Album Reviews

Following up on a pretty much flawless debut album, can’t be easy. Unless you happen to play in Be Well, that is. The band (featuring members of Battery, Darkest Hour, Fairweather and Bane) left me with my jaw on the floor when they released ‘The Weight And The Cost’ two years ago, a stunning album from start to finish that offered equal amounts of energy and melody and the kind of emotional catharsis you normally associate with a Greek tragedy.

Clocking in at a brisk 18 minutes, ‘Hello Sun’ boasts six new new songs of top-notch melodic hardcore that find former Battery frontman and producer extraordinaire Brian McTernan digging deeper in childhood trauma, depression, and fatherhood. It’s the same brutal lyrical honesty that helped shape ‘The Weight And The Cost’and it isn’t any less powerful this time around. Not only are cuts like opener‘Treadless’ and the title track excellent songs, they also find McTernan coming to terms with the ghosts of his past. Musically, the energy level is kept at a constant high, while soaring melodic guitar lines help lift the material to the next level right up until the final notes of ‘In The Shadow Of Who You Thought I Was’ ring out.

Hello Sun track list:

1. Treadless
2. I Will Leave You With This
3. An Endless Loop
4. Hello Sun
5. Only One Wish
6. In The Shadow Of Who You Thought I Was