2021 CD Reviews - The Dead Daisies - Holy Ground

[TageRyche]

THE DEAD DAISIES
Holy Ground
Spitfire Music / SPV - 2021
http://www.thedeaddaisies.com

Ahead of the release of Holy Ground, the new album from The Dead Daisies, there were some key lineup changes. Singer John Corabi and bassist Marco Mendoza left the group. In their place, the band brought singer/bassist Glenn Hughes on board.

I suppose that change is why the first time I listened to Holy Ground, my impression was that this sounded much more like a Glenn Hughes album than a new album from The Dead Daisies. Don't get me wrong, I love Glenn Hughes but I was a bit thrown at first.

Thankfully, after listening to the album a few more times I came away with the realization that while the unique sound of Glenn's voice definitely changes how the band sounds, the music mixed with his vocals makes for quite the heavy rocking combination. Hughes wrote all the lyrics for the album (save the cover of the Humble Pie song "30 Days in the Hole", which I thought was a pretty solid effort) and the music is credited to The Dead Daisies as a whole.

The album opens up with "Holy Ground (Shake The Memory") and right from the start, its like the band serving notice that they intend to fully rock out start to finish. This song is absolutely fabulous and serves as a great tentpole track for the album.

I mentioned that the music has a very heavy rock vibe to it and the song "Like No Other (Bassline)" really employs this style to great effect. I thought "Come Alive" had a real enticing grinding rock pace to it as well.

I'm not sure how much Glenn Hughes' love of funk played a part in the creation of the material but I thought the song "Bustle and Flow" had a kind of undercurrent to it that might be attributed to that kind of music. Of course, being the undercurrent it ran underneath a kinetic explosion of rock and roll on top of the mix.

There's a crushing groove to the song "My Fate". The track is slightly slower than most of the songs on Holy Ground, but it still employs a heavier overtone to the music. While I own other albums from The Dead Daisies, as I write this I can't remember if they ever got political on any of their past works. But with the rocking "Chosen and Justified", the lyrics from Hughes feature a clearly political aspect to them. But I have to hand it to the band as a whole, the song works well.

The songs "Saving Grace" and "Unspoken" both start out with a mid-tempo pace but pick up speed as they go on. "Unspoken" gets a LOT more hard-charging towards the end of the song.
Another standout track for me on the disc was "Righteous Days", a straight blazing rocker that got me amped up each time I listened to it.

The album closes with the song "Far Away" and for most of the song it is a deliberately slow paced song. The vocal from Hughes feels somewhat ethereal at times but the music still retains a heavier feel to it. Musically, the song gets a lot more intensely rocking at the end. It's like The Dead Daisies decided to floor it to bring the album to a thunderous crescendo to end things on a high and hard rocking note.

While it took me a minute to wrap my head (and ears) around the new album, the addition of Glenn Hughes to the lineup of guitarists Doug Aldrich and David Lowy and drummer Deen Castronovo ends up proving change can certainly be good. While the heavy rocking sound of The Dead Daisies has always been great, Holy Ground shows that not only has the band has found yet another level to explore musically, they do it with great aplomb!

[RJhog (Admin)]

I think the opening track and the closing track are fantastic.  The Bassline track is good too.  The rest sits as listenable but not overly memorable for me.  I love Hughes but preferably in Black Country Communion and I enjoyed Corabi in this band.