Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Some will move Heaven and Earth to make sure that the voices that are ignored, those that question, those that probe beyond the polite enquiry, are heard. For to keep anything in silence, to bully someone because their point of view is different to your own, is a sign of the intolerable winning and no reasonable discussion or debate should be Hard To Kill with an executive order.

Hard To Kill, the sign that they cannot stop you, that your actions speak more volumes than their hot air bluster and so called command; the bodies of the dead, are never found but by those who know where to look and whose songs capture the imagination and provide a solace, a heart thumping parade in which the Rock is insatiable and reinforces the passion that sometimes wanes.

For Joe Retta, Stuart Smith, Lynn Sorensen, Steve Wilson and Mike Mangan, Heaven and Earth are always moved; their desire to see the celestial as an encompassing beast, as a handshake that is sincere, is what makes Hard To Kill so riveting an album to listen to. The powerful beast is always one in which the heart is drawn too; it might be dangerous, it could sweep you away in a tsunami of high stakes Rock and lyrical cool but it also the one in which the ears were meant to be used for, the sense of hearing a powerful conduit in which the truth must be heard.

In the tracks Bleed Me Dry, The Game Has Changed, Beautiful Monsters and Hellfire, Heaven and Earth don’t take any prisoners, they have no reason to employ such savage tactics that others find useful, instead they simply argue their case and present the facts as they see them and allow the captured heart to choose between what is right and what is just echoes under the sea.

Hard To Kill is the idea that keeps pounding and whispering in the ear, the one that makes the mind stoked to enjoy the beat and in Heaven And Earth, all things lead to the moment of realisation that Rock is the genre that keeps giving.

Ian D. Hall