Review Summary: A set of dumbbells for your gym session.
Do you, ladies and daddies, like to work out? If you do, you must have a few favorite albums or a playlist or two for the occasion. Well, if at some point you feel like your usual gym music won’t do and it’s time to look for something new, I have a suggestion. This new album by Ukrainian band The Hardkiss should do just nicely. The album tries to appear more than what it is, or at least the band tried to present it as some high-concept work in their interviews. There’s indeed some concept about time and grey suits, but you wouldn’t have known it if I didn’t tell you. Because, in all honesty, this is just gym music.
Let’s see for ourselves. The album is big and loud and contains more guitars than an average The Hardkiss record with the synth firmly pushed into the background. Yulia’s voice is clear and powerful as always and she remains front and center of every song. The standard “quiet verse – big loud chorus” formula is used and abused relentlessly almost throughout the whole album. If anything, there’s plenty of rhythm and drive in this music, which is what you need for a good gym session. The runtime is reasonable this time around, unlike some of the band’s earlier longplays that were bloated beyond any measure. There are still quite a lot of songs on “Grey Hound,” but they are mostly short, and if you take away the (extremely pretentious) intro and outro the album lasts less than forty minutes. And the “best” part is that it offers absolutely nothing to think about. Just press play, fill your head with hot air, and start pumping some weights, moving to the rhythm of these brash and loud songs. In short, this is a complete and unapologetic move back to basics for The Hardkiss, which is a big disappointment after their 2021 record “Alive and not Made of Iron,” a varied and emotional LP that saw the band deviating from their usual bombastic sound to a great success. “Grey Hound” sounds like that album didn’t exist.
Of course, variety is the most obvious issue here. The tender ballad “Ursula” stands alone with its expressive saxophone melodies and soft vocalizations in the background. Otherwise, it’s the same formula repeated all over again, energetic but monotonous riffs that could have been written by any average pop-metal band, and very familiar melodies that border on self-plagiarism. There’s a tiny bit of ambivalence because The Hardkiss is still a bunch of very capable musicians, and Yulia is an extremely gifted singer. If you just want some engaging songs with catchy choruses, this album should be more than enough. But do any of those songs work outside of the gym?
Well, that’s highly subjective. You may end up loving the entire album, or feeling thoroughly bored with it, that depends on your personal preferences and the mood you’re in when you listen to it. I personally would recommend only a couple more songs apart from “Ursula.” Those are “Take me to the Start” with an excellent bridge section and “1000,” the one song that works as intended, forcing me to turn off my brain and sing along through sheer power of catchiness. Maybe I would also add the short and snappy “AiAiAi” to an imaginary “best of” playlist, but that’s already debatable. As for the rest of the album… well, like I said, it’s a perfect set of songs for one specific activity, which is a gym session. Not much else, unfortunately. The Hardkiss had all the roads open in front of them after their previous record, but they chose to just make an Amaranthe album.
