HEART — Beautiful Broken (review)

HEART — Beautiful Broken album cover Album · 2016 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Unitron
Beautiful Broken is the sixteenth studio album from classic hard rock band Heart. The album mostly contains re-workings of some of Heart's early 80's material, with a few new songs mixed in. One of the new songs, the title track, features none other than Metallica's James Hetfield performing vocals along with Ann Wilson.

Out of the new songs, "I Jump" and the title cut are absolutely killer tracks. The former has some stellar guitar riffs reminiscent of Soundgarden, and even some crunching metal riffs in there. The heavy rock and symphonic sound is fused together perfectly, especially on this track. Hetfield and Ann Wilson's vocals are made for each-other on the title cut, both having real strong rock vocals, something that's missing in a lot of modern rock music. "Heaven", while technically not a new song as it appeared on the Alive in Seattle live album, makes it's studio debut here. The song has quite an epic presence to it, with it's mix of droning Indian sounds and powerful vocals.

Listening to the re-workings, you'd never guess they were originally from the 80's. The Pink Floyd-esque "Johnny Moon" is especially much better, sounding a lot more organic with no overproduced drum sound. "City's Burning" is given a grunge-y sound, blended with some really nice string instrumentation. Speaking of strings, the album has an overall symphonic sound to it with string arrangements featured in most of the songs.

While many classic rock acts have either broken up or are living off of past glories, Heart is still making powerful heavy rock that sure delivers the goods. I could do without the ballads, but the other songs definitely make up for that. If you're a fan of Heart and/or powerful hard rock with strong folk and symphonic elements, this is a must-listen.

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