When you’re rising from the ashes of a band as venerated as Pantera, meeting expectations is a tough call, and one that HellYeah fell well short of on their self-titled debut and 2010’s Stampede.
With Band Of Brothers, though, they’ve finally found their feet by producing an album that sounds, well, just like Pantera. Vinnie Paul’s distinctive drumming style is militaristic in its relentless aggression, while Rage/Burn sees guitarists Greg Tribbett and Tom Maxwell conjuring monstrous riffs that rip through the air like a catastrophic tornado.
Lyrically they tend to stick safely to the path of boozing it up (‘Life’s too short to be sober,’ growls vocalist and Mudvayne alumni Chad Gray on War In Me, and Drink Drank Drunk speaks for itself), the metal community and, on the title track, how thoroughly fabulous it is being in HellYeah, but Gray’s vein-bursting screams give even the dumbest proclamations weight.
HellYeah will probably never be as vital as what went before, but at least now they’re playing to their strengths.
