Label: SPV / Steamhammer Records
Release date: January 22, 2021
Production: Ben Grosse
Album length: 48.15 min
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 10/10
The Dead Daisies are a proper rock supergroup. Under this name, the musical Hercules figures of rock and roll join forces, led by Australian magnate David Lowy – the band’s rhythm guitarist, by the way. In a relatively short time, the band has cranked out four studio albums, a live album and a compilation, run a string of tours all over the world and wowed crowds with their energetic shows.
Still, the band has never made a single album without a lineup shake-up along the way. And so came that autumn of 2019. Another turning point for David Lowy, who by then had made peace with the fact that the band is forever haunted by the draft from a wide-open door, with musicians constantly coming and going through it. Through that door walked a truly towering name of the rock era, one who also carries the tag “the voice of rock”. Glenn Hughes, who took over as singer and bassist at the same time. Corabi and Mendoza left on their own, with nobody pushing them out. The first wanted to unhitch from everything for a while, the second to focus on new projects. The main instigator behind Glenn’s arrival was guitarist Doug Aldrich, who knows Hughes very well. They met back when Aldrich was playing for Ronnie James Dio. Doug also backed Hughes at his solo shows. Most recently in Europe in autumn 2015, when he was presenting his solo album “Resonate”. It so happened that Hughes really wanted to make an album with Aldrich, who was at first convinced that, with Glenn’s packed schedule, something like that was simply impossible. In November 2019, the band headed to the south of France and the La Fabrique studio, where they spent quite some time tossing around ideas and testing how the new lineup clicked. For the first time in their career, The Dead Daisies had become a four-piece.
Things obviously moved fast, because the album was finished as early as the start of 2020. But then what happened, happened. Bands were left without tours, and The Dead Daisies too had to push back the album’s release date. By a whole year. But you can’t put off a release forever. So on January 22, 2021, the album “Holy Ground” finally made its way into the world. And what an album. Out of all five albums released to this day, “Holy Ground” is the most special The Dead Daisies record. The band went through a radical sonic change – similar to the time before “Revolution”, when it was left without a keyboardist and Lowy decided the next album would favor the guitar sound (Richard Fortus was then replaced by the markedly different Aldrich). But that seismic shift is nothing compared to what happens when Glenn Hughes shows up on the scene.
Glenn Hughes is – and this hasn’t been a surprise for years now – an extremely dominant figure. As a vocalist, bassist and songwriter. In his own style, he wrote all the lyrics and of course took an active part in writing every song. But his performance brings a fundamental departure from everything The Dead Daisies did before. The music on “Holy Ground” picked up those wide-open spaces of black, soulful vocal acrobatics that are unique in the galaxy, theatrically unbridled and explosive, and a guarantee of all the peculiarities that Hughes’ stainless-steel throat brings to every album. The Dead Daisies have always had a strong allegiance to blues roots, but with Hughes it’s stressed even more firmly. It also soaked up some of that heavyweight blackness of Black Country Communion, but luckily Aldrich is very different from Bonamassa – so any further comparisons between the Daisies and BCC are off the table. On the other hand, a layman hearing The Dead Daisies for the first time with “Holy Ground” would think – given Hughes’ extraordinary vocal dominance – that they were listening to nothing less than a new Glenn Hughes album.
Aldrich wrote a few phrases that are simply tailor-made for Hughes. Especially when the listener runs into one of the best tracks on “Holy Ground”. That’s “Like No Other (Bassline)”. Aldrich wrote it by imagining how Glenn Hughes would play bass lines around his phrasing. Since he knows Glenn so well, he bowed to him masterfully, especially in the intense chorus, where the song builds a special, ramped-up groove and incredible grabbiness, thanks to Hughes’ powerful melody that seizes you instantly. The album is opened by two extremely strong moments. The first is the song “Holy Ground (Shake the Memory)”, written by Glenn Hughes, and the second is the aforementioned “Like No Other (Bassline). After just a few seconds of listening, it’s clear this is a gorgeous piece of work, and one like The Dead Daisies have never made before. Musically it’s special in every way, and the band’s new artistry is in fact its rebirth. The carrier of this change is Glenn Hughes, who pulled things out of the other three that they otherwise wouldn’t have tackled. The material on Holy Ground is downright fascinating. Hughes is simply infectiously influential. Aldrich had to reach for moves he hadn’t used before. That shows in the solos, which are different, much better suited to the new format, which puts the development of the ultimate funky groove front and center, and, wrapped in distinctly pouty guitar phrases backed by a deep blues character, demands a different approach to soloing too. Technical polish takes a back seat, while keeping up that distinct groove kinetics is a must. And there’s plenty of it throughout. Given that there are eleven songs – including the Humble Pie cover “30 Days in the Hole” – it’s great to find the album runs under 50 minutes. That means the songs average around four minutes. A little more, a little less. The song “Far Away”, which stretches to seven minutes, is the closer and was written right at the very end of the recording sessions. The Dead Daisies were missing a slow number. Hughes has been a master of that since the Mistreated days. Aldrich, who is used to very fast playing and favoring phrases of distorted sharpness, had to dig in especially deep on this track with the guitar arrangements. Especially in the search for just the right measured “clean” sound. That’s how one of the album’s best compositions came about, closing it out with a big sweep.
The Dead Daisies have always liked to dip into covers. The released compilation “Locked and Loaded: The Covers Album” (2019) is built on them too. Neither Hughes nor Aldrich is a big fan of covers, as they primarily swear by original material, but still. More original material had been written, yet The Dead Daisies gave priority to a cover anyway. The aforementioned Humble Pie classic “30 Days in the Hole”. At its end, this one too developed a distinctly bristling guitar-phrasing look, which was necessary, since otherwise it would have sounded too much like the original. Lead vocals on it are taken by drummer Deen Castronovo, who is regarded as an excellent singer, as Journey put to the test during his career, and as also goes for the Aldrich and Castronovo tandem in Revolution Saints.
Hughes “kills” it on vocals. Age doesn’t touch him. Not easily, anyway. This album will become a mighty magnet for everyone who hasn’t paid much attention to The Dead Daisies until now. With Hughes on board, everything is different. And none of this would exist without the brilliant production of Ben Grosse, who, acting as the band’s fifth member, calibrated things with filigree precision in the background and contributed substantially to the individual talents magnifying themselves in all their glory and full yield on the album. This is capitalized on with brilliant “coloring” and contrasting of the building blocks of the sonic picture, and the resulting funky groove suspension, which accompanies the album every step of the way. This is an album of an incredible, unique union of musical tightness and moments when passion, emotion and the core of the chameleon-like vocal acrobatics of the incredible Hughes take over. The virtuoso strengths of Aldrich and Castronovo bow to the majestic groove that struts across the album. Glenn Hughes’ bass lines are markedly thickened and provide a ferocious “drive” that, with its built-up voltage, shocks and hypnotizes the listener after just a few bars of the opening “Holy Ground (Shake The Memory)”.
“Holy Ground” is thus a The Dead Daisies album that will now also draw hordes of Glenn Hughes fans under its wing. That means, among others, those who love Deep Purple in the Mk IV lineup. So the already big The Dead Daisies are becoming even bigger with “Holy Ground”. It’s not far-fetched to presume that a Deep Purple classic might sneak into the quartet’s live repertoire. “Holy Ground” is thus an album that, right at the start of 2021, delivers one of its rock and roll highlights. An album that won’t want to leave your players of good rock music for quite a while.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Holy Ground (Shake The Memory)
2. Like No Other (Bassline)
3. Come Alive
4. Bustle And Flow
5. My Fate
6. Chosen And Justified
7. Saving Grace
8. Unspoken
9. 30 Days In The Hole
10. Righteous Days
11. Far Away
Lineup:
Glen Hughes – vocals, bass guitar
Doug Aldrich – guitar
David Lowy – guitar
Deen Castronovo – drums, vocals on track no. 9
