This lead single from the six-piece, Brighton-based band's debut album, The Torino Scale, is nothing original: It is laden with everything that has gone before, but does it with such tact and taste that the sound is impossibly alluring - for some.
Since their formation in 2002, HWG has toured with Alter Bridge and The Bled and released their initial full-length opus in 2004. Shortround is a fluent, rhythmic tune with heavy riffery and a well kempt melody, but it fails to offer anything intensely creative. Instead, it divulges too much from the past in a three-minute time space where its appeal is distinctly commercial.
By comparison, it's companion piece Hoods Up! is much more effective; heavy and fast without being too forceful, and it carries itself with pace and attitude, whereas Battles Not Worth Waging walks the trenches with a brutish riff. Think Lostprophets and you'll be in the same dimension. As commercial metal trying to pose as something far grittier, it doesn't quite make the full run.
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