:: Hinder - Extreme Behaviour

Hinder

Having already conquered the US with four hit singles, Universal Music Australia has finally picked up the option to locally release Oklahoma City based rock act Hinder’s double platinum selling sophomore album ‘Extreme Behaviour’ some two years after its initial release. With Hinder enjoying some extensive radio play with their current power ballad ‘Lips Of An Angel’, many have branded the five-piece act as a simple Nickelback clone. But in reality, Hinder have something different to offer, with an ‘80’s hard rock mixed with their brand of post grunge. The opening track/debut single ‘Get Stoned’ gets the album off to a slow and heavy start, with a chorus that’s easy on the ears, while the up tempo ‘How Long’, the subdued ‘By The Way’ and ‘Nothin’ Good About Goodbye’ are infectious slices of ‘80’s hard rock (with the huge choruses, the layered vocals and the somewhat clichéd lyrics), with only the production giving the song the facelift. The ballad-like ‘Bliss (I Don’t Wanna Know)’ and the semi-acoustic based ‘Better Than Me’ are fairly formulated and aimed squarely for the radio, and therefore come across as little more than ear candy for the most part, while the hard rocking ‘Room 21’ and ‘Homecoming Queen’ are straight out party anthem, and at complete odds with the rest of the album. Finishing up the album is the post grunge sounds of ‘Shoulda’, which sounds great, but again, against the grain of some of the more hard rocking efforts that featured earlier. There’s a distinct clash of styles evident on ‘Extreme Behaviour’, and it inevitably leads to an inconsistency throughout the album. Hinder’s sophomore effort isn’t a terrible one, but a little hit and miss. As soon as they figure out what decade they want to immerse themselves in, I’ll bet they’ll finally make an album worthy of praise, rather than a string of hit singles bundled together with some fillers to flesh out a product made purely for the masses.