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Towering
Metal Planet Music reviews in the most glowing terms the freshly released Glenn Hughes’ album Chosen.
The Voice of Rock is back and taking no prisoners. ‘Chosen’ comes nine years after last solo album ‘Resonate’ gained huge critical and public acclaim and shows that there’s still fire in his belly and a larynx that’s the envy of all out there.
Having kept himself busy touring his Deep Purple focused shows and a stint with The Dead Daisies, Hughes hasn’t really stood still but still managed to write and record this ten track opus to herald the return of his own project. With longtime foils, guitarist Soren Anderson, drummer Ash Sheenhan and keys player Bob Fridzema by his side, this is a passion project that builds on the already legendary status the vocalist and bass player has worked hard to earn. With ten, all killer no filler tracks, there’s no sense of growing old gracefully and with the power presented here the outfit stamp their authority on an album that somehow balances modern production with a timeless feel.
Metal Temple is more subdued with a 7/10 verdict:
But to me it all lacks that bit of extra that will get me wanting or trying to listen to “Chosen” as often as possible. Like I mentioned, there isn’t a bad song on it, but there isn’t a proper belter on it either, and that is what could have made this GLENN HUGHES stand out from some of the others he has made. Let me phrase it like this: if I come to visit you and you are playing “Chosen” on your stereo, I will and shall enjoy it for the 50:52 minutes it lasts. You won’t hear me complain for a second. But I would never have “Chosen” this album if I wanted you to hear what I most admire in GLENN HUGHES.
Meanwhile, Get Ready to Rock not as much as reviews the new album, but publishes a retrospective of Glenn’s career for the past 20 tears or so.
Like many contemporaries there have been the wilderness years – lost to changing musical tastes or something worse. From the mid to late-1990s (chronicled in the 2020 box set) Glenn had picked himself up, dusted off the bass guitar, and since that time it has been a musical rollercoaster, crowned by solo albums, Black Country Communion and generous contributions to other mere mortals – an aspect David Randall described as “That ubiquitous session whore”.
…wear some garters if you are attending Wolverhampton, Liverpool or London this weekend. It’s the first time since 1976 for the Liverpudlians. By his own admission he ‘should be dead.’ Keith Thompson, May 2008
Classic Rock is more enthusiastic:
What seems most important with this record, though, is the weight of Hughes’s lyrics. Whichever musical hat he wears, its brim casts a darker shadow than before. Physically, he may look a lot better than most of his contemporaries do these days – he turned 74 on August 21 – but he might be feeling it. His subject matter is delivered obliquely, but in the tone of a man looking back on his life and the mistakes he’s made, making peace with himself for correcting them, and looking forward to a more contented afterlife – as he suggests in Chosen.
And yet another track from the new album was posted to commemorate the D-day. Here’s My Alibi:
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Someone gifted Glenn an Alice In Chains album!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOJEcEkR1a8
But I like the new single, grungy as it is.
September 6th, 2025 at 02:31A sign of a strong album is that you’d be hard pressed to leave any song out. Chosen is one of those albums for me, having now listened to it around 10 times. A smaller complaint is that the songs are somewhat similar, due to the downtuning and the riff based approach. It’s very dense with everything turned to 12 except for “Come and Go”. Almost too much to digest in one sitting and I would have included one or two more lighter pieces to serve as a contrast to the heaviness. But as stand alone songs, there’s nothing I would label as weak and Glenn still sounds awesome. Basically, he still sounds like he did in the 90s = a strong positive. It will get a lot of playtime. 4/5.
September 8th, 2025 at 11:27@ 1… A song based on Lane’s battle with Heroin addiction. Don’t do drugs Boys and Girls, listen to Nancy Reagan.
September 8th, 2025 at 12:33Daniel’s review hits the spot. I too could have used another ballad or two, but it’s quality music and the album is well-produced and -played. I’m not the greatest Grunge fan on Earth, but Glenn’s dosage of Seattle influence is fine with me.
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Timmi, Lane was a junkie alright and paid dearly for it, but wasn’t the title “Would?” a play on the likewise heroin addicted Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Would%3F
Mention of Nancy … immortalized by your namesake Burton for even a younger generation via the first season of Wednesday …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di310WS8zLk
September 8th, 2025 at 21:54Am I the only one getting Rage Against the Machine vibes from this album? And that is not a bad thing. 🙂
September 9th, 2025 at 08:27@ 4….. True Uwe, the song was based on Andrews death, but you can see what was in Lane’s head at the time.
September 9th, 2025 at 11:54@ 4… Nancy Reagan High School 🤣
September 9th, 2025 at 11:57I have enjoyed most of Glenn’s recent prolific output, though I sometimes wish he was less prolific, and had some more quality control. The structure and sound can be predictable. Generally this is overcome by the song quality overall which makes each new album a treat. Chosen, after three or four listens is somewhat flat, with many tracks sounding like other Hughes tracks; better previous songs. I got the feeling it is what you’d get if you asked AI for a Glenn Hughes album.
September 9th, 2025 at 16:54By every standard metric, “Chosen” is a well-crafted rock album, full of strong songs and top caliber performances from all concerned.
It is tight, focused, and superbly produced – a definite statement album that Glenn should be well proud of in my opinion, even if I must confess that it isn’t necessarily the solo album that I would have preferred at this point.
From where I sit, Glenn has plenty of other vehicles available to him for making powerful rock albums these days, Black Country Communion being chief among them, so I might have liked a purer-sounding GH album, one that more completely embraces his love for funk and soul music in a rock context than “Chosen” seems to, but I can’t deny that this is an excellent rock album just the same.
Highlights for me? “My Alibi”, the title track, “Chosen”, “Hot Damn Thing”, and “Black Cat Moan” seem to be the songs that make my ears perk up the most so far, but as I’m really only beginning to familiarize myself with the album at this point, we’ll see what stands the test of time in the weeks and months to come…
September 9th, 2025 at 17:05For me Glenn Hughes reached the top of his game with his solo debut in 1976 already… I liked several of his later albums but he never got that good again. In resent times Resonate, the last BCC album, California Breed and the second Dead Daisys one being one string of samey sounding songs to me. Plain boring. Trying to be someone he ain’t. I just wish he would stick to the sound he loves. He always told us he was ‘the fucking king of funky’ – so why not go for it? Maybe get a good writer in too.
September 10th, 2025 at 06:39“Am I the only one getting Rage Against the Machine vibes from this album? And that is not a bad thing.”
Shamefully so, my knowledge of RATM is scant, Svante, what is a good place to start? I’m of course aware of Tom Morello’s work in various projects, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a RATM album front to back.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRszDzboJxNu2pmoAWU6n6_w9mDV-xr4TtG1A&s
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I’ve been listening to Chosen a lot the last few days. While I would have liked a higher funk content too, this is a Frontiers Records release and Glenn said in an interview that the Italians wanted a rrrocka rrrecorrrd, capisce?! from him. You don’t mess with these people!
https://media.tenor.com/cvWGcVC8mNYAAAAM/luca-changretta-peaky-blinders.gif
That said, if Chosen had been released by a bunch of twenty- or even thirty-somethings, the hard & heavy rock press would be falling over each other in how good it is and how that band has a great future carved out for itself.
But life isn’t fair, Glenn doesn’t have that perspective anymore. His twenty years of first hand botanical study of Peruvian and Columbian produce has cost him the phase of his life where you either make or break it as a rock artist. He was still a young adult when DP folded and left him with unfulfilled funk fantasies and a nasty cocaine habit, by the time he regained his senses he was into his mid-forties, way too late for a new career other than one tagging after his ex-DP status for the initiated and his life conundrum that he’s too funky for Purple diehards and too white & Purple for the funkster brigade. He’s now in his mid 70s, no record company on Earth will spend money for him on a promotion offensive to break through in new markets, that train is gone.
Which is kinda disheartening given how well-executed Chosen is. While the album is steeped in traditional 70s rock, it has just enough modern (= grungy and nu metal) influences to not sound like a nostalgia fest, Glenn’s bass playing has lost none of his young man’s hip thrust and the youthful vigor of his vocals on that album is a-ma-zzzzing! It’s one of his strongest albums to date, though the music isn’t that far removed from either The Dead Daisies or Black Country Communion (Glenn tends to put his indelible stamp on things if you let him even as much as co-write).
So this is a very good album which will lamentably go nowhere because Glenn’s time passed long ago.
September 10th, 2025 at 18:28@ 11…Points well made, Uwe – though I don’t think that Glenn is necessarily under any illusion that “Chosen” is going to springboard him to new heights and/or a larger audience per se, rather it sounds to me like “Chosen” was made to satisfy his obligations to Frontiers as much as anything else.
If that was the main impetus for this album, then it’s amazing to me that it’s as good as it is – and it really is a good album!
I think Glenn has come to the stage in his career where thoughts on his “artistic legacy” have begun to enter into the equation and, in that sense, I suppose I am a bit surprised that, if this is truly to be his last solo album, he’d offer a modern-sounding rock record up as the capstone to the career of Glenn Hughes the solo artist.
I would have expected an album that would shine more as a testament to who he really is artistically, and what he really loves musically-speaking, something more akin to “Feel” or “F.U.N.K” in other words…
Rocking? Yes – but with his funk and soul flag flying proudly for all to see…
Perhaps such an album is yet to come, and almost certainly on another label I would imagine – but who knows?
What I do know is this – I’ve been a fan of Glenn and his artistry for four decades now, and with all the highs and lows that have been a part of that time for him, its really a miracle that today, at 55, I’m still lucky enough to be able to receive new releases from this enormously talented and gifted musician.
Truly, as I see it everything new that he does at this point is nothing less than a gift, as he really has nothing left to prove at this point in his long and storied career, one which finds him with a respectably-sized international audience, and the artistic reverence and respect of so many of his industry peers.
As GH fans, I’d say we’re pretty lucky to continue to have as much ongoing quality output from him as we do, and I definitely appreciate “Chosen” with that thought in mind, no matter the kind of album that I might have liked to have seen were it solely up to me instead.
September 10th, 2025 at 22:59Max @10, I’m with you, there was something “encompassing the whole & true Glenn” about Play Me Out when it came out (originally slated to be a reformed original Trapeze release). But of course it was also a huge FUCK YOU! flashed at the fans of the more traditional Purple sound, it was like some of them felt personally insulted by that album. It was like a confirming exclamation mark to their favorite conspiracy theory “Glenn snuck unbeknownst to the others funk into our holy Deep Purple and thereby drove away Ritchie and killed the band”. 😂
But Play Me Out is what Musik Express or (German) Sounds wrote at the time: It shows so much deep and sincere commitment and devotion to Black Music that you cannot help but be impressed by the former Deep Purple bassist’s first solo work. Mind you, they also added a foreboding Doubtful however if Deep Purple fans will see it the same way. 🤣
It’s too bad he hardly ever played songs from Play Me Out live and pretty much stopped doing so altogether some 20 years ago.
It goes to what I always say: That Glenn never had the guts to show up in the offices of Motown Records and say I might appear to have the wrong skin color for you black cats and I know that the name Deep Purple means nothing to you, but hear me out, I really belong on your label! and then ask Quincy Jones to produce his next record. Maybe all that cocaine got in the way.
September 11th, 2025 at 12:45Apparently, Frontiers had a contract for one more album from Glenn, going back to California Breed days. Perhaps he will go more funky and soulful on the next album, unless Chosen is a success and Frontiers offers to renew 🙂
September 11th, 2025 at 14:11