H.E.A.T – Into the great unknown

It feels like far more than three years since H.E.A.T last released an album but that’s just a sign of how good they are that their absence has been so noticeable. The fact that the band haven’t played a live show for 2 years has also made the wait feel longer. A fantastic live band their studio albums have been equally impressive, so it’s fair to say this album has been eagerly awaited.

With that in mind, I hit play and prepared to be impressed…and something strange happened. I liked what I heard, but wasn’t immediately blown away by it. Was this a sign the album would fail to live up to the high expectations people have? What I found though was the more I listened to the album, the more it grew on me. It’s actually a great album and it’s good that they didn’t take the easy option of trying to just make another “Address the nation”. So many bands try and make the same record again and again and they usually become stale, so when a band pushes their boundaries and makes each record different to the previous ones then that helps keep things fresh.

There’s some of the great melodic rock that we’ve come to expect from H.E.A.T but alongside that is music that’s more pop than anything they’ve done before. The real artistry is in how well they’ve arranged the tracks on the album so that you’re constantly moving between the two rather than having the more pop oriented songs clumped together.

This is an album that grows on you rather than impressing immediately, but I think that once you get used to the new sound, the result is the best album yet from H.E.A.T. It’s a big change for fans to get used to, hence why it takes a while to grow on you, but it’s well worth putting in the effort.

“Into the great unknown” will be released on 22nd September 2017 via earMUSIC

Track listing:

1. Bastard of society
2. Redefined
3. Shit city
4. Time on our side
5. Best of the broken
6. Eye of the storm
7. Blind leads the blind
8. We rule
9. Do you want it
10. Into the great unknown