Best known, perhaps, for being Billy Idol’s rhythm guitar player for almost two decades, Billy Morrison has almost literally got the band back together here.
The same people who worked on The Morrison Project in 2024 are back again, but for my money Hollow is simply a superior album. Bigger, darker, more varied and, crucially, packed with ideas, it sounds like Morrison taking everything he does well and seeing how far he can push it.
The title track starts things with swaggering arena rock, but there’s something unmistakably British about it too. Morrison sings of his “hollow life”, searching for whatever piece is missing while the music around him sounds absolutely enormous.
“Becoming”, the first single, was written with Godsmack’s Sully Erna and Nuno Bettencourt, with the latter handling guitar. That pedigree shows. Morrison talks about the “darkness in me”, while Bettencourt supplies exactly the sort of fireworks you’d expect.
“Forgive Me” turns its attention towards the modern world, railing against a lost generation seemingly handed over to algorithms, before “The Tailor” takes things somewhere altogether more sinister. There’s a very late-90s feel to it, almost Marilyn Manson-like in the way it lurks in the shadows before exploding into its chorus.
That makes the stomping rock ’n’ roll of “Take Me As I Am” all the more striking. The lead work is sensational, but then Hollow rarely stays in one place long enough to become predictable.
“No Suspects”, for example, brings in rap and an urban feel that you probably wouldn’t have expected at the outset, before Morrison arrives with the hook and somehow ties the whole thing together.
“Another Day” demonstrates the same gift Billy Idol has always possessed: making rock songs sound massive and dangerous simultaneously. It attacks the “rising tide of useless information”, and there’s genuine venom behind it.
Then comes “Leave No Trace”, which could comfortably have appeared on a Duff McKagan solo record. Acoustic guitars are played by men who clearly still have punk rock in their hearts, while some superb steel guitar adds another colour entirely.
“Devil In Your Eyes” finds yet another one. Strings give it an appropriately ominous atmosphere, before “Tearing Down The Walls” returns to the cold, clinical world of industrial rock. “Where is this rage I always feel?” Morrison asks, and the answer appears to be everywhere. This is a nihilistic, barren landscape and deliberately so.
“Never Gonna Change” flips everything again. Essentially melodic punk with designs on being a summer anthem, it comes complete with a filthy, sleazy guitar solo, as if by now Hollow is determined to prove there’s nothing it can’t do.
Which only makes “Butterfly Effect” stand out further. A Beatles-tinged ballad to finish, it provides warmth after much of the darkness that preceded it.
The album barely needs the irony pointing out. Hollow is anything but. It’s magnificent, packed to bursting with ideas and arguably one of the finest records Morrison has put his own name to.
Rating: 8.5/10
