The New Halestorm Is Going to Rock

Halestorm will release 'ReAniMate: The CoVeRs eP March 22nd (if you want a physical copy, you'll have to order from the band's website, otherwise you can purchase digitally elsewhere). Normally, I think cover albums are lame, but this one is going to rock. The song choices and bands are pretty awesome:

1. Slave To The Grind - Skid Row
2. Bad Romance - Lady Gaga
3. Hunger Strike - Temple Of The Dog
4. Out Ta Get Me - Guns N' Roses
5. All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You - Heart
6. I Want You (She's So Heavy) - The Beatles

Now, I'm sure Lzzy Hale sounds awesome on the Heart and Gaga tunes, but I'm most excited about the Temple of the Dog track. My friend and I used to freak out when the video for "Hunger Strike" would come on MTV back in the day. And by freak out, I mean squeal. I think I still have my VHS tape with the video on it...recorded in haste during one of the squeal sessions. I digress.

Halestorm will perform as part of the Avalanche Tour, along with Stone Stour and Theory of a Deadman.

Comments

[Shadow]

Hmm, I've heard metal remixes of Bad Romance but this should at least be interesting. They're self titled debu is pretty good and i own it.The song that really wat to hear though is slave to the grind!

[Blaine]

Nice to see they're keeping busy... I still haven't bought their latest live album yet, but imagine I'll pick both of these up in the very near future.

Personally, I don't mind cover albums... Especially in this day and age, with rampant piracy and ever-shrinking recording budgets, for a lot of bands and labels, it just makes fiscal common sense.

Also, I've been turned on to many new bands through cover albums... Poison's Poison'd, LA Guns' Cuts, Vince Neil's Tattoos and Tequila, Def Leppard's YEAH!, Aerosmith's Honkin' On Bobo, GNR's The Spaghetti Incident, Tesla's Reel To Reel, Down N Outz... I enjoy it all. And let's face it, Van Halen's Van Halen II and Diver Down were basically cover albums... right?

[JN]

I am a Halestorm fan, being from Philly also, but would have liked to see some new original music, not a covers album.

[longhairedrocker]

Wow! Van Halen and Van Halen 2 covers albums? No, Van Halen put a cover or two on each cd they recorded with Ted Templeman. The reason was Ted believed that you need one cover song per cd to get people interedted in your other songs by giving them something they already know. Van Halen 1 has "You Really Got Me" and "Ice Cream Man". Van Halen 2 only has the song "Your No Good" and Diver Down has 5 covers and 4 originals and I'm not going to name them all. Diver Down is the closest to a cover cd from Van Halen but still not an all out covers cd.

I personally hate covers cd's. I unlike Ted Templeman...don't see the need.

[Metalboy!]

This is kind of a mixed bag but I do like Halestrom, so it will be interesting to see what they do with the stuff.

I find it interesting that the name of their forthcoming covers album is "Reanimate" since I have been listening to a much more fascinating project virtually non-stop lately, "Reimaginator" from Rock Sugar. It's not exactly covers since they actually combine different songs together to create "new" ones. Still, I'm sure any similarity in the titles is pure coincidence.

I happen to like covers, though not necessarily cover albums, per se, though I am impressed with Stryper's latest album, which is all covers, titled "Uncovered". Man, they really turned it up to "11" on a lot of stuff that you will now think was recorded on "9", if you do a side by side comparison. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but Stryper Rocks B*lls!

A few killarious covers, though often unintentionally so, are the Stone's "It's Only Rock'n'Roll" by Shy, Loggin & Messina's "Summer Breeze" by Type-O-Negative, Leiber Stoller's "Love Potion #9" by Beau Nasty, though I prefer Tyger's of Pan Tang's version for that little bit of extra "b*llsyness".

I could go on and on, as I'm sure most of you BBGer's could, too, but I'll wait for the "Crazy Covers" post Al should do. Should we start a petition?

[Kenny Ozz]

Wow. I was just saying how cool of a song "All I wanna do is make love to you" was on facebook yesterday. Glad to see it getting a new spin.

[M.]

Unlike the earlier Niki Barr post, I'm afraid this one doesn't do anything for me. Something very "weak tea-ish" about this band. A similar female-fronted rock band, Saraya, was in my rotation 20 years ago, and it's interesting to see how little has changed. Saraya had some good rhythms and more memorable hooks.

Why do groups still sound like this? 20-25 years ago, this sound would have been viewed as pandering to the lowest common denominator in order to get onto MTV. These days it's decidedly fringe, in that it isn't going to sell, but still sounds like the corporate mainstream. For God's sake, guys (and gal), stretch it out! "Hunger Strike" might be a step in the right direction, come to think of it, but it all depends on how it sounds.

[Metalboy!]

Good point, M.! Stretch it out!

p.s. My mother, God rest her soul, was a supreme Lowest Common Denominator detector. She used to whisper out of the side of her beloved mouth, "L.C.D." whenever she would notice ANYTHING appealing to that level of intelligence. Granted, we probably wouldn't have loved the fact that she may have flagged some of our beloved bands with that moniker, but she enabled my love of the Beatles when I was just a toddler and "appreciated" the likes of Zeppelin, Queen and Cheap Trick among others. And she would often remark to me how much she loved a song on the radio if she heard it when we were carpooling to school with a bunch of punk kids in the back. "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Stairway To Heaven", "Killer Queen", "Only Women Bleed", "Whatever Gets You Through The Night", "Imagine", "Mind Games" and later, The Stone's "Shattered" and Trick's "Surrender" come to mind. At that point the woman was well into her fifties. She was no dummy.