The third full length release from Scott "Wino" Weinrich's current band is a concept album but don't hold that against it. It is a fine collection of retro-sounding metal. Granted the songs can get a little samey—any of them could be switched around and I would be hard pressed to notice—but there is not a bad song in sight. Unfortunately, listening to them all in one go is an unrewarding experience as there is not enough variety to make this work as an album.
Southern Lord
The concept behind the album is the life of a mixed-race American during the frontier days. However, the conceptual side of the album falls quickly by the wayside because at the end of the day the story is not that gripping. The music is more like something that would be associated with Birmingham 1970 than with early America. Most of the songs are pretty good; energetic and no-nonsense rock being the order of the day. Although apart from the opener, "Purple Neon Dream," they all blend into one another far too easily. That being said, the songs are pretty solid and hit hard and fast.
Songs like "Dark Horizons" and "The Lesson" just about stick out above the rest. There is not much to set them apart but the performance on these songs pack a little more oomph. The album closes with "Slow Rain," which finishes off things neatly with a few easy on the ear solos. The main drawback here is that there is not enough variation on The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote, although this is expected from Wino as not much has changed in his output since Saint Vitus were knocking about. He could have easily written many of these songs 20 years ago.
While it is nice to hear some old school metal, with The Hidden Hand there is always a feeling of "been there, done that." There is not a lot here to separate what Wino has done with any of his previous bands (and even in the beginning the music was far from forward-thinking). That is not to say that the music is bad, it is very, very good but I have already got a shelf full of albums that sound pretty much the same.
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