You can trust Louder
If this was Asking Alexandria’s second album – following their 2017 self-titled ‘debut’ – they’d be lauded for how their tough, hard-rock sound is shaping up. But it isn’t.
This is their sixth album, and they spent the first three building up a solid metalcore fan base on both sides of the Atlantic. That began to crumble when singer Danny Worsnop tore his vocal chords (and/or got tired of screaming, depending on who you believe) and quit in early 2015.
He returned the following year after the band’s ill-fated dalliance with a replacement, and the aforementioned self-titled album signalled the change.
Like A House On Fire completes the transition. The Violence and Antisocialist are big-sounding, anthemic rants with hooks, I Don’t Need You is a ballsy ballad and Worsnop’s ‘clean’ vocals are commanding.
They even own up on Here’s To Starting Over. Whether it will be heard over the howls of “sell-out” from metalcore fans is another matter.
Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 50 years. Actually 61 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.