Album Review: Shaman's Harvest - Smokin' Hearts & Broken Guns

The intersection between metal, country and rock has long been a crowded one, with bands from the southern and Midwestern United States attempting to conjure up the most perfect amalgam of all three.  Shaman’s Harvest out of Missouri is another name on the list, trying again to crawl above the heap and tap into their built-in name recognition through their frequent collaborations with both the WWE and feature cinema.  As with all rock bands, Shaman’s Harvest is attempting to take over the world, this time through their fifth studio record, “Smokin’ Hearts and Broken Guns.” 

 

This record finds Shaman’s Harvest plying their trade with renewed fervor, as vocalist Nathan Hunt bravely continued the production while undergoing aggressive treatment for lymph cancer in his throat.  Miraculously, no hint of vocal fatigue is evident on the album, as Hunt guts out his lines with aplomb, laying down vocals that would be equally at home on the farm, at the bar or in the fraternity house.

 

There’s a template at play here, one that Shaman’s Harvest has mastery of and employs in all the logical permutations.  They blend the necessary elements of country and rock into their hearty stew for album opener “Dangerous,” a swaggering tune that sounds like a cowboy swinging the loosely hinged door of a saloon, looking for trouble.

 

This continues with the expected bravado for “Country as F*ck,” which is all the things you’d expect a song called “Country as F*ck” to sound like.  The rhymes are easy and the lyrics perhaps just a touch sophomoric, but that’s a gleeful revelation in a song meant to be easy and free while possessed of a punchy riff.

 

There are several promising moments in other parts of “Smokin’ Hearts and Broken Guns,” as the album can alternately sound like the low thrum of a classic Soundgarden record, and spends whole stretches colored like the soundtrack to a lonely, long drive home late at night.  These are the mental images that Shaman’s Harvest paints in their best moments, and they are surprisingly genuine.

 

Still, to reiterate what we said before, there is a template at play here, and the band doesn’t hesitate to stick to that template.  With the exception of a couple outside-the-lines moments, Shaman’s Harvest is content to run down the checklist of modern rock, particularly modern blues rock.  There’s the requisite piece of bluster and confidence, the lamentations of women both naughty and nice, the man trying to play hero, the bar room fodder, the true ballad, the power ballad, and the usual smattering of safe, major chords.  Perhaps ‘safe’ is the operative word to describe the great majority of “Smokin’ Hearts and Broken Guns.”

 

It’s easy to like this album, but that’s at least partially because it’s always been easy to like this album under a thousand different names.  This new effort is like those years in the Madden NFL video games where yeah, they updated the rosters and all, but there aren’t many new features.  “Smokin’ Hearts and Broken Guns” is a solid enough record, but it is what it is.  If the band concentrates on their more Soundgarden-y, soundtrack-y tendencies, while still folding in some country, they could truly make waves.

D.M

Music Editor

D.M is the Music Editor for Bloodygoodhorror.com. He tries to avoid bands with bodily functions in the name and generally has a keen grasp of what he thinks sounds good and what doesn't. He also really enjoys reading, at least in part, and perhaps not surprisingly, because it's quiet. He's on a mission to convince his wife they need a badger as a household pet. It's not going well.