What comes into your mind when you hear the word bull? There are probably many things that spring into your mind, but I'm sure the one you think of the most is the animal with that name. Just looking at one when it's angry is enough to scare the pants off anyone, as let's face it, those horns on it's head can kill you if you're not careful, so going up against one of them is a death sentence, be it through rodeo, matadors, running through Spanish streets while being chased and many other things that require facing one of these things. In short, bulls are animals to be feared, so what if you name your band and shape your logo around this animal? The answer is the feature of this review, which is a Norwegian Hard Rock band who just so happen to be called BULL.

Originating from the Oslo region of Norway, BULL started out as a quintet of underground rockers, releasing their first single in 2011 and, despite the video for the song being censored on YouTube for the content, it still went on to win the 2011 Best Music Video award in the USA at the Miami Short Film Festival, which is not a bad achievement for a new band.

Fast forward a year later to 2012 and their first full length "Autocrat" was released and the musical content is centered around their frustrations for how messed up the world was becoming, which is understandable, as there is a lot of horrible stuff happening in the world today. Fast-forward to 2015 and album two, "Redshift", is released and available for us to hear and I will be reviewing it to give my thoughts on it.

Clocking it around 33 minutes across 9 tracks, the new BULL album is full of wild Hard Rock songs that have plenty of energy to get those heads banging, and the dirty underground style sound that is also present in the mix, adds a sense of uniqueness to the melodies, as it enables you to enjoy the melodies even more and really get your body moving as you blast it at parties with your friends.

The production sound is actually mixed quite well for an album of this type given the heaviness of the melodies present on the songs combined with the dirty underground style sound. The melodies from both the electric and bass guitars are the main part of the dirty sound present in the music, and the way they have been tuned to sound as dirty and heavy as possible, while still allowing you to hear and appreciate the music.

If there's only one thing that worries me is the vocal performance. Although I do give the bands singer points for the performance and the delivery, there are moments when it can sound a bit too heavy meaning that you never really get to enjoy it as much as you want to. Also, the vocals can sometimes become buried underneath the dirty sounding guitar driven melodies meaning it can be very hard to make out the lyrics sometimes.

Bottom line, the second album from BULL is not bad as I do appreciate it for what it is as the dirty and heavy melodies do give it points as they are quite enjoyable but the occasional off putting vocal performance lose it a couple of points. This shouldn't put you off from giving the music a listen as despite any issues I addressed with the vocals, I still recommend checking this one out if you like dirty sounding heavy Hard Rock music with plenty of energy and melodies you can headbang and rock out to.<