hellyeah were desperate to get popularity or notoriety, they would have updated their sound. But it still feels shoehorned in and at least a little like a publicity stunt.
The overall problem I have with "Unden!able" is fatigue. This is all old. "Live Or Die" is one of the band's better songs, but surrounded by the songs on this album it feels more cliché than it actually is. The lame parts drag the decent ones down. "Love Falls" is definitely different for them, but it's melodramatic hard rock love song #736; striking in context here, but wholly unremarkable. (They should of called this album "Speaking Of Which" because speaking of wholly unremarkable, don't even get me started on "Startariot".)
The last album Vinnie Paul put out in his lifetime ends with "Grave". It's got more attitude but it's kind of formless except for the outro, where the strings come back in and things fade out on a melodramatic note unearned by either song or album. This is better than Blood For Blood, but it goes for tropes no one is nostalgic for yet in ways better executed by its predecessors. Also, I liked like three songs on Blood For Blood in spite of itself; I came close to liking like four here but none of them quite got there.
So WHOOO is that a load off. I set up these reviews almost a year ago and I'm finally getting them out the door. (I had to listen to five Hellyeah albums and 80's Glam Pantera; can you blame me?) Final verdict: Hellyeah were just as bad and not quite as bad as I was expecting all at the same time. Thank fuck I...
What? They're putting a new album out in June? Fuck!
PART I: The 80's
PART II: Cowboys From Hell and Vulgar Display Of Power
PART III: Far Beyond Driven
PART IV: The Great Southern Trendkill
PART V: Official Live 101 Proof and Reinventing The Steel
PART VI: Damageplan
PART VII: Rebel Meets Rebel and Hellyeah (2007)
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