REVIEW: Cook Allender – ‘Music Your Parents Hate’

There is something deeply refreshing about a rock record that understands exactly what it wants to be. Cook Allender arrives with ‘Music Your Parents Hate’ and simply delivers what great guitar music has always promised: volume, movement, release, and the kind of riffs that make ordinary life briefly feel cinematic again.

Raised in New Orleans and now based in Nashville, Allender builds his debut around the spirit of 90s alternative rock without becoming trapped inside imitation. The record’s DNA captures grunge muscle, post-Britpop melody, radio-ready hooks, and highway-sized choruses, but the album feels driven by genuine affection for the genre rather than empty revivalism.

From the opening moments of ‘Wild Side’, ‘Music Your Parents Hate’ embraces immediacy. The guitars arrive loud and unapologetic, the rhythm section pushes everything forward relentlessly, and nearly every track feels engineered for movement; whether that means packed club floors, long midnight drives, or the private adrenaline rush of blasting music far too loudly through headphones.

‘Climb’ remains one of the record’s defining moments. Built around a thick, propulsive riff and a chorus that feels purposefully built for collective release, the track captures the emotional core of the album surprisingly well. Beneath the distortion and momentum sits a song about fear, self-belief, and the uncomfortable necessity of relying on others.

But what makes the album work so effectively is its refusal to overcomplicate itself. The artist clearly understands the emotional power of straightforward rock songwriting, as the hooks arrive at exactly the right moments, the solos feel earned rather than indulgent, and choruses hit with clarity at every turn.

There are echoes throughout the record of bands like Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, and early Bush, particularly in the way melody and heaviness coexist without fighting each other. Yet ‘Music Your Parents Hate’ also carries a warmth that keeps it from feeling cynical or overly aggressive. Even at its loudest, the album feels strangely optimistic.

In many ways, ‘Music Your Parents Hate’ succeeds because it remembers something modern rock too often forgets; that guitar music is supposed to be fun. Not shallow, not disposable, but genuinely exhilarating.

Cook Allender may frame this as rebellion, but the real triumph of the record is its emotional honesty. Underneath the crunching riffs and full-throttle choruses is an artist rediscovering the thing he was always meant to do, and sounding fully alive while doing it.