It’s February 2003 and I’m 14. I think Red Hot Chili Peppers and Coldplay are the Alpha and Omega of alternative rock music, with a few stops at Greenday, Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age in between. It’s also the month that Hell Is For Heroes release their debut full length, The Neon Handshake.
While it would be unfair to say I’d never heard anything like it, (having already been well versed in the teachings of a very British take on nu-metal, including the earliest days of Lostprophets and Hundred Reasons) The Neon Handshake was one of the very first albums I remember repeatedly listening to in its entirety.
Looking back there’s not that much remarkable about it. Of course, its catchy guitar riffs and sing-a-long chorus’ were absolutely guaranteed to stoke the angsty fires in almost all rock infused early teens, but the same could be said of many similar albums of the time and genre. What, however, did make it stand out was the fervency of their delivery. Again, it’s not like other bands of the time didn’t strive for this, it’s just that I didn’t particularly care for what they were singing about. While bands such as Greenday were preparing to lecture us about the folly and greed of war, Hell Is For Heroes were kicking and screaming about things that as a 14 year old, I could well and truly relate to.
Take I Can Climb Mountains for example, a chest-beating call to arms if ever I’ve heard one. I challenge you to find a song that better represents the veneer of invincibility that any cocky teenager wants to present to the outside world, with the possible exception of Killing In The Name Of. Yet The Neon Handshake was also a representation of the teenage maelstrom of emotions, with Slow Song representing the fragility that all of us faced at one stage or another.
Hell Is For Heroes went on to release two further albums, Transmit Disrupt and their final, self-titled album. While I gave Transmit Disrupt a listen, I’d grown up and moved on, just as the band had. I don’t think I even gave their self-titled release a solitary spin. Every now and then, though, I still give The Neon Handshake a listen and it still conjures up the same feelings it did all those years ago.