Heavy Metal Kids – Hit the Right Button

 

Here’s some intriguing facts – it’s been nearly 14 years since the last Heavy Metal Kids album and before that there was a 15-year wait. This isn’t a new album though; it’s a re-issue of the one from 14 years ago. Alright. Oh, and the Heavy Metal Kids aren’t really heavy metal either.

I hope that clears things up.

The Heavy Metal Kids are a kind of mix of hard and classic rock and melodic punk.

Despite being difficult to categorise, Hit the Right Button is an enjoyable album.

It’s full of catchy singalong stuff and it’s all very positive, you know, the kind of punky stuff that doesn’t stick two fingers up at the establishment and make you want to break things mixed with the kind of rocky stuff that doesn’t exactly start a moshpit. It sounds boring but it’s not really.

The album opens with Message which is a bit bubblegum-meets-Eurovision in sound, but it’s foot-tappingly catchy. It’s the kind of song that you can listen to again and again.

And once you’re comfortable you can move on to the love song, Girl of My Dreams, which is surely the blueprint New Found Glory turn to when they’ve got no new ideas.

Blow It All Away has the kind of guitar solo that makes you air guitar along whilst making sex faces (you all know what I mean).

The title track is a nice rocky number and then there’s Wildlife with huge shades of The Who.

The title NY Streetlife made me expect an all-out rock offering, so a Spanish guitar number with street sounds in the background was highly unexpected. It does then segue into Viva New York! though which is a lot more rock – like 70s radio-friendly rock.

I Walk Alone is the token slow song and Crool World is maybe an attempt at a Slade-esque mis-spelled song title?

Whisky sounds like snakeskin boots and big hair as you’d expect and A Hundred Skeletons plods along well after the bone-tinkling of a xylophone starts it off.

Gotham City doesn’t sound like it would get many plays in the Batmobile and Voices ends things in a bit of a Beatles-alike way.

The wheel isn’t being reinvented, but then does it need to be? Good rock is good rock and this is mostly good rock.

Stick Hit the Right Button on and feel like it’s the late 70s all over again.

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HIT THE RIGHT BUTTON ALBUM INFO

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