Black9 “Stop Dragging My Heart Around” - official music video

“Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” is going to please a lot of ears
thanks to it being a superb adaptation of a song from one musical style
to another. Black 9 has taken the sinewy classic rock vibe of Tom
Petty’s original recording, revamped the number as a dyed in the wool
metal number, and avoided the tired trappings weighing down a lot of the
band’s contemporaries. Some might superficially associate the band with
the recent spate of female fronted metal acts, but their take on “Stop
Draggin’ My Heart Around” shows off a level of flexibility few of those
bands share with Black 9. It’s quite a feat how the band manages to nail
both some of the straight forward guitar groove of the original,
despite overpowering riffing and heavy distortion, and give their vision
of the song some of the same character as a musical bulldozer.






Many will be surprised by the vocals. Aven Roth’s singing snaps you
to instant attention when she enters the song and she really peaks with
each payoff. The full-throated fire she brings with the chorus and its
preceding buildup will surprise fans of the original with its emotional
impact and Aven is the driving force behind that. She gives so much of
herself over to this performance that you can’t help but wonder what
sort of personal experience matches it in his own story – the vocal
carries that kind of dramatic weight. Naturally, at the end of it all,
it may just be a superbly realized vocal, but its backed-against-a-wall
desperation is impossible to ignore.



The hard-nosed riffing filling much of the song keeps a lot of the
melodic sound heard in Petty’s original, but the more abrasive sound of
the hard rock or metal style does give it more ballast somehow without
ever dragging it down. This guitar first approach culminates in Tiffany
Marsten’s concluding guitar solo and ending the track on such a note
will please a lot of listeners thanks to Marsten’s ability to seize the
dramatic moment. She, thankfully, never overplays – even the bit of
flash she throws into the performance only serves to color her guitar
attack and never risk the sort of hackneyed result we might expect from
lesser musicians.







Even if you end up not liking their take on the classic song, “Stop
Draggin’ My Heart Around” is undeniably the product of a talented band
coming together and demonstrating a capacity for surprise that too few
bands possess in the modern era. Some say rock music is on the run,
receding into the past, reeling in the wake of hip hop and pop country
as commercial forces. You can be grateful that Black 9 never listened –
instead, they take on this style with enough personality and
intelligence to dare something different with its conventions. “Stop
Draggin’ My Heart Around” isn’t an original composition, but it will win
over a lot of new converts for the band with a single listen and
signals the upcoming release Cruel History is well worth watching for.