Static

Despite many tries, I just couldn’t find much of value in Huntress’s sophomore effort Starbound Beast. I find Jill Janus to be a hugely charismatic performer and person, but the music just wouldn’t stick. Something of a discography completionist as well as a slut for a bargain, after I spotted Static on sale for only a few quid, I decided to give Huntress another shot.

Things start off relatively well – ‘Sorrow’ is a decent enough metal track, nothing to write home about but elongates the hope that Static will at least be a step-up for the band. ‘Flesh’ then ends up treading the same path, indistinguishable from most other songs on the record; ‘Four Blood Moons’, ‘Static’, bonus track ‘Black Tongue’ – the majority of the tracks meld quickly into a repetitive slog. Across the record, the guitar work feels lazy and unimaginative. The vocal lines are basic. One of the two can be forgiven on occasion but the union of both across an entire album leaves little left to enjoy. Almost without exception, each song ascends its chorus towards a hook that is rarely delivered upon.

Huntress have never been a particularly imaginative band when it comes to their lyrical output either and Static still delves in numerous directions without much success. ‘Four Blood Moons’ delves into the occult, ‘I Want to Wanna Wake Up’ shoots for angsty relatability whilst ‘Harsh Times on Planet Stoked’ attempts dystopian world-building. ‘Mania’ is the most affecting detail of Janus’ mental state, a tragic document of the struggles that later took her life - If you ever spent a night in my head, by the morning you'd be dead…I'm getting harder to defend.

The biggest frustration with Static is that there seems to be some untapped opportunities hidden amongst the monotony. ‘Noble Savage’ buries its haunting backing vocals instead of allowing them to bewitch, ‘Mania’ carries a decent song within its grossly bloated run-time and I actually enjoyed ‘Brian’, even if it does nothing wildly different to the rest of the album (it benefits from appearing early in the tracklist before the usual Huntress tropes are exploited over and again).

Despite the disappointment, Static is indeed a step-up from Starbound Beast as far as I’m concerned – though read as more of a critique on the latter than anything else. At least ‘Brian’ is enjoyable and ‘Noble Savage’ could have been something. Moments of note on the album feel like happy accidents though rather than a spark of genius and it really is a shame that the band never got some decent challenge from a producer that could have made their trilogy of records less of a slog to get through.