Features: The Blackout ‘Hope’ - First Listen

Want to know what The Blackout's third album sounds like? We've heard it, and here are our thoughts...

Posted Thursday, 3 February 2011 in

We’re a few short weeks away from the release of The Blackout’s third album ‘Hope’, so we sat down and gave it a damn good thrashing. What’s it like? Read on, read on…

(Note: this isn’t the official Rock Sound review – that will come in a later issue of the magazine)

Ambition Is Critical
You’ve already heard this one after they offered for a free download, but in the context of the album it feels even more kick-ass. It’s a fine opener and sets the tone appropriately: The Blackout kind of want to own the world. It’s a proper bouncer – you can imagine festival crowds jumping up and down as one during this’un.

Never By Your Side
If ‘Hope’ was a live show then ‘Never By Your Side’ is the bit when all the pits open up and either Sean or Gavin (or more likely both of them, the tykes) come to the lip of the stage and shout something along the lines of ”Come on you lot, let’s open this up!”It’s not the subtlest tune they’ve ever written but it’s got bags of energy and a killer chorus that sounds like it needs to soundtrack an epic fight in Transformers 3: Let’s Go Fucking Mental With Robots.

Higher & Higher (featuring Hyro Da Hero)
Since Zane Lowe let the cat out of the bag with this monster it’s fast becoming one of the most talked-about tunes in the UK. And not just because it’s the most public exposure yet for Hyro Da Hero (who, the first time we heard this, prompted us to immediately phone the AA because his breakdown is ludicrous) but because it’s just a massive, massive track. Seriously, if you can listen to this without nodding your head you’re stronger than we are.

Hope (Scream It Out Loud)
Ballad time. Get your lighter out, climb a mountain, let the wind whip your hair and practice your “Woah-woahs” because The Blackout are going stadium-rock. If Take That had written this it’d be used to soundtrack every single holy-shit-I-got-through-to-boot-camp montage on The X Factor until the end of time – but they didn’t, so we’ll just have to make do with it being the sort of tune that makes us want to phone mum and tell her everything’s going to be okay even though we aren’t eating all that well.

This Is Our Time
And now, the pace kicks up a notch and those pits open up again. The guitars sound like revving motorbikes and the screamed vocals sound like the last thing you’d hear before being murdered by a psychopath (in a good way, obvs); most impressively, all the punk rock fury is reined in by a chorus so big you could put a baguette under its arm and call it France. Before ‘Hope’’s release the band talked about wanting to find the middle ground between Slipknot and Prince – boom, this is it.

The Last Goodbye
Another ballady one – someone notify the World Boxing Organisation because The Blackout have some hits. Taking a rough guess, it’s probably about Gavin Butler missing his girlfriend, but the lyrics ”Never thought it would ever end up like this / That you’d be the one that you’d always miss”could be about the band’s well-documented love of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes, which are just impossible to buy when not in the UK.

No More Waiting
Big and slowish and heavy and awesome, kind of like a bear nodding its head to Black Sabbath, ‘No More Waiting’ is a proper thumper with a breakdown sure to usher in total chaos when the band play it live. And when Gavin and Sean scream ”Wake up! WAAAAKE UUUUUP!!!” we’re sure they’re channeling a bit of Rage Against The Machine, which is the very definition of A Good Thing.

The Devil Inside
A bit Used-y, a bit Bronx-y and a lot screamy, this is the most pissed-off The Blackout have sounded in ages. ”The way you fuck to feel is so degrading… you make your way through the crowd hoping for something real” is a particularly brutal line and the squealing pinch harmonics and epic guitar solo make ‘The Devil Sound’ a definitely highlight.

You're Not Alone
Other artists who have written songs called ‘You’re Not Alone’: Tinchy Stryder, Embrace [not the hardcore dudes], Olive, The Enemy, Shayne ‘I am a fucking wanker’ Ward, Saosin. This sounds nothing like any of those, and is actually a chiming, big-hearted rock song that couldn’t be any more pop if it tried. It’s ‘quite big’ in the same way the sky is ‘quite big’.

Keep On Moving
Listening to this is like being taken out for dinner by someone really attractive, and halfway through the meal (probably Italian – old-fashioned, yet still delicious) they reach across the table and say, ‘Fuck it, let’s just go to Paris. Come on, it’ll be an adventure!’ and you kind of know you never will but the fact the possibility even exists is enough to make you a bit happy. Or something.

The Storm
And now, to close the album: a driving rock song that The Cult would have written had they grown up in South Wales. It kind of sums ‘Hope’ up – it’s got heavier bits, big soaring melodies and a chugging pulse that feels like it needs to be played out of some huge festival speakers come summer.

Rock Sound’s One Word Verdict: “big”.