Review Summary: The Hottness, again with two Ts people, have risen up above their brethren. They are very talented, signed to a well-known label, and have a large amount of potential.
How did The Hottness, with two Ts, end up rising up from an unsigned band to being signed to Ferret Music in less then a year? Even the band members are not real sure how it happened, from the press release (Adam speaking); “When we started we always used to fantasize about signing with a label like Ferret where we respected and love most of the artists on. We weren’t even in the mindset of approaching them and it turned out Carl (Severson, Ferret) heard our music and got in touch with us.” In between these two bookends is a semi-brief but important stint at Tragic Hero Records. Here they released their debut album, “
Stay Classy”. The band is going after a refreshing breath of fresh air with their mixture of Rock, Punk, and Southern Metal. The Hottness is a five-piece band from Wilmington, North Carolina, home to the bands ASG, The Needles, and He Is Legend. Will The Hottness rise above their Wilmington brethren or fall flat on their face for trying to run before their able to walk?
The whole album starts with someone pissing and then flushing the toilet. The actual song “
Straight Brown” then starts and gives you the immediate sense of Adam’s gritty vocal performance. Adam has two different vocal styles. He has the good, gritty scream, but he has a good singing voice, that he shows off on “
Blue Eyed”. You really can tell Adam is a good singer, and not that fake singing, where they are screaming in a sing-ish tone, populating the Modern Rock scene. Kyle and Eric, the guitarists, helps on the vocal duties, and brings in some different dynamics. One example of this is the duel-vocals you hear throughout the album.
The Hottness does dive into the “cool” and quickly annoying scene fad in “
This City Is Ours”. That would be when you hear the movie sound clip. The Hottness only use this once so it is nothing to fret over, but it is getting to the point where it the fad needs to die. While on the subject on lyrics, The Hottness writes about the usual topics of most of the modern scene these days (life, relationships, etc.). They do mention William Shakespeare’s “
Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in which four young lovers and a group of amateur actors interact with the Duke and Duchess of Athens and with fairies from a moonlit forest. “Midsummer Night’s Dream” is on of Shakespeare’s most popular works, with The Tempest probably being the most popular. My question is, when did Shakespeare become cool in the scene?
Kyle and Eric are talented guitarists who allow themselves to have the occasional chugging of the guitars. The guitar parts are half clean and half distorted. When the clean parts are high in the production they really fit into that part of the song. On “
Dearly Departed,” you can hear a great riff that gets about three seconds of solo time before it falls to the back of the production order. This should have just fallen behind the vocals, but the producer chose for that riff to be buried. The Hottness does not have that many solos, but when they do, they are very good. There is a distorted solo on “
This City Is Ours”. A southern drenched solo in the middle of “
The Ghost,” and a great solo on “
Still Standing” that leads to some quick shredding and then back into the riff. The guitars do most of the song intros. On “The Ghost,” you get a clean intro/riff while on “
King of Thieves” you can an extended intro to let all the instruments breathe some. “
Super Hightech Jet Fighter” is the only song on the album in which you can hear the bass and it is the hidden/bonus track of the album.
The drummer brings most of the groove to the music. While most of the drum parts are simple, ex “
King of Thieves”, the drummer does have some bright spots. It starts with a great intro on “
Dearly Departed”. Then actually using cymbals as the focus of the into on “
Still Standing”. You then end it with a good ‘ol fashioned guitar/drum fill on “
She’s a Riot”. A surprise for the Southern Rock/Metal scene, a piano is heard on “
The Ghost”. The percussion area is the backbone on any band, and this backbone is sturdy.
The contrast found in the Classy/Trashy Combo can be the battle cry of “
Stay Classy”. On “
Classy,” you are met with a sophisticated song that has the guitars chugging with Adam singing in a low volume. After about a minute you get a few screams which leads into Adam singing in a higher volume then at first. “Classy” is Adam’s best vocal performance on the album. “
Trashy” is the gritty bar fight background music. “Trashy” starts with a Thrash influenced guitar intro. You will not find any clean singing on “Trashy,” but you will hear some spoken-ish lines. If you are looking to get pumped up for some reason, to fight someone, to get ready for the day, or you are about to play a sport, you would listen to “Trashy.”
You can literally see the southern flair dripping off the guitars while the vocal contrast works really well with this type of music. The Hottness, again with two Ts people, have risen up above their brethren. They are very talented, signed to a well-known label, and have a large amount of potential. Does this bring the breathe of fresh air they were looking to bring? No, but they are potential front-runners in the Southern Metal genre, even though they are more influenced by Punk and Rock. “
Stay Classy” was produced to recreate the raw live feel of a live show, and you can feel the rawness. If you like the genre or you are just interested in what The Hottness is all about, you should check out this album. If not for anything else then that they were ranked twelfth in, “AP’s Top 100 Bands to look for in 2008.”
3/5
