Review: Hungry – Hungry for Your Love EP

Animated Insanity Records (October 7th, 2022)

Reviewer: Jason Hopper

‘Hungry For Your Love‘ is a six song EP from the band Hungry and is the ninth release from No Dust Records and Animated Insanity Records collaborative ‘Untouched Series‘. The series consists of bands that have better than demo quality recordings that have never seen the light of day. The band recorded some songs in the late 1990s but then broke up at the turn of the century, leaving these songs long dormant.

So what can you expect from them? If you’re into early 80s sounding metal with a Lee Aaron/Doro flair to it, then this will be right up your alley. There’s some solid grooves on this album and the band sounds tight. While I did enjoy most of the songs, I must say the band borrows heavily from other artists for aspects of their songs before going in a different direction to create something new. I did find this derivativeness worked against the songs.

Opening track ‘Believe In Me’ opens with a very familiar acoustic chord progression played by dozens of bands over the years before kicking into the main melody line, which is a near identical copy of Dokken’s ‘Dream Warriors’ with just a couple of notes missing. It starts to change into its own song by the time the bridge and chorus arrive and is quite catchy, if familiar.

Next is the title track and the first and second verse steals from Whitesnake’s ‘Still of the Night’.  The muting of the chords and crash cymbal so the singer can say the lines in dead silence before the full band kicks in is straight up robbery. Next track ‘Lonely Soul’ also borrows the musical rhythm from the verses of ‘Slide It In’. Once again, the songs eventually go in their own direction yet still retain that Whitesnake feel. It’s two kick ass tracks for sure but as stated earlier, the “tribute” to what came before is rather distracting.

Next there is ‘Waiting For Another Century’, which was no doubt inspired by the upcoming millennium at the time it was written. The band once again borrows from another band, this time from Quiet Riot’s song ‘Condition Critical’ for the drum rhythm.  Out of all the tracks, this one resembles its inspiration way too much to the point it’s essentially a remake of the QR song.

The only songs that don’t remind me of any other bands’ songs are the straight out of left field speed metal track ‘Scream’ and the acoustic-based  power ballad ‘Cry Me a River’.  If I had to guess, I would say the band was in the midst of finding their sound as a band with these recordings and broke up before that process was finalized.

This is a strong collection of tracks if you can look past all the influences that have been cut and pasted amongst the original pieces of music they created. This certainly sounds like a band that could have been something special had they given the project a little more time. If you do not mind all the familiar sounding elements and are into all the bands I listed, you will find something to enjoy with this release.