Review Summary: A good album in a genre that I just don't get.
Hellbound Glory’s seventh studio album,
The Immortal Hellbound Glory: Nobody Knows You, is your fairly typical country album that features a variety of instrumentation and a solid, charismatic voice fronting it all. But it very rarely provides any truly great moments as it always coasts along familiar ground.
One of the things that Hellbound Glory undoubtedly succeeds in is the rich instrumentation within each song. While nothing outside the norms of country is found here, it seems each song brings a new instrument into the spotlight. The album's earliest highlight,
13 Corners, features a consistently great fiddle melody throughout, and
Trouble In Mind contains a nice bluesy guitar solo, ending the album with a high note. My personal favourite track has got to be
Nobody Knows You as I believe even the biggest country skeptics would have a hard time not tapping their foot along to the emotive vocals and the occasional sprinkling of harmonica throughout the song.
As I just hinted, another strong point of this album is the powerful and smoky vocals of Leroy Virgil, who is the band's sole member and songwriter.
Can’t Wait to Never See You Again proves he can write a catchy vocal melody that stands out amongst the solid instrumentation. But one of his strongest performances is easily on
My Woman’s Whiskey Kiss. An emotive performance that doesn’t rely too much on bombast and volume but on the smoothness of its delivery instead.
Where this album falters for me is really just down to my taste on country as a whole, so admittedly, not a fault of the album in itself. It is a genre that is by definition traditional, so doing anything too different or exciting would be either a tough sell to the audience or just a bastardisation of its defining qualities, to the point where it is no longer country. The band members are certainly aware of this, as it all sounds familiar to the tropes of the genre, but they still give every song their utmost effort. Now my problem is that I am not fond of the genre in the first place. Again, it is a heavily traditional genre, and as this traditional sound itself is not my thing, there is very little to be done without changing the genre entirely to keep me invested beyond a couple of the songs here. However, Hellbound Glory certainly gives a solid performance that is difficult not to appreciate, and there are definitely aspects of this album that I do in fact like, despite my general aversion to this genre. But in the end, I have to admit that Hellbound Glory just isn’t my thing.
