Album Review

Hellions – Indian Summer

2nd Feb 2015

Picture yourself stranded in the misery of the current mainstream rock scene – an arid desert; tumble weed rolls forlornly across a sea of dead bands auto tuned to death, drowned in the laughable drudgery of their meaningless existence and their empty messages.

In the distance, a dust cloud appears on the horizon. A deep rumble trembles the earth beneath your feet as the speeding object hurtles towards you at breakneck pace. You do a tiny shit in your pants. That dust cloud on the horizon? That’s Hellions. They’re from Australia like Mad Max. Also a bit like Mad Max, they’re a whirling, snarling, hungry ball of chaotic and forward-looking punk spirit.

Their debut album ‘Indian Summer’ is nothing short of a phenomenon. We’re not usually ones for this much hyperbole (really, read the rest of our reviews) but this lot really, truly deserve it. Their flailing, hardcore-influenced, melodic punk rock variously evokes Letlive., Glassjaw, Small Brown Bike, Static X, System of A Down, Thursday, early Funeral For a Friend and a whole host of others.

Far from being a muddy mess, listening to this record is like being smacked around the head by every band you’ve every loved at different stages in your life all at the same time. By just the second track on the album you’re knee deep in a dueling guitar solo that wouldn’t be out of place on a Dragonforce record. It’s just possible that we might all have died and gone to rock music heaven.

Every few years a band comes along and sweeps up all the empty bullshit we’ve had stuffed down our throats and buries it with their vitality, exuberance and importance – Hellions could well be that band. Thankfully, if you don’t believe our gushing praise you can check the record out in full here ahead of its release on Monday and see how good it is for yourself – thank us later.

– Jamie Otsa