If you can't be arsed to do that, I basically said that the album was OK but nothing special. I also said that I had confidence The Answer would return with another belting album.
Well, it seems like this is it!
If I was rating albums entirely based on how cool the cover looks, this would be resting on a solid 10. Not just that but unlike New Horizon, the title actually reflects the album's content. Album opener "Long Live The Renegades" sets the tone perfectly and whilst it may not be the best choice to release as a single, it reminds you that these guys are all about the Riff Based Rock. So is this just another repackaged collection of decent Hard Rock like New Horizon?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, it's still The Answer right down to the core. You've got tracks like "Last Days Of Summer", "The Other Side" and "Red" which have adapted the style of artists like Rory Gallagher into their own beefed up brand of Heavy Blues. On top of that, there's an acoustic number, "Strange Kinda' Nothing", neatly placed at the album's halfway point as a sort of intermission from the other Hard Rockers. On the surface, it's something that fans of Revival and Everyday Demons will enjoy. However, once you start to dissect it, you'll find a slight change in musical direction.
There are songs such as "Cigarettes & Regret", "Raise A Little Hell" and "Whiplash" that sound like they were inspired by contemporary American Rock bands such as Soundgarden, Audioslave and Queens Of The Stone Age. I suppose this isn't too big of an observation, as some of the songs on New Horizon shared similarities with 90's bands too. However, I'd argue that the connection is more apparent on this album. It might just be that they're developing something they previously experimented with or it could be that their producer wanted this album to reach American audiences. Either way, it's not a criticism.
The songs are all well written and pack a punch that's unlikely to fade after a few listens. The album is full of riffs and solos that sound like they were conceived with the sole purpose of being played on Guitar Hero, which isn't surprising considering that's where the band really shot into the public eye about seven years ago. If you enjoy air-guitaring or even just imagining yourself playing along to music whilst listening to it, you're almost certainly going to enjoy Raise A Little Hell.
In fact there's only really one glaring fault which I doubt I can blame the band for, as I feel it's something the record label had the final say on. If you buy the ordinary album, you get 12 tracks. That's pretty good BUT if you shell out another £7 or so, you get the Deluxe Edition.
So what's on this Deluxe Edition? For the extra cash, I assume it's an entire disc packed with bonus material for the fans. Nope! It's six extra songs. Six...and three of them are acoustic versions of tunes already on the first disc. So really, you're getting three new songs, meaning that if you want the whole album and those three songs, you need to pay an extra disproportionate amount. The only reason I'm making a big deal of this is because those three tracks happen to be better than most of the basic album.
"Feel Like I'm On My Way", "Flying" and "I Will Follow On" could have quite easily replaced three of the other songs and made the album a lot stronger. Since this isn't the first time a band have tried to justify releasing an extra disc with about 20 minutes worth of extra material for the price of an additional album, I'm expressing my desire to see this little trend of milking the fans crawl away and die like a diseased rodent. Either release them as digital-only singles to promote the album or create more material to warrant a second disc/Deluxe Edition.
Anyway, apologies for going off tangent there. As I was saying, Raise A Little Hell follows the unspoken rule of every odd-numbered album by The Answer being great. As is the case with most of the albums I've reviewed, I'd recommend this to people who are comfortable with what they know and like. In this case, it's previous material from The Answer and American Modern Rock. I would rate it higher than 8/10 if the three bonus tracks were part of the main album but sadly, the extra 2 points are part of my Deluxe Edition review that costs an extra half hour of your time and comes with me paraphrasing things I've already said but without any adjectives.
