Guns for Glory - Love Lust & Loneliness (Album)
The title of Guns For Glory’s new short album, Love Lust & Loneliness, is a pretty good description of the lyrical content of most of the songs. The CD is a great effort from the band for its debut. The album cover features a woman sitting on a white couch, looking up and the band name which is spreading above her head. Theatrical but minimalist – a refreshing approach compared to the standard screaming-at-you images that most rock efforts have these days.
Guns For Glory is a relatively young band, both in the time they have been playing together and in the ages of the players. Out of New South Wales, they coughed up a demo CD, Beyond This Point, just last year, and Love Lust & Loneliness is their debut album – although truth to tell, with just five tracks and two bonuses, it is more of an EP. They play a decent blend of hard rock and punk, with some pop elements thrown in to make it catchier – sort of like a cross between Jet and Parkway Drive, or a less-polished, less try-hard version of Good Charlotte.
The music quality in Love Lust & Loneliness is surprisingly high for a debut rock/punk effort. The vocals are nice and clean cut, with the singing being as perfectly legible as any pop outfit’s, and the screaming still having easily-discernable lyrics. The lyrics themselves are nothing challenging, but singer AJ’s voice still has a great tone. There is a lot of variety from track to track, with some being heavy rock/punk and some being much lighter melodic pop. One gets the impression that Guns For Glory were trying to sell themselves by showing off their full range in this compilation. On the main, the songs, while no innovative breakthroughs, feature some interesting melodic ideas, and have nice creative compositions – one song might feature both heavy distorted rhythmic guitar and then lighter catchier leads, standard snare/hi-hat drum parts which then blend into tom-tom based loops, etc – have a look at single Lead Me to see what I mean.
While Lead Me and Fighting Ghosts are being promoted by the distributors, my favourites on the album are Apathy Doesn’t Cut It Anymore and bonus song Defence Mechanism, and I admit a large part of the reason is both have such nice intros. Apathy Doesn’t Cut It Anymore has some great breakdown work, as well as numerous hooks, and Defence Mechanism, while it needs a little more volume in the bass throughout the song, clearly shows the potential of Guns For Glory.
A very decent album for a debut. Good listening, no compromise, and hinting at further potential. Hopefully it’s selling at EP prices to boot.
