Halfway To Gone: Second Season
Lots of heavy guitar work and noisy drums characterise this second offering by a, in my opinion, highly-under-appreciated modern rock band. I would call it stoner rock, like others before me, but for two reasons:
- Firstly, I know that such a label would instantly mean many people, due to stupid prejudices, would never even bother to try listening to this
- Secondly, almost all the tracks (11 plus one "hidden" which Windows Media Player finds effortlessly) are far too lively to be true stoner rock.

The music itself does have the kind of ring about, admittedly, but this *is* different to e.g. Queens Of The Stoneage. I do have a "thing" for heavy guitar riffs, so it's no surprise that this is one of my favourite albums, but Halfway To Gone prove they are more than a one-trick pony in the variation of the tracks. Some of the tracks aren't so heavy, there're several fully instrumental-only, and the hidden track is a fucking amazing rendition of Can't You See (I think that's what it's called - the track isn't listed on the cd and it's what Google turns up as the name).

It's by no means a fully-chilled out album though. In fact it's almost like a "stream of consciousness" album if you play it in order non-stop (like a number of albums these days manage to be), but it's never pretentious and it never tries too hard. The fact that Halfway To Gone can pull off an instrumental-only track without difficulty and without it seeming out of place on the album speaks volumes for their talent (in fact they pull off several). I can only hope more people discover them and they survive to release a third album (i was surprised they even got to release a second as they appear to be extremely and unjustly unknown)

NOTE: post first appeared at my blog