Despite only releasing their first music at the turn of the decade, UK Rockers, Juliet’s Not Dead have been hard at work, grafting away, releasing numerous EPs and even their first debut album over the past 5 years. Now ready to demonstrate where the band plan to move onto, comes their sophomore release The World Is Ours (TMR Records). Just like the name implies, the band have lofty goals when it comes to their music. Hiring Grammy-nominated producer, Romesh Dodangoda, to bring that extra flair and sleek sound design to their music, the band have a lot of hopes and dreams riding on this album.
Opening with “Sinner or Saint”, the band bring in this triumphant introduction, heralded in by horns and shimmering sounds, to launch into a giant classic rock-tinged riff, full of this bombastic major chords running throughout the guitars journey. The true stand-out amongst this hard-rock playing, is the drums; however, the tight playing by Jack Corbett instantly grabs you by the ears to hear this polished, melodic beat. The opening song, while wearing this old-school, hard rock anthem sound clearly on its sleeve, equally, knows the era it’s in, bringing in a lot more in terms of more theatrical rock/emo rock bands like Ghost or My Chemical Romance. Combining this together with Stevie Stoker’s distinctive voice adds a whole new sheen to the band that other nostalgia-driven bands aren’t able to accomplish.
The band manages to accomplish a feat that many other bands who are trying to recapture the older styles of rock do not. In “Battle Scarred”, the band harnesses more contemporary sound types including this chiming at the beginning of the track to answer the question of how bands of the past would’ve sounded with the access of the technology and instrumentation of today. Harnessing this chime, and invigorating it with the two guitar melodies, the band accomplish this heart-swelling chorus and crescendo towards the end of the song.
On the Penultimate track, “King And Queen”, the band brings all of the albums displayed of their talents and just amps it up. The guitar riffs are loud, bombastic, but most importantly, right in your face. Stoker’s vocals are punchy and full of attitude, and the drumbeat is as tight and intricate, creating the blueprint for a great rock anthem. It really feels as if this is the song to close the album on… And then it continues onto the final track, and feels as if the band just took a huge step backwards. Closing on an emotional, heart-tugging ballad is tough at the best of times, but unfortunately with “Capsize” it feels like it should have either been an earlier entry in the album, or left on the cutting board. The crux of the song feels like it takes a long while to reach, and when the power-chord lead section of the song kicks into full flux, it’s a little underwhelming as a whole.
In 2025, where the world isn’t as focused on rock as a leading genre, it’s bands like Juliet’s Not Dead that should be showing the latest displays of music in the scene rather than ones that purely lament and repeat the golden-oldie’s with different words. This World Is Ours, shows a band at the brink of something massive, if they hit that right sound, they’ll undeniably can go far, and if the penultimate song is anything to go by, this band can easily accomplish this.
Buy this album here:
https://linktr.ee/julietsnotdead
7 / 10
CHARLIE HILL