Album review: GIRISH AND THE CHRONICLES – Hail To The Heroes

Frontiers [release date: 11.02.22]

Highly derivative hard rock/metal from Bengaluru, India band, Girish And The Chronicles. They are now on their third album, and first on Frontiers.

The album’s title, ‘Hail To The Heroes’ suggests a bunch of declamatory stadium anthems. Not to be, unfortunately. What we get is a bunch of stampeding, quasi-metal shout-a-thons, most of them sounding like they were written by an unimaginative committee whose members phoned in their contributions.

In its favour, every song on the album is fueled by a sense of drive and urgency, clearly aiming at a Black’n'Blue, Quiet Riot, Rough Cutt style, where seismic riffs and ragged edged hard rock knock down everything in their path.
But too often they end up going nowhere.

Only the mid album, mid paced ‘Clearing The Blur’ and ‘Lovers Train’ hold their nerve. Each focusing its energies on restrained hard rock, each with a decent melody and a hooky chorus that doesn’t rely on shouting at us.

Elsewhere, the lyrical banalities, the over dependency on the overdriven guitar noise, and the vocalist’s guttural growl, peppered with occasional Coverdale-isms, become too much too soon.

For Girish and his team, the drawing board beckons. **1/2

review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

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