Hinder – ‘When The Smoke Clears’ [Review]
As a set of classic-style hard rock tracks, When The Smoke Clears does the job. There’s no faulting Hinder’s musicianship or songwriting skills; every track on this album was ready-made for arena/festival-level consumption. The songs on When The Smoke Clears will stick in your head for a good while, and Hinder’s long-time fans are sure to get off on them.
Beyond that, however, there’s not much else to it. For starters, there’s no passion at all – performed and theatrical, forced attitude that connects on the shallowest intellectual level, sure, but that’s as far as it goes. It comes across as studied, calculated, worked out and designed rather than felt, meant, internalised, and projected.
Then come the clichés. Letting go…dead to me…sick and tired…here I go again…coming down…make everything alright…pain and hurt…to be fair, going through shitty times in life fucking sucks, but the world doesn’t need another album crammed with lame lines and ten dozen whoa-ohs. There were too many of them by the end of the ’80s, let alone 25 years later.
With Mötley Crüe bowing out in style after a 34-year career, it makes sense that the thousand-and-one clone bands created in their wake will continue to fight for the scraps from the legends’ table. With a movie version of The Dirt almost certain to make it to big screens around the world at some point in the future, glam metal’s momentum is likely to continue for a good while yet – which means a million more clone bands, and a million more albums exactly like When The Smoke Clears. If Hinder want to rise above the rest in terms of quality, they’re going to have to dig a hell of a lot deeper.
TMMP RATING: 69%
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