Gun – Hombres (2024) Review

After the reunion era reached its creative high-water mark on Favourite Pleasures, Gun could have been forgiven for easing off.

Instead, Hombres doubles down.

Released in 2024, the band’s ninth studio album captures modern-day Gun at full stride: punchier, hookier, and heavier than their recent work — with riffs pushed to the front, choruses built for the stage, and a lineup that finally feels settled and confident in its own skin.

And it wasn’t just an artistic win. Hombres also delivered the band’s strongest modern-era chart showing, peaking at No. 10 on the Official UK Albums Chart and placing high across the Rock & Metal, Physical, and Scottish charts.

They’re All Fired Up

Seven long years and a pandemic had passed since Gun released the sublime Favourite Pleasures.

This was the album where the Scottish rockers finally adjusted to Dante Gizzi’s rasp-and-range vocal identity, sounding better than they had in years — but in order to cement the legitimacy of their second act, they needed a follow-up with the same level of conviction.

The pressure was on, and ninth studio album Hombres rose to meet it.

It manages to take all of the strengths of its predecessor and turn them up to eleven — the riffs are tighter, the solos soar higher, the drums hit harder, and Dante sounds so locked in that this incarnation of Gun no longer feels like a revival, but a band with real momentum.

Levels Above

Hombres hits hardest when Gun lean fully into scale.

Take Me Back Home initially flirts with a familiar shape — there’s a moment where it threatens to echo Steal Your Fire — but just as you’re about to accuse Gun of borrowing from themselves, the track blossoms into the widest chorus they’ve written in years.

It’s a real driving-with-the-top-down modern hard rock anthem, and one of their best late-career statements.

A similar sense of purpose runs through You Are What I Need, where new addition Ru Moy slaps an endlessly replayable lick beneath a towering chorus. Meanwhile, Never Enough showcases the album’s muscular core, with Giuliano Gizzi’s power chords colliding against Paul McManus’ pounding drums like waves hammering rock. It’s simple, physical, and built to be played loud.

Finally, there’s lead single All Fired Up, which manages to capture Gun’s post-lockdown hunger in three minutes of tight, melodic, riff-led rock.

Heavy enough to satisfy, hooky enough to stick, this is the kind of material which doesn’t just confirm their resurgence — it genuinely challenges the best material within their catalogue, and reinforces how locked-in this lineup has become in recent years.

"I've made enough mistakes you'd think I'd learn,
I'm trying to fill the void I feel inside."

ALL FIRED UP

Brothers In Arms

Hombres wastes no time proving its strengths.

Despite only two of the album’s twelve tracks stretching beyond the four-minute mark, Dante Gizzi still finds room to tackle heavier themes — male mental health, relationship collapse, social media addiction, and the bottled-up frustration of being forced indoors just as the band’s resurgence gathered pace.

But it’s big brother Giuliano who steals the show.

Fans have spent years urging the guitarist to unleash his riffs and solos with the freedom he once displayed in the band’s classic era, and on Hombres he finally delivers.

This is Giuliano at the peak of his powers: precise, purposeful lead lines that elevate songs rather than interrupt them, and solos that arrive with audible intent. You can hear the momentary lift in his playing right before he breaks away — that split-second of momentum — and then the release, as he climbs the fretboard with the kind of hunger that makes this record feel not only heavier, but alive.

An Album Of Few Lows

The low points of Hombres are few and far between — but nothing is perfect.

For one, the running order could be tighter (something I’ve tackled below in the “These Go To Eleven Re-Worked Tracklist” section). And despite solid intentions, the mental health-focused Boys Don’t Cry pulls Gun a little too far from their core sound, leaning into a baggier, alt-rock texture that feels oddly disconnected from the album’s otherwise riff-led momentum — imagine if The Stone Roses hired Axl Rose — and even a blistering solo can’t fully bridge the gap.

There’s also the simultaneous joy and frustration of Falling. On one hand, it’s a majestic piece of work that nods back to the band’s mid-’90s prime. On the other, it ends far too soon, fading out just as it appears Giuliano Gizzi’s second guitar solo is about to take flight, robbing the song of the crescendo it clearly wants.

"Treated like a king but I'm feeling like a fool,
Up in my plastic world."

TAKE ME BACK HOME

Gun — Hombres

Few bands have enjoyed a second bite at the cherry quite like Gun.

They’ve now released the same number of studio albums with Dante Gizzi on lead vocals as they did with original frontman Mark Rankin throughout the first run — and there’s a genuine case to be made that the new material is stronger.

Hombres feels like the culmination of a decade-plus of adapting, touring, and honing their craft until the second act stopped sounding like a revival and started sounding like the point. It firmly re-establishes Gun as one of the UK’s premier rock acts, and the wider recognition finally followed — tracks from the album were used in the Samuel L. Jackson thriller Damaged (available on Prime Video), and the record went on to win “Album of the Year” at the Scottish Music Awards 2024.

>> Hombres is part of our Gun album review series.