![]() The aforementioned “When the Lights Go Down” and “Reminding You of Me,” as well as “The Last Night” also manage to be somewhat engaging and memorable. “I Need Your Love”, self-consciously simple as it is, manages to hit the spot like a tray of microwavable mac and cheese with four big, dumb power chords and a catchy chorus, even though it shamelessly apes British Steel. It sabotages Black’s obvious ear for hooks, best exemplified by the truly catchy “When the Lights Go Down” and “Reminding You of Me.” Catchy, punchy tracks that lose a great deal of their immediacy through a compressed, sheeny production.Īdmittedly, some of these more immediate tracks slice right through the production woes with some tasty hooks. The lack of bends, slides and vibrato that give teeth and character to a lead part are absent in favor of a style that feels robotic and rehearsed. ![]() There’s something to be said about musicians who tackle something as daunting as a one-man-band project, but Black’s lead guitar does little more than hit the right notes. I don’t doubt Black’s earnest enthusiasm for what he does, but the record’s self-conscious, uncommitted instrumental performance articulates very little of the spirited zeal one might expect from this project. His sophomore effort underneath the High Spirits moniker, You Are Here clearly wants to be a free-wheeling, hard-rocking heavy metal record, but the mood is largely sabotaged by poor execution. Black clearly has no time for modern metal cynicism, and his one-man throwback project High Spirits, with lyrical themes tagged in the Archives with “rocking” and “being in high spirits,” is about as light-hearted and easily palatable as modern metal gets. I’d like to think that Chicago-based traditional metal champion Chris Black (fellow music journalist and leader of a number of lauded traditional heavy metal groups such as Dawnbringer and Pharaoh, both of which I’ve unfortunately managed to neglect) himself went on a sojourn into these nether reaches of the Archives and decided that enough was enough. For example, filtering for “lyrical themes”, unsurprisingly, finds that “nihilism” and “national socialism” trump out “rock”, “rocking” and “fun” in the heavy metal thematic lexicon. ![]() Botanist - Nero di Marte - Void of Sleep crowd-fun.Running searches on the vast database that is the Metal Archives can be a fascinating – and sometimes hilarious – way of looking at the genre at a whole.And if you like your metal like your temperatures (in the '80s (Fahrenheit)) then High Spirits will lift your spirits high! If you're the kind of person that thought/thinks a white and gold Pontiac Firebird was/is the pinnacle of cool, this will be the soundtrack to your summer. You Are Here is a pretty accessible and infectious album that will stick with you for days. And the vocal harmonies and hooks are there in spades. No matter the case it's hard not to get caught up in the energy he puts out there as a definite frontman. The closest comparison I can feel is to Klaus Meine of Scorpions. It's an honest to goodness ode to the masters of trad metal's heyday, or a guy in a really good bar band. Black's delivery is somewhat unrefined but definitely clean. What will make or break the album for most will be the vocals. But you can't pick slide on those fake guitars. It's almost like it's straight out of Guitar Hero. It's relatively straightforward with big power chords, tasteful leads and arena-sized sing-along choruses. It'll snag you faster than a blanket made of barbed wire. ![]() Riffs, melodies, galloping rhythms, vocals. These high energy rockers, lead by Dawnbringer's Chris Black play a brand of uptempo, NWOBHM inspired, old school metal that you just can't get out of your head. Curse you Disney! Well, I found the solution: You Are Here by Chicago's High Sprits. If you're the parent of a little girl, or even spent some time with a little girl in the last 6 months, you've likely found yourself straining to remove songs from the movie Frozen from your head.
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