HALESTORM – EVEREST Atlantic Records Release date 08th August 2025

 

You can absolutely just sit in the relative safety and comfort of base camp and listen to this as just the next brilliant Halestorm album but if you’re willing to crampon up and go climbing with them, then your sonic sherpas Halestorm will guide you to the summit of their recording career and you’ll understand a saying that is synonymous with those that have climbed both the physical and the mental mountains of this life…when you’ve been to the mountain, you give back!

 

After two decades of climbing up and over everything that the industry and life in general has thrown at them the band have acclimatised to the air when you’re consistently playing at these heights. This is album number six and unlike many of their peers and influences they’re still out there playing with an all-original lineup and that shows a level of trust, of truth and of family that goes well beyond the mountaineer’s belay rope. They have arguably the most underrated rhythm section the genre has seen in their lifetime, two genuine guitar goliaths and out front they have the freaks freak, a woman who has a once in a generation voice, a stage presence that can go heel to heel with any icon you care to mention and the poetic ability to write lyrics so deep they should come with a lifeguard.

 

Between hope and hell lies the real, and this is album is very, very real. They say that wisdom is simply healed pain and whilst that is absolutely true for all of us Lzzy Hale manages to turn that pain into poetry and then poetry into song and that is the rarest of gifts my friends. Great songwriting you see has the ability to deliver brutal truths in beautiful ways and has the answers to the questions we were too afraid to ask ourselves and this gets to the heart of why I think Halestorm have not only survived but thrived over the past twenty years. They understand and openly embrace the duality of their own existence for they are and always have been simultaneously a masterpiece and a work in progress.   

 

The recording process for Everest was very organic and what you are hearing is the energy created and captured between inception and execution. This is not so much a journey of discovery as one of re-discovery and I’d be willing to bet that the band came out of the recording process entirely differently than how they went in. This very much feels like a cathartic experience where the band just made the album THEY wanted to make. Not what the fans wanted, not what the radio expected and certainly not what the industry demanded, and you know what? Not only have they earned the right to do exactly that, it has produced something truly special.

 

The moment ‘Falling Star’ explodes into life you know that this is an album that doesn’t ask for your attention, it demands it…and you give it freely. The opener is rooted in a positively filthy riff that drops so low it’s cavernous and hypnotic which allows the vocals time to breath and play beautifully round about it. Up next is the title track and one of the three songs released as singles, Everest has that grinding groove to it that drives home the message of the song, that whatever passion you have in your life you do it simply because you don’t know how to or want to do anything else…put simply you never rest on your Everest.

 

As much as the temptation is there to continue with a track by track, I think it best to leave you to journey at your own pace and time through the rest of the climb, but it would be remiss of me not to signpost a few particularly special moments that had me stopping to admire the view along the ascent. ‘Like a Woman Can’ is the best Bond theme song you’ve never heard, ‘KILLING’ takes the phrasing from Extreme’s Play with Me and turns it into an extreme sport. ‘I Gave You Everything’ has the most hauntingly relatable lyrics you’ll hear this year, and the closing ‘How Will You Remind Me’ is that classic Halestorm piano led ballad we always crave.

 

With frontwoman Hale currently adorning the front cover of almost every rock and metal magazine the world over and Metal Hammer in particular crowning her “the queen of everything” it’s very easy to forget that this was once just a wee girl sitting in sight of a log cabin in the Appalachian Mountains singing her heart out to the leaves on the trees. Twenty-eight years ago tomorrow that girl and her brother decided it was Everest or bust…I hope wherever they are today they take a minute to sit and enjoy the view, because it’s spectacular. Mz Hyde is no longer hypoxic, Miss Understood now understands and the Daughter of Darkness is now radiating her own internal light because those alter egos have been left further down the mountain; the woman standing planting the Halestorm flag on top of her Everest is one hundred percent, prime time, flesh and blood…Lzzy Hale.

 

Much love

SS