Vicious (Halestorm album)

The American rock band Halestorm released their third studio album, Into the Wild Life, on April 10, 2015.^[9] This was followed up with 2017's Reanimate 3.0: The Covers EP, produced by Nick Raskulinecz.^[10] The band ended up discarding 15 songs,^[11] as frontwoman Lzzy Hale became displeased with the material out of fear that she was "paying way too much attention to making everybody happy."^[12] The band reunited with Raskulinecz in Nashville, Tennessee's Rock Falcon studio for what began as a series of live jam sessions.^[13][12] By February 2018, Hale announced that the new album was "almost done," and that Halestorm had "about two or three weeks left of recording just to put the cherries on top."^[14]

Lzzy Hale commented to Blabbermouth.net:

"In my opinion, this is gonna be the first record… And we always say this, we hope we get better as musicians as we go on, with each record. But this is gonna be the first record where you can really hear all four corners of Halestorm and what makes us a band. And if any of you have ever seen us live, I think this is the closest to what you see when you see us live. In a lot of these records that we put out, 'Okay, we have a catchy song, and I sing on it,' and then that's about it. So there's so many different layers to this record that I'm so proud to show everybody."^[15]

When discussing the album artwork with Sound Vapors, Joe Hottinger said:

“We wanted to create some sort of imagery that maybe spoke to somebody. Is it a woman, like struggling through the gauntlet of the industry or is it a woman enjoying all these hands on her? Or is it commentary on current events? There’s no answer. It’s an image to create questions.”^[16]

Halestorm announced the details of their new album, including the name, track list, and release date, on May 30, 2018. The announcement was accompanied by the album's first single, "Uncomfortable",^[5] and a music video directed by Evan Brace, who previously directed videos for Phantogram and Taking Back Sunday.^[17] On June 22, the band released "Black Vultures."^[18] The last pre-album single, "Do Not Disturb," was released on July 20, a week before Vicious. The song was accompanied by a video directed by Robert Schober, also known as Roboshobo, who previously worked with Metallica, Alice in Chains, Mastodon, Disturbed, and Green Day.^[19]

To promote Vicious, Halestorm went on tour with support from In This Moment and New Year's Day, a decision that Lzzy Hale said was made because "It's important to realize that music is gender-less."^[20] Hottinger says, "We were told by the third show [on the tour] that there were more females buying tickets than males, which in hard rock, we have never seen before."^[12]

All tracks are produced by Nick Raskulinecz.

Notes

• ^{^[a]} Though listed as being recorded in Philadelphia, the track was actually recorded in Camden, New Jersey.^[39]

Almost two years after the release of the album, the band debuted the Vicious (Stripped) EP for Record Store day 2020.^[57] The album features acoustic versions of four songs from the album as well as an acoustic version of "Chemicals", which was released as a non album promo single the previous year.