World So Wonderful Mason Hill

• 1 Burn It Down 04:42
• 2 Twisted 04:09
• 3 Hurricane 04:32
• 4 Tainted Wings 04:15
• 5 Stay For A Little While 03:38
• 6 Resonate 03:34
• 7 Without You 04:19
• 8 Silence 03:59
• 9 Oxygen 03:47
• 10 Remember 03:55
• 11 Drag The Chains 05:52
• Total Runtime 46:42

Info zu World So Wonderful

Long awaited second album from Scottish rock act Mason Hill, whose debut album ‘Against the Wall’ hit the UK Top 20 in 2021, also hitting No.1 on the UK Rock Chart. In doing so they became the first rock act debut album to make the UK Top 20 since Greta Van Fleet in 2018, and the first British rock act debut album Top 20 and #1 UK rock chart since Royal Blood 2014.

“A couple of years ago this album seemed like it would be an impossible task. To be sitting here, finally launching the pre order feels like we just climbed Everest and made it to the top! This album is the next step in the evolution of Mason Hill, it’s more fierce, more refined, and hungrier than ever. This one is for everyone that kept believing in Mason Hill. I can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on it.” (Matthew Ward)

"Nearly 10 years ago, I headed over to Rockwich in Cheshire to take photos and review the bands performing that weekend. It’s only a small indoor local festival, but it was the place where I would discover Mason Hill, an up-and-coming Hard Rock band from Scotland. They blew me away and I became an instant fan, following them avidly on social media and taking as many opportunities to see them as possible. Things were going great for them… Then COVID hit. Their first album “Against The Wall” was released during the pandemic, but they couldn’t tour it, and a couple of years later their frontman received the devastating news that he could no longer carry on singing due to a health condition. For a long time, that looked like it would be the end of the band, which made me sadder than it probably should have, but I was mainly devastated for them and their creativity as a group. They were such a close-knit group, and worked so hard, so it felt like the kind of news that would destroy their spirit and their desire to carry on. It seemed like yet another case of “Why does that bad shit always happen to the best people?”…

Then that all changed when they finally found new vocalist Tom Ward. And now they’re (finally) back with their sophomore album, “World So Wonderful”, and boy am I happy to have it land in my review queue.

The sound is distinctively Mason Hill, but it’s got heavier and darker since the first album. This is an album put out by a band who have been forced to mature through the adversity they’ve faced. But often out of the greatest pain comes the greatest achievement. That is very much the case here, and Tom’s vocals fit superbly well with this new heavier twist.

Still present though are the awesome Hard Rock riffs, which are bass-driven and make you want to move, the arena choruses that will have everyone singing along, and the lilting guitar solos that sit up on top of the riffing (check out ‘Tainted Wings’ for an example of all three).

They’ve got the ballad game wrapped up too, in ‘Stay For A Little While’. A track that slows down the pace, but doesn’t lapse into a cheesy, typical ballad. Instead, it’s more of a melancholic, tender lilting that breaks the album up a little before heading into ‘Resonate’, which is bordering on Modern Melodic Metalcore! This is a great new direction, which I really, really love.

And this is how the latter part of the album continues. Really heavy, walking on the cliff edge of Metal and Metalcore, but never dropping completely in. It’s clever, it’s fresh, it’s exciting, and I am so, so, SO happy to see these guys back making music like this. Now, I need to get to see them live again at the earliest opportunity!" (Beth Morait, ever-metal.com)

Tom Ward, vocals
James Bird, guitar
Marc Montgomery, guitar
Matt Ward, bass
Craig McFetridge, drums

Mason Hill
Mason Hill’s journey has hardly followed the convenient route. After forming in Glasgow, the band endured false starts, problematic record deals and a six-year gap between their self-titled 2015 EP and debut album ‘Against The Wall’ in March 2021.

It made an immediate impact, reaching number 19 in the ÜK Albums Chart and topping the ÜK Rock and Metal Chart. Yet its release coincided with the Covid pandemic, meaning that the touring momentum such a record deserved was initially impossible to realise.

The band did eventually get back on the road, becoming one of the first acts to tour when live music cautiously resumed. They even toured one of our smallest venues in the Über Kingdom in Pontypool’s The Dragonffli. But after 2022’s ‘Live In Glasgow’, another major blow arrived. Original vocalist and co-founder Scott Taylor left the band in 2023 for health reasons, forcing Mason Hill to cancel commitments and enter a period of uncertainty.

For any band, losing its frontman can feel terminal. For Mason Hill, it came after years of trying to establish themselves, survive setbacks and make up for lost time. Guitarist James Bird has admitted that, before Ward joined, the band came close to calling it a day. “There have been times over the years when we weren’t even sure we’d be able to keep on being a band”, he said.

That context matters. ‘World So Wonderful’ is not simply the follow-up to ‘Against The Wall’. It is the album that might never have existed.

Tom Ward’s arrival could easily have resulted in a band attempting to recreate the past. Instead, Mason Hill have taken the opportunity to reset. Ward discovered the advert seeking a vocalist on Gumtree in 2024, initially sending ideas back and forth with the band before the relationship developed into something more substantial.

That unusual beginning seems appropriate for a record born from unlikely circumstances. Ward is not trying to impersonate Taylor, and the band are not presenting him as a replacement in the narrowest sense. His voice brings its own character, moving between vulnerability and full-throated power, while the familiar Mason Hill ingredients remain firmly in place: muscular riffs, widescreen choruses and songs designed to connect in a live room. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the look on Ward’s face at Steelhouse Festival this year.

The result is a record that sounds recognisably like Mason Hill without being trapped by their debut. Bird’s stated intention was clear: the new music had to remain Mason Hill, but it could not simply be a copy of the first album. That distinction is central to ‘World So Wonderful’. The band have retained their DNA while allowing the line-up, the circumstances and the passage of time to alter its expression.

The album’s lead single, ‘Hurricane’, offers an effective indication of the record’s renewed energy. It is a forceful, searing rock track, driven by a sense of forward motion that feels especially fitting given everything the band have overcome.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet