Hellyeah - Unden!able

Nope, not a new release from this year, but rather one from 2016 that I have just felt compelled to write about for awhile now, and after finding a splendid deal for a physical copy a couple of weeks ago and listening to it again recently, I just couldn’t help but carve out some time for this album. I think most of us have at least one or several of those albums that garnered very little critical praise for predictable reasons, yet we can’t deny our love for them. For me, Hellyeah’s Unden!able is one of those albums, and I think it’s worth going into some brief personal context surrounding my love for it (it’s just my musical experience with the album, not gonna be unpacking any big traumas or anything).

For some reason I have always distinctly remembered my first time listening to the album. It came out the same day (if my memory serves me correctly) as Volbeat’s Seal the Deal & Let’s Boogie, which I was more excited for given Volbeat’s run of good form leading them into the rock/metal spotlight a few years earlier, and given Hellyeah’s previous albums (Band of Brothers and Blood for Blood) finding them in a rut of stale form. So I decided to listen to the new Volbeat album first, which turned out to be such a disturbingly recycled and radio-rock-fishing disaster, with “Lola Montez” rip-off after “Lola Montez” rip-off through the whole thing. It was such a grand disappointment and undoubtedly the band’s worst album to date.

After finishing listening to that soulless heap of creative autopilot, I loaded up the new Hellyeah album, hoping to God to hear a band that sounded like they actually wanted to play what they were playing, and Unden!able did not disappoint at all. Devoid of any pretenses or façades of being more than just an honest vibrant metal album, Unden!able was exactly what I needed after Volbeat’s disastrous album, and it has stuck with me since then for the sheer, uninhibited, honest passion and power the band play with on every song.

Unden!able found Hellyeah coming into strong compositional form in the right place at the right time to make an album even better than their debut (which fans and detractors alike often cite as their best). It’s an exercise in confident, cathartic, well-orchestrated defiance against the subtle pressures that had been building on the band to either conform to something supposedly more sophisticated than their “low-brow” NWOAHM groove metal sound or face being continually critically panned out of their standing within the metal ecosystem, which is a fancy way of saying they were pissed off and made what they knew they were good at and wanted to to give their detractors a loud, direct “fuck you!”. I don’t want to characterize Hellyeah as some pitifully abused black sheep in the metal family; they just seem to be sneered at in a few notable circles for their simple approach to carrying Pantera’s torch, but they have plenty of appreciative fans to contrast their detractors. In fact when I saw them opening for Volbeat of all bands before Unden!able (and before Volbeat’s Seal the Deal), they were able to quickly win over the crowd that was much more stubborn to give their energy to Iced Earth before them, plenty of whom I know went home as new Hellyeah fans.

But back to, Unden!able. It’s by no means a more “sophisticated” album than anything else Hellyeah had done up until that point, and that was intentional. On top of consistently well-produced guitar and bass tones that have gotten the job done for them efficiently, the band’s strengths lied heavily in Vinny Paul’s knack for heavy groove rhythms behind the kit that could make time to dazzle while not dropping the song being carried on its shoulders, as well as Chad Grey’s visceral, uniquely tambred, and proficiently wielded screams and melodic snarls. And the band did well to play to those strengths by crafting banger after banger from start to finish for themselves to go wild on and showcase their ability in the best possible context. Songs like “X”, “Be Unden!able”, “Grave”, “STARTARIOT”, “Blood Plague”, and my personal favorite by just an inch, “Scratch a Lie”, are relentless, indulgent thrashers that channel the band at their most potent through their most complimentary formats to deliver exactly the kind of raw, fiery, palpable energy their style is supposed to. And indeed, the band is as direct lyrically as they are musically. Chad Grey isn’t trying to be some spiritual lyrical miracle here, and the lyrics aren’t really deep at all beyond the impassioned rage they’re delivered with, again, intentionally, because this album is about tapping into and getting the best out of that natural expression of raw energy.

The band even ambitiously tow the line between corny and emotive on “Love Falls”, approaching the modern alternative metal ballad with surprisingly successful vulnerability and well-placed strings to back it up. It’s the kind of song that should have fallen flat on its face, but the band were just in such unstoppable composing form, they pulled off making a song with the lyrics “every time I fall in love falls out of me” actually feel unironically powerful through their delivery.

As much as I’ve listened to and continued to enjoy this album since its release in 2016, it’s really just continued to cement that first impression it made on me of a band that just wanted to play some kickass metal and knew they had the capability to do it justice. The appeal of Unden!able is rather simple, but it is exactly the kind of album that suits Hellyeah and their creative trajectory perfectly. I’m not saying that bands should stick to what they’re perceived to be “supposed” to do. I’ve been pleasantly surprised many times by artists stepping into supposedly forbidden territory, and, inversely, been bored to death by artists coasting on what has shown to work just enough to keep the lights on. What I’m saying is, Hellyeah didn’t go into this album trying to be anything other than who they are (or were, rest in peace Vinny Paul), and that honesty set the band on the best creative path to success for them and it made that honest passion as tangible as possible through the performances they were able to bring to songs they so clearly felt and believed in 100%. It’s easy to scoff at the kind of metal like this that just seeks groove and heaviness and widely applicable messages of defiance as opposed to what would be seen as grander artistic aspirations, but I think it’s important to remember how integral this relatable defiance is to so much of metal. And if a masterful channeling of that unfiltered essence isn’t something appealing, then perhaps that reveals a potential understanding of one’s own distaste for that side of metal altogether that also perhaps warrants a bit of explanation upon hasty dismissal of works like those as being for the peasant class.

Hellyeah/10