Review Summary: Combining/Expanding the melodic sound of WTAFT and the aggressive nature of In Vogue, DDG has created their most refined release to date.
With the release of Worse Than a Fairy Tale; Drop Dead, Gorgeous has changed their style of music from bland metal core (In Vogue) to a melodic form of Post-Hardcore. Hot-N-Heavy basically takes the best of both albums and makes combines them near perfectly in one album. Taking another leap in musicianship, DDG once again proves to us that they are better than most practitioners of their repetitive genre.
Killing A Classic: This song already starts the album off with more screaming than most parts of WTAFT. After a burst of aggressiveness, it get’s catchy as reminiscent of their past album. This song is a very good example of how the album will sound like. Song structure wise it is somewhat varied, it does have a chorus but in between it is always different. The chorus isn’t that strong but it doesn’t get boring either. 3/5
Southern Lovin’ (Belle of The Ball): This song basically sounds like a b-side of WTAFT. It’s not a bad song. It starts off catchy and has its aggressive parts. The chorus is very melodic which makes up for it sounding exactly like a WTAFT song. It ends on a high note with a small tempo change near the end. 3/5
Beat The Devil Out of It: This is where the album starts to kick off. It showcases some of DDG’s best musicianship in their whole career combining the perfect amount of tempo changes with melodic and aggressive parts, this song is a win. I’m really glad DDG didn’t make this song drag out longer than it should have, being a pretty short song, it is still actually cool. 4/5
Two Birds One Stone: This is pretty much the catchiest song on the whole album period. Heck, I’m singing this one right now. It’s very poppy which is kind of weird, especially if you knew them since Be Mine Valentine. Anyways, this is most likely going to be their first single and is the song that will make people want to buy the album. It fellows the more conventional verse chorus verse thing but throughout the song you can tell members of the band are trying to mix up their parts to make it interesting and not repetitive. 4.5/5
Sue Simmons! Watch Your Mouth: Starts off aggressively and does not let up from there, well sorta. This song basically has some of the heaviest parts through out the album. Again, this is like something from In Vogue. Combining super heavy parts with equally melodic parts, this is another gem in the album. There are very good tempo changes within this song, from really loud to softer sung parts then to fast melodic singing. This is one of the songs where you can notice the Keyboardist doing stuff. 4/5
Fame: Starts off pretty melodic then get’s back to heavy. This is one of the songs that features the band working together as one cohesive unit. You can hear all instruments (bass and keys included) working together to create a pretty sick song. There is actually a part in this song that sounds like a The Devil Wears Prada song because of the synths, however, DDG actually pulls it off very well. 4.5/5
(The) Internet Killed the Video Star: I believe this is the first song off the album DDG posted up on myspace a while back ago. I really liked it back then since it was more reminiscent of their older material than the new melodic stuff in WTAFT. But yeah, this song is pretty cool since it has the trade mark piano keys and aggressive screaming and singing. It has a good amount of tempo change to keep it up. Actually, now that I think of it, this song sounds like if anyone remembers “Knife vs. Face Round 1” from In Vogue. Heck it even follows the same song structure. It’s still a fun song though. 3/5
Can’t Fight Biology: This song starts off pretty boring actually. When I first heard it I just wanted to skip it after the first 10 seconds. But then decided to keep listening to it for some reason. Anyways, after the boring beginning, it then slows down in tempo and get’s pretty soft for a while. A soft sung and an actual guitar buildup can then be heard! It then gets into all out singing! This is one of the cooler clean vocal parts. It also features some of the coolest guitar work in the album! After this parts it get’s aggressive again but a lot better than the beginning. Right when you think the song is finished, it explodes again into screaming and singing. I really don’t like the intro of the song, if they could remove that then it would be a pretty awesome song. 4/5
There’s No Business Like Snow Business: This is a pretty standard/average song in the album. I mean it has some tempo changes but overall, it just doesn’t stand out too much in the album. It still has some pretty heavy moments reminiscent of In Vogue which is pretty cool for fans of that kind of stuff. 2.8/5
Interlude: Your standard instrumental song with purposely done crappy mastering in the fluency department. Sounds kind of creepy I guess. 3/5
Dirtier Than You Want to Know: This another pretty cool song. It’s one of the more aggressive songs on the album, features some wacky guitarring and effects, it makes a pretty neat song. This song features some of the heaviest/aggressive parts in the album. About half way into the song, tempo changes to a slower one. It then get’s soft and a sung part is played with everyone once again working together to create one cohesive band. One of the better songs off the album 4/5
We’re Planning, God’s Laughing: Yes this is the longest song off the album clocking in at 6 minutes, kind of reminiscent of “I Want To Master Life and Death” in scope. Starts off slow with slow beats and guitarring. Screamed vocals are then delivered, with everyone working together to create a pretty sweet sound. About halfway in, things get heavy, I was actually surprised at this part, it’s still slow but heavier. Then things start picking up from there with a catchy repeated singing part. After a little more aggression, more singing is then delivered, then both screaming and singing is heard, and everyone else. It then closes the album with drums coming to a end. All in all a pretty cool song, just too pretentious sort of. It was a little bit longer than it needed to be I think. 3.5/5
Conclusion: Today, there are a lot of bands that have been trying to do what Senses Fail did with “Let It Enfold You”, most of them failed. DDG on the other hand has created something somewhat original actually. I must really hand it to DDG, they really did do a good job at making a record cohesively mixing both melodic and aggressive parts. None of the songs really dragged out too long (except the last one). This album really is above average, something good, no great! 3.5-4/5
