{"id":39847,"date":"2025-08-01T17:23:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/39847\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T17:23:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T17:23:12","slug":"halestorm-pick-their-five-most-underrated-rock-and-metal-bands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/39847\/","title":{"rendered":"Halestorm pick their five most underrated rock and metal bands"},"content":{"rendered":"

If 2024 had \u2018Brat summer\u2019, then 2025 may well be on the cusp of \u2018Halestorm<\/a> summer\u2019. When I interview frontwoman Lzzy Hale<\/a> and lead guitarist Joe Hottinger at the Gibson Garage in London, the Pennsylvania hard rockers are about to enjoy several career milestones. The day after we talk, they\u2019ll support Iron Maiden<\/a> at the 75,000-capacity London Stadium, and the weekend after that they\u2019ll perform at Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> and Black Sabbath<\/a>\u2019s blockbuster farewell show. Oh, and on 8 August, they\u2019ll release Everest: comfortably the best album of their 15-year recording career so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re peaking right now,\u201d Hottinger laughs when I mention the stacked schedule his band have for the coming weeks. \u201cIt\u2019s all downhill from here.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Everest receives the goodwill that it deserves, then hopefully not. On their sixth full-length, Halestorm eschew the trappings of US radio rock<\/a> without sacrificing their melodic punch. The songs are heavy, passionate jams with an improvisational spirit, achieved by the fact they went into the studio with producer Dave Cobb with nothing written down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a looseness to it,\u201d Hale says. \u201cI think \u2013 given the circumstances and the fact that we were forced to live in the moment, trust ourselves, trust our guts and make decisions \u2013 we stopped ourselves before we were getting bored with something or something was getting too comfortable. In essence, that\u2019s what live music is all about for us anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

That verve quickly appears on opener Fallen Star, when Lzzy cackles and screams \u201cKick it!\u201d before she and her bandmates launch into one of the nastiest riffs of their lives. Combine that with the searing lead lines of I Gave You Everything and the lung-popping shouts during Watch Out!, and you get an album that finally captures how raucous this foursome are in the live arena.<\/p>\n

\"LzzyLzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger performing at Black Sabbath\u2019s final concert in 2025. Image: Alison Northway<\/p>\n

On paper, Cobb seems like a wildcard pick for the producer of such an unapologetically rock\u2019n\u2019roll project. Though he\u2019s produced Rival Sons<\/a> and Greta Van Fleet<\/a> in the past, he\u2019s mainly known for working with such country-pop superstars as Chris Stapleton<\/a> and Brandi Carlile<\/a>. I ask what made him the man for the job of overseeing Everest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the Chris Stapleton record,\u201d says Hottinger, \u201cand Brandi Carlile is just a monster. Every time I fall in love with a record, I see his name and I\u2019m like, \u2018That fucking guy again!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d have conversations with Dave and ask, \u2018How did you make this or that work?\u2019,\u201d Hale adds. \u201cHe\u2019d be like, \u2018That was just the vibe on that day. We were literally living in the moment.\u2019 For us, no matter what genre, I think that that\u2019s just a good divining rod to be guided by.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all the rambunctiousness that Everest smacks the listener with, the album lyrically alternates between rock star pageantry and affecting levels of introspection. On lead single Darkness Always Wins, Hale cries, \u201cWe are fighters, holding up our lighters!\u201d: a line almost definitely written with the intention of getting phone torches during their arena shows. Similarly, K-I-L-L-I-N-G is a barnstormer with a spell-along hook that anyone can quickly get caught up in.<\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum, though, are lyrics as personal as those on Broken Doll, where Hale laments previous, toxic relationships. \u201cI still believed the lies we shared, shattered dreams beyond repair,\u201d she sings. Like a Woman Can is a defiant declaration of the singer\/guitarist\u2019s bisexuality, while How Will You Remember Me? finds her asking the lofty question of what her legacy will be after she dies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was tired of what I had created in the past \u2013 this pedestal, the idea of me \u2013 and ready to say things the way that I actually feel them,\u201d Hale explains. \u201cI don\u2019t have to have all the answers and everything doesn\u2019t always have to be okay. I feel like, in past years, especially after fame happened and all of a sudden you\u2019re a role model, I needed to be a beacon of hope for everybody. I wrote all these songs that said, \u2018It\u2019s gonna be okay,\u2019 but that\u2019s not reality. We don\u2019t know whether everything is going to be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Halestorm prepare to put out their best music yet and get ready for a summer that will surely only make their star burn brighter, I turn the conversations to bands who haven\u2019t had that level of fortune and attention. Below, you\u2019ll find Halestorm\u2019s picks for great rock and metal<\/a> bands that should have become household names but, for whatever reason, unjustly fell short of megastardom.<\/p>\n

\"Halestorm,Halestorm. Image: PressSevendust<\/p>\n

Lzzy: \u201cThey\u2019re an incredible band, but they\u2019ve always been notorious for, like, everybody that\u2019s ever opened for Sevendust has gone on to do great things. They\u2019re kind of the springboard for that. [1999 album] Home was the thing that knocked me out of my parent\u2019s generation of music. I was listening to Judas Priest<\/a> and Alice Cooper<\/a> and Dio<\/a> and all of that, and then Home came out, and there\u2019s a song called Licking Cream with Skin from Skunk Anansie<\/a> on it. I remember thinking, \u2018Oh, girls can sing this type of music! There\u2019s hope for me!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember meeting them: I had been a fan for a little while and then we went to the NAMM<\/a> convention in the States. They had a small gig there and somebody got me in. They were the sweetest men in the world! A couple months later, they had a show in Lancaster, Pennsylvania at the Chameleon Club. They remembered us, invited us onto their bus and took our demo CD. They played one of our songs through the PA right before they went on! I remember turning to my little bro, just like, \u2018Well, if Sevendust think we\u2019re cool enough to have our song played in front of their audience, maybe we got something here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Priestess<\/p>\n

Joe: \u201cThey\u2019re a band from the very early 2000s that never got too huge. They did some touring and I think they made two records. I still love that band. They have a record called Hello Master and I found a vinyl of it, an original pressing, at a shop in Nashville for like 20 bucks. It melted my brain! How they started that record is some of the inspiration for how we started this new record, because it\u2019s just a killer riff that goes on for too long. Haha! It\u2019s in a different time signature and I was like, \u2018That\u2019s brilliant!\u2019 It was one of my favourite records coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Divinyls<\/p>\n

Lzzy: \u201cThey\u2019re an overlooked punk<\/a> band that were only ever known for [1990 single] I Touch Myself, and the rest of their albums sound nothing like that. They\u2019re this crazy, high-energy Police<\/a>-meets-old-school-punk kind of band. Nobody ever really digs deeper than that one hit they ever had.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got into them kind of by accident. I realised later, \u2018Oh, they\u2019re the I Touch Myself band.\u2019 The lead singer [Chrissy Amphlett] ended up dying many years ago, but they were one of those bands that opened up for everybody and then never really got their due, except for that one song. It was completely unhinged, amazing vocal prowess. The guitars were really interesting. You could tell that they were very jazz<\/a>-influenced, but then they all got into punk bands when they were teenagers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Killing Joke<\/p>\n

Joe: \u201cThe record that got me into them was the one Dave Grohl<\/a> was on [2003\u2019s Killing Joke]. That got me into Killing Joke, that was my introduction. Don\u2019t they have a songwriting credit on Come as You Are or something? [Nirvana<\/a>\u2019s riff was strikingly similar to the one in 1984 single Eighties. Killing Joke were reportedly annoyed about it, but didn\u2019t take legal action \u2013 Legal Clarification Ed]<\/p>\n

\u201cI discovered them through that record because it was on a random playlist or something, and I heard it and I was thinking, \u2018That sounds like fucking Dave Grohl \u2013 what are we listening to?!\u2019 Then I went deeper and deeper and I bought the record. It was just on for, like, a year and a half straight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lzzy: \u201cI\u2019m definitely a fan. It\u2019s just the energy of a song like Asteroid and the personality. There are certain people who are able to exude that kind of energy vocally where you get to know who they are. You\u2019re just like, \u2018Man, I know everything about you just from that run!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mrnorth<\/p>\n

Joe: \u201cThey were Irish boys and they made a record on a big label [2004 debut album Lifesize was released by RCA]. I think they did some pretty good touring. The vocals were soaring, like Jeff Buckley<\/a>, but they were a rock band. Lifesize is a beautiful record. They had a shot, I guess, but it didn\u2019t quite go their way. We\u2019d see them play all the time at Grape Street pub in Philadelphia. They were so good live!\u201d<\/p>\n

Lzzy: \u201cTheir lyrics were pure poetry. They took you to a different place. The words were like visuals. He [singer\/guitarist Colin Smith] had a way of taking his surroundings \u2013 there was a lot of talk about trees and nature \u2013 but then relating them to one\u2019s inner self. I remember thinking, \u2018How do people think that way?!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/p>\n

Guitar.com\u2019s extreme metal specialist, Matt\u2019s been writing about obnoxiously loud music since his first year of uni. His favourite band is Gojira and he thinks Machine Head\u2019s Halo is the best song ever written. James Hetfield once told him to stop smiling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If 2024 had \u2018Brat summer\u2019, then 2025 may well be on the cusp of \u2018Halestorm summer\u2019. When I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1896,49,48,75,2527,341,1352],"class_list":["post-39847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-artist","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-rock"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}