Band:	Huntress
Album:	Static
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	September 25, 2015
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Sorrow
02. Flesh
03. Brian
04. I Want To Wanna Wake Up
05. Mania
06. Four Blood Moons
07. Static
08. Harsh Times On Planet Stoked
09. Noble Savage
10. Fire In My Heart
11. Black Tongue [bonus]
12. Vultures Can Wait [7" vinyl bonus]

I have seen Huntress take a lot of flak, and always found the criticisms to be very unfair. In fact, given their style and schtick, Huntress should fit like a glove in the new generation of rabid heavy metal disciples that they have been helping to spearhead. With all the good will in the world, Static simply doesn't live up to Huntress's potential. Completing what we may evidently understand to be a thematic trilogy of albums, Static circles back to Spell Eater musically, but doesn't quite shake off the blandness of Starbound Beast.

Very odd production cripples Static, making it thoroughly lifeless and stiff. The sterility tastes of plastic and strongly recalls Ghost in an uncomfortable way. While Ghost, to some extent, purposefully cultivate a certain subdued obscurity, Static simply sounds flat and immobilized. I'd expect a band like Huntress to rip and tear and explode with raw energy, especially because half of this album's line-up comes from Holy Grail. Jill Janus already exhibits a great deal of flatness and strained rasping in her vocal delivery, which certainly works given the proper context, but when the rest of the album falls into the same desolate dynamic wasteland, the vocals only contribute to the problem. The strange thing is that Jill's voice sounds fuller and pushed further to the front than it did on Starbound Beast, which I'd normally consider a good thing, but the material here simply isn't strong enough to effectively utilize this change.

Lyrically, Static resembles the sort of thing I scribbled over my trigonometry notes back in high school. A lot of people have a lot of different opinions about the importance of lyrics and how much they affect the overall quality of a song or album. I myself largely have to take it on a case-by-case basis because of how singular an aspect the lyrics are. Generally I err on the side of not particularly caring, but every now and then I find something whose messages are so silly that it's distracting. You'll find this a lot on Static.

But lyrical and technical aspects aside, Static still sounds like it was born with a headcold. "Brian" stumbles over itself for the first ten seconds, with one guitar part rather uncomfortably out-of-sync with the rest of the band. For the most part, all the wheels and cogs fall into order once the song begins in earnest, but thus far Static has thrown out a mild opener with exceedingly silly lyrics, a single of moderate quality, and a song that occasionally loses track of itself. This is roughly the point in an album where the listener decides to abandon ship or make the commitment to finish out the release. I have to stick around, because I'm the reviewer, but if I were a regular punter, I'd have moved on to something else by the time I noticed that "Mania" is nearly nine minutes long.

"Mania"'s midsection sounds clunky and restricted. The sound Huntress tries to achieve there calls for limberness and a casual sort of heavy swing, but it instead falls out strait-jacketed and oddly-put-together. In fact, the only song I have particularly positive feelings for is "Harsh Times On Planet Stoked," which finally reproduces some first-album energy. The closer, "Fire In My Heart," also breathes a lot more easily; it sounds heavier and more alive than the preceding material, but of course it isn't quite enough to save Static from suffocation. Since I generally do enjoy Huntress I don't like to take my first opportunity for official examination to agree with their detractors, but Static desperately needs some soul.