The first of two Rival Sons albums due out in 2023 (Lightbringer <\/i>should release in the fall sometime), Darkfighter <\/i>finds the California classicist rockers as good as ever.<\/p>\n
Twenty fourteen\u2019s Great Western Valkyrie <\/i>was where I discovered this band, with its classic rock inspirations (Zeppelin, Soundgarden, Black Keys) fueling such great songs as \u201cSecret\u201d and \u201cOpen My Eyes.\u201d Initially more popular in Canada, they gained U.S. recognition and Grammy nominations with 2019\u2019s Feral Roots<\/i> and \u201cDo Your Worst,\u201d and so Darkfighter <\/i>aims to build on that momentum with album number seven.<\/p>\n
The influences are still there, but Rival Sons have grown beyond them for sure; no way could they have pulled off a confident rave-up like \u201cNobody Wants To Die\u201d or the vocals of \u201cMirrors\u201d a decade ago. \u201cBird In The Hand\u201d is a stomping, overdriven midtempo piece, very reminiscent of Queens Of The Stone Age\u2019s 2002 hit \u201cNo One Knows\u201d as filtered through the Keys and Joe Bonamassa. <\/p>\n
Some reviewers heap praise on \u201cBright Light\u201d and \u201cRapture,\u201d but they don\u2019t really work; the latter is too slow and the former, for whatever reason, just can\u2019t quite pull off the vibe it\u2019s going for. But no fear: \u201cGuillotine\u201d is all rock energy (with some classic Queen sounds in the chorus) that veers into an off-kilter instrumental section and a rampaging guitar solo. This then leads into the six-minute album highlight \u201cHorses Breath,\u201d an ambitious, kinetic stomp-rocker with some great singing from Jay Buchanan and a guitar drone that anchors the piece. It\u2019s not every band that could pull something like this off, but these guys do it fantastically.<\/p>\n
Allegedly, the material the band was writing over the last three years found itself split into two kinds of moods, so if the titles are any indication, Lightbringer <\/i>should be an uptempo, sunny affair. Darkfighter <\/i>isn\u2019t gloomy by any means, but it has gravity and weight underpinning all the songs, which makes it a compelling listen that only gets better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":34863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10882],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46730","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-rival-sons","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46730"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46730"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}