Review: Halestorm Unleashed New Single Darkness Always Wins!
- Tara Lakatos
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Today is Christmas Day for all Halestorm Freaks and Haleraisers. We've been teased by lead singer Lzzy Hale over the last month with new promo photos, snippets of lyrics on her new Instagram page (@lzzyhale) and a barrage of hashtags, some of which we could figure out and others left us hanging. Last week they announced that Halestorm's new single "Darkness Always Wins" would be released on 4/22. Most of us diehard fans waited up until midnight last night to be the first to hear what the band has been cooking up for the last two years. They started writing this album in April 2023 with Grammy Award winning producer Dave Cobb in Savannah, GA. This is the band's first project with Cobb and everyone is really excited about it.
Halestorm released a minute clip on their community chat earlier on Monday to further tease their fans into a feverish frenzy. Group chats exploded with anticipation on what the rest of the song would sound like. No one was expecting what seemed like a piano ballad.
Lzzy went live on Instagram last night just before midnight to alert fans that her and the bands guitarist Joe Hottinger would come back on at midnight to discuss the new single. They had only walked off stage in Charleston, S.C. a little over an hour prior, finishing out their acoustic duo Living Room Sessions Tour.
I jumped in and out of the chat to listen to the song. There is so much to unpack. The lyrics, the haunting music, the chest wide open vocals and the intricate layers of all of those things. You are initially fooled by the tapping of the high-hat by drummer Arejay Hale, the piano and Lzzy's most airy, open vocals that had ever been recorded.
At a minute and half the full band comes in with Arejay just pounding out a true heartbeat, Josh Smith's bass notes pop and Joe's guitar rings out with anticipation. There is so much build to this piece of music. The song was described as "cinematic" in their press release, and I couldn't agree more. If a song was a picture this would be it. You are led on a quiet journey that gradually builds intensity, then you are running away through the darkness, faster and faster, not letting it catch you. As Joe's signature solo kicks in you feel the darkness, entrapment and ultimate escape from the talons of the underworld.
The band has grown so much since I started following them, they've gone from small clubs in Allentown, PA and Philly to stadiums. Their music has gone from sexual cliche and inuendo to the most musically intense song I have heard in at least a decade. Rock and Roll has become so cookie cutter, one formula to songs, the same writers, the same producers causing fatigue for both fans and artists trying to carve a path in a flooded genre.
Halestorm has been trying to break free of the stereotypes for quite some time but always ran into a brick wall with the powers that be. "Darkness Always Wins" is an emergence of their persistence to be free of the chains of the corporation. To me this song feels like home. It's where Halestorm was always meant to be.
Stream “Darkness Always Wins” here.
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