Band: Chasing Deer
Track: Bad Decisions
Time: 2:55 minutes
For fans of: Shinedown, Hozier, Tom Walker
H2N Rating 72/100
The UK’s answer to Shinedown have arrived with Bad Decisions, their most ambitious and complex effort to date.
When I first heard Chasing Deer in 2019 when they released Unstoppable I thought, “nice, this is nice” and I compared them to a soft, less musical Walk The Moon. I then listened back through their catalogue of tracks released during 2018 that formed their debut record Hands On and instantly knew they were much much more than that.
Chasing Deer are a band that don’t fit a genre. Not a single one anyway, but with the release of Bad Decisions, they have at least taken a step towards defining a sound that I think could help them into the mainstream (if that’s where they want to be). When you listen to the record, combined with Unstoppable and now Bad Decisions, it’s clear that the band are going down the mid-tempo, stadium anthem, sound, and with their latest release, they’ve hit that brief perfectly.
“You can’t erase the chemistry, but I know all the things I did wrong.
Betrayed your loyalty.”
Hailing from the UK’s capital, Rob and Adam, have created something really listenable with Bad Decisions. It screams Shinedown; it could fit right on their latest record Attention Attention, and that is a huge compliment being in my top 5 global artists. There’s percussion depth, synths, a commanding vocal and above all, Tom Walker-esque keyboards which are all the fashion right now. Lyrically, this one cuts deep too, “I loaded the bullet you etched with my name”, isn’t typical of what would be expected when just listening to the track, so there is certainly more to this duo than many might think.
Bad Decisions spans every sound that’s popular in UK pop-rock right now and when combined, makes for something quite special. Coming in at under 3 minutes, I want more though, and feel this could have been a true epic with a long bridge or a solo dropped in somewhere, but that isn’t the Chasing Deer way. Bad Decisions is a big step away from where the duo were a few years ago and carrying on this trajectory would be absolutely the right decision.
H2N Ranking Score
Originality: 14/20
Lyrics: 18/20
Complexity: 13/20
Catchiness: 11/20
Stadium Filler Rating: 16/20
Merch and music: https://chasing-deer-store.myshopify.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6dYpvLzQD7hengPe9uhize
