H.O.T. (HANDS OF TIME) – Hands Of Time

The taste for Hard Rock/Rock N’ Roll with sips of Heavy Metal, came down to the loving embrace of H.O.T. or Hands Of Time. After a year and half of existence, H.O.T. released its self-titled debut album. Through its crunchy musical roads, it is a nice sweep through some Queen, Girl, Def Leppard and Faster Pussycat. Glam Metal meets old 80s oriented Rock N’ Roll.

From the kickstart of the ignition or the start up of the chopper, as on the album’s beginning, it was bound to be good. Better said, H.O.T. showed the young band’s fine touches on securing the 80’s sound of their used genres. With a production that gave them a crunchy sound, on all counts, it is the razor’s edge meets fine shards of depth. The band’s main advantage is the simplicity of their material. While trying to issue a better mix to Rock and Metal, H.O.T. demonstrated their worth with cool sweet compositions along with several illustrations that will show a bit of a different approach.

H.O.T.’s ability to write classic material of the early 80s has served them well. Their nice melodies of true Rock riffs (electric and acoustic) inspired by bits of a Metal flame created a sort of diversity that can be noticeable on their tunes. Better than that, their use of a semi-multiple channel style vocals gave them a strong edge. It is like hearing the sweet, sexy sound of a childish Glam singer with the mix of a largely brute helper. However, a number of their attempts go a bit sour as some were musically good, yet overall, were not so impressive and even sound a bit like reworked classics. Although those as “They Don’t Want You To Know”, “Miss Denial” and “Suicide Rock N’ Roll”, have their shares of styles, the music has it’s turn offs.

On the other end, there are the treats, which show a bright future for this Rock N’ Metal band from Italy. H.O.T. wrote some amazing acoustic ballads/short verses, produced with love as “Medicine Girl”, “Very Far Away” (a funky tuned bugger) and “Cigarette Burns – No Time To Say Goodbye”. Alongside there are the fresh killing Hard Rockers as “Stand By The Bomb” and “I Want More”, a rather intense vision of these guys, great British/American Hard Rock.

As for their best tune to date, H.O.T. has “The Priest”. It starts with a great choir sing along, follows through a “Killer Of Giants” style riff and ends as ass kicking cult Rocker. If H.O.T. will keep on writing tunes as this one they will climb up the ladder to become great. Until then they should keep on working on their originals harder, they have something good going.