“Don’t you want to be someone?”
Much has changed with Australian hard rock quintet Hands Like Houses since the release of their previous full-length album Anon. over six years ago. The obvious elephant in the room is the shock departure in 2023 of founding lead vocalist Trenton Woodley. Woodley’s passionate delivery and rich lyricism were arguably the band’s most immediate points of difference from their peers, particularly as they drifted further away from their post-hardcore roots into a more mainstream hard rock sound. While there was little denying the dramatic streamlining on Anon. compared to their complex early works like Ground Dweller and Unimagine, Woodley at least kept the band grounded in genuine emotional catharsis. His sudden departure – on poor terms, at that – felt to many fans like Hands Like Houses losing their whole identity, as opposed to just losing their vocalist.
Now Hands Like Houses have recruited a fellow Australian, Josh Raven of The Faim, to attempt to fill the void left by Woodley’s absence. The band has been slow dripping new music with Raven since late 2023, releasing a series of three EPs before finally announcing their new album ATMOSPHERICS, which contains all 12 tracks from those previous EPs, as well as four additional tracks.
Let’s get this out of the way early: Raven is a perfectly competent vocalist for the sound Hands Like Houses is now going for – shiny, radio-friendly hooks and big hard rock production. His time in The Faim gave him plenty of experience with mainstream rock songwriting, and there’s nary a moment on ATMOSPHERICS that deviates from the radio rock formula the band now embraces like gospel. The problem with Raven’s performance – and ATMOSPHERICS as a whole – lies less in what it is than what it isn’t. The album is nearly totally devoid of the songwriting twists and turns that characterized the best tracks on the band’s superb first two albums, which radiated with a palpable passion and intensity that is sorely lacking here.
It’s not just that the band has smoothed out the jagged edges of their sound in pursuit of greater mainstream success. Although the formulaic instrumentals are certainly part of the issue, it’s that they’ve ironed out any complexity at all. Woodley’s songwriting would tackle difficult emotions and life’s challenges with genuine nuance, offering a rich emotional journey that few of the band’s ‘Risecore’ contemporaries would even attempt.
On ATMOSPHERICS, virtually nothing that made Hands Like Houses unique remains. At the album’s best, such as the Normandie collaboration “Hurts Like Hell”, they recall a lesser version of that band’s hooky modern rock, feeling like a B-side that Normandie pawned off while saving the better material for their own albums. The song opens with a groove and vocal melody that can only be described as a Normandie song, and even as a fan of the former band, it is deeply strange to see the standout track on a Hands Like Houses album essentially belong to another band.
The album’s overlong runtime largely blurs together a perfectly competent yet totally inoffensive mass of hard rock tropes. These tracks have the outlines and structures of quality hooks, but consistently fall short of being memorable or displaying any real passion. There’s no risk, no true soul-baring, nothing that would risk mainstream rock playlist or radio programmers taking a second look.
Perhaps it’s harsh to judge Hands Like Houses this critically against their previous work when nothing here stands out as particularly poorly written or executed for the sound they’re going for, but anyone who has followed the band for years knows what they are capable of when firing on all cylinders. And that is exactly what makes ATMOSPHERICS, and this entire new “era” of Hands Like Houses, so thoroughly disappointing. It’s the sound of a talented band content in complacency, substituting cliche for passion and formula for artistic reinvention. The days of Hands Like Houses being at the forefront of the modern post-hardcore scene, or any scene, seem to be long gone. What a shame.
3/10
ATMOSPHERICS is out February 14th through Civilians. It can be pre-ordered here (global / Australia).