Release Date: 12th January 2024
New Jersey rockers The Uneasy released their debut album Time To Kill mid-January 2024 with ten tracks of mostly fast-paced rock, with a little intro in there too to get the juices flowing. A few singles precluded the release but seeing them brought together as a final product and let loose on the world is how this piece will be most appreciated.
Whilst the aforementioned intro does bring you into the warmth of the album itself, it does feel a little tacked on and it’s not until you get into ‘Want Some’ that you feel what The Uneasy are really about. Here pure hard rock is let loose for just under four minutes and there just aren’t enough quality albums that know what they are and what they want to do these days. Lead singer and songwriter Emily Jean’s talents are pushed to the fore with her vocals not only being a strong focal point but matching the energy of the track perfectly.
This is something that continues throughout the full three-quarters of an hour that Time To Kill runs for, even when tracks like the titular one, ‘Time To Kill’, slows things down to more of a stumble than ‘Want Some’ and its full-paced sprint. In what isn’t far off being a ballad, but just that bit more energetic than your average one, the atmosphere feels much more dramatic and a solo or two solidifies the grounding of the album in hard rock.
As the album progresses you can feel where Jean was when writing the piece, the track ’27’ being a prime example of this. The number is well known as a bit of a curse in music and the song title, and the song itself, reflects not only on the sombreness of that specific age but also Jean’s own mental state that led to this album coming to be. Her own struggles with addiction and near life-ending experiences have allowed her to reevaluate life and how it was progressing. The fact that Time To Kill even exists is a testament to how this reflection can push you on. Jean says “Today I have a stable and loving home life, a beautiful daughter, son on the way and I got to marry my soul mate. Your life is really what you make of it.“
As the album pushes into the second half, ‘Why?!’ provides a pacy mid-point. Almost instrumental aside from repeated lyrics and the odd phrase, the song slingshots us into the second half and is a heavy contrast to ‘Mistaken Identity’ which comes up next and dials that pace back and puts Jean’s vocals back into focus. This time though they’re softer and less desperate initially, lulling listeners into a sense of security that choruses test slightly, but one that doesn’t quite reach ‘full-throttled’ again. A couple of the pre-released singles follow in ‘Dangerous Expectations’ and ‘In The Depths’. The pair of them pushing the grungy, gritty element that the band excels in to the fore, with the former being what is probably the strongest track on the record.
From a band that are going to be new to a lot of people, Time To Kill is going to be an accessible and fun record, tinged with a sense of self-reflection that is unavoidable given frontwoman Emily Jean’s journey to get here.