Audrey Horne-Pure Heavy

Napalm Records
2014

"Pure Heavy" is album number five for Norwegian hard rock band Audrey Horne. Having loved the band's 2013 album, "Youngblood", I will admit that I was a little worried about being let down by this new disc. Call me a pessimist if you must, but when your first introduction to a band comes courtesy of such a great rock record as "Youngblood" it can be hard to picture any band improving upon that. Thankfully my fears proved to be unwarranted. As it turns out "Pure Heavy" is pure bliss as far seventies & eighties-inspired rock/hard rock is concerned and for Audrey Horne the good times only get better! Now, for those who don't know this Norwegian band, which was formed in 2002 and takes its name from Sherilyn Fenn’s character in the cult TV series Twin Peaks, features musicians primarily associated with the black metal scene. We're talking about a band whose past and present members have played in bands like Enslaved and Gorgoroth so an album like this can come as quite a surprise. A pleasant surprise mind you, but a surprise nonetheless. The thing is the five musicians who are involved in Audrey Horne are such top-notch performers that it all comes across as natural! Up front on the mic you've got Torkjell Rød/Toschie while Ice Dale and Thomas Tofthagen handle guitars, Espen Lien plays bass and Kjetil Greve plays drums*. Each and every part of this band performs at the top of it's game while simultaneously blending together to form this near-perfect rock and roll machine! The individual songs present on "Pure Heavy" compliment each other resulting in this amazing collection of highly-memorable and hook-laden tracks! Favorite moments are too many to count as this is simply track after track after track of cool and buzz-worthy rock! When I reviewed "Youngblood" last year I wrote how the band "has a good sense of melody and knows a thing or two about writing catchy riffs." That is as true now as it was back then. And while I could sit here and roll off the band's influences and try to point out the references to everyone from solo Ozzy to The Sweet let's just say that Audrey Horne has their own vibe going on and leave it at that! Although I will say one last thing. If the slick combination of seventies rock/hard rock and eighties hard rock sounds like something you would want to roll with then you will love this release. Then again, even if you are not all that sure about that sort of combination chances are you'll still enjoy this release. Plain and simple it's fun. It's a fun album from a very cool rock band. And frankly speaking that will never go out of style in my book!

http://www.audreyhornemusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AudreyHorneOfficial

Review of "Youngblood"
http://metalmark.blogspot.com/2012/12/audrey-horne-youngblood.html

*This is the band's line-up as listed on Facebook. As the digital promo did not include any line-up information I am simply going to go by that.