On Everest, Halestorm make room for doubt inside the big choruses. A review of Lzzy Hale’s performances, the album’s restless range, and its refusal of easy answers.
IN THIS ARTICLE
An album called Everest could easily spend its entire running time congratulating itself for reaching the summit. Halestorm are more interesting when they question why they started climbing. Across this record, ambition sits beside exhaustion, defiance beside the need to be understood. The band still know how to build a chorus big enough for a field full of people. They are increasingly willing to put an uncomfortable thought inside it.
The doubt inside the anthem
“Darkness Always Wins” is the clearest statement of that tension. Its bleak title sits against the communal language of people continuing to fight. That contradiction gives the song somewhere to go emotionally: the act of joining in matters even when the words offer no guarantee of success. An audience can sing together without pretending that everything has been put right.
THE RECORD
Artist: Halestorm
Album: Everest
Released: August 8, 2025
Format: Studio album · 12 tracks
Label: Atlantic Records
Producer: Dave Cobb
Listen on Apple Music · Listen on Spotify
A retrospective review of the original album.
In her track-by-track conversation with Apple Music, Lzzy Hale describes becoming frustrated with the obligation to find reassurance at the end of a dark song. That is an unusually useful admission from a songwriter whose work often gets treated as a supply of motivational anthems. Sometimes an honest song needs to leave the difficult part unresolved. Here, the uncertainty makes the invitation to keep going more credible.
There is a distinction between writing about hardship and allowing hardship to complicate a song’s conclusion. Everest benefits from the latter. The title track’s mountain becomes a way of questioning the cost of a chosen life: what happens when the thing you love also demands more than you expected to give? The question is more durable than a victory speech.
A band with room to move
Recorded with Dave Cobb in Savannah, Georgia, the album places familiar Halestorm force beside a wider range of moods. Hale and guitarist Joe Hottinger have spoken about the sessions as a process of trusting the four members’ instincts again. That matters for a group so easily reduced to its singer. Joe Hottinger, bassist Josh Smith, and drummer Arejay Hale are essential to the movement around her voice; the songs need a band, not simply a platform for a spectacular vocal.
“Like a Woman Can” offers one of the record’s most useful changes of pace. Its bluesier movement gives the performance room to carry a request for understanding. Hale’s explanation of the song centres on the effort women make to understand men and the desire to have that effort returned. The appeal is recognisable without being tidy. Affection does not automatically produce understanding; someone still has to pay attention.
“Shiver” turns the scrutiny inward. Hale has described writing from the perspective of people trying to love her through her difficult moods. That is a more exposing subject than declaring independence from someone else’s failures. A powerful voice asking to be understood can reveal more than the same voice announcing that it needs nothing.
Where the excess helps—and where it crowds
Halestorm have hardly become restrained. “WATCH OUT!” was conceived with the spirit of a sporting-arena chant, while “K-I-L-L-I-N-G” supplies a short burst of manic energy. Those choices keep the album from becoming solemn about its own seriousness. There should be room on a rock record for the sheer pleasure of making a racket.
The trade-off is cohesion. The movement between blues, hard-rock confrontation, balladry, and rowdier material gives Everest variety, but it can also make the record feel like several competing versions of Halestorm taking turns. Listeners who prefer an album to sustain one atmosphere may find the shifts distracting. The big gestures occasionally demand attention that a quieter emotional detail has just earned.
That is why the vulnerable songs matter so much. They give scale a purpose. Without them, twelve tracks of force could become a demonstration of endurance; with them, the strength has something human to work against. The more rewarding question is often what Hale chooses to expose, rather than how much power she can put behind a note.
The question at the end
“How Will You Remember Me?” closes the album by moving the argument beyond the immediate struggle. A question about legacy carries a different anxiety from a declaration of survival. Continuing is one thing; understanding what your life has meant to other people is another, and no amount of achievement gives you complete control over that answer.
Everest is at its strongest when it allows those questions to remain questions. Its restless changes of mood will not suit every listener, and its appetite for large choruses sometimes crowds the finer details. But there is substance in the uncertainty. Halestorm have made a record that can raise a room’s energy while admitting that confidence, even loudly expressed, does not settle everything.
Start with: “Darkness Always Wins,” “Like a Woman Can,” and “Shiver.” Then hear “How Will You Remember Me?” in its place at the end of the album.
Listen: “Darkness Always Wins”
Watch the official Halestorm video on YouTube.
Sources and further reading
- Apple Music: album details and Lzzy Hale’s track-by-track commentary.
- GRAMMY.com: Lzzy Hale on recording Everest with Dave Cobb.
- Metal Hammer: Joe Hottinger’s track-by-track guide.
- Halestorm: official “Darkness Always Wins” video and lyrics.
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