The year 2024 has been exciting for the Grammy-award-winning hard Rock band Halestorm. It has been a year full of progress, unexpected firsts, milestones, and dreams becoming reality.
In March, Halestorm announced that they were actively working on their follow-up to 2022’s Back from the Dead. The band enlisted the talents of David Cobb (who has worked with everyone from Rival Sons to Greta Van Fleet) as its producer, and there are hopes it will arrive sometime in 2025. With this in mind, the band also collaborated with I Prevail to record the new song “Can U See Me in the Dark?” ahead of their co-headlining summer tour.
At a very busy time, unexpectedly, Lzzy Hale was asked to front Skid Row for the list of their 2024 tour dates. Quite exciting, it was not only a huge help to Skid Row but a fantastic fulfillment by Hale, who grew up loving the band, and Halestorm even covered “Slave To The Grind” for their 2011 EP Reanimate: The Covers EP. If that were not enough, on April 23, 2024, a Halestorm hardcover graphic novel emerged.
A project that finds Halestorm joining forces with the exceptional publishers at Z2 Comics, the new book initially came out back in 2022 as a paperback, and it is called HALESTORM: Hyde Manor. At the time of its initial release, conceding with the 10th-anniversary celebration of the band’s 2012 EP Hello, It’s Mz Hyde and their top-selling sophomore album The Strange Case Of…, the story finds the entire band (Lzzy, Arejay Hale, Joe Hottinger, and Josh Smith) immortalized as comic book characters.
The story is inspired by the lyrics of songs like “Mz. Hyde,” the writing is handled by Twins Brittany and Brianna Winner (the Twin Soul series), while the art is done by Sara Scalia and color, DJ Alonso.
Bringing together a dark tale of the band arriving at an overwhelmingly beautiful gothic estate after a lengthy tour, Lzzy soon begins to realize something is not right within the walls. Giving off an energy that makes her uneasy, escaping from her reflection in mirrors, is the darkest part of her that seemingly wants to take control. From here, the remainder of the band is soon taken in by the same assumed evil, all looking for a way to escape alive.
It is a fascinating story; on the surface, it feels like a horror fable, but beneath, you see, it is about the very real battle we all have within. It is about the constant push and pull inside all of us where we want to deny particular parts of our personality and, when looking in the mirror, wonder who we really are. Inevitably, what HALESTORM: Hyde Manor teaches is that rather than look at the darker part of ourselves as forbidden, we should at least accept them but know the balance makes who we are, hoping that our good will trump the bad.
A smooth read with exceptional illustration, Halestorm fans will love the depiction of each member of the band and the weaving of the theme of their music. Ending the story with a quote from the outstanding 2015 Halestorm song, “I Am the Fire,” is a great way to see the band from a different lens. Now pressed as a pristine hardcover with the alternative cover art, it is highly recommended you pick up this edition of HALESTORM: Hyde Manor because Cryptic Rock gives it 5 out of 5 stars.
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