I say that, not because the album is bad, but because its so drity and grimy and sludgy that there is no other comparason for it.
Typing the name of the album into google, I get some interesting results, and became somewhat distracted while trying to listen to the album. Ten minutes of distracted browsing later, I returned to the album.
The album sounds like I’m listening to it with my head in a big wooden box, the muted sounds of the guitar and the deep bass hang heavy in this album, while simple riffs play out behind the dry vocals.
Mainly slow paced, it drags you slowly through the album, like a monster taking it’s screaming prey to it’s inevitable demise. The final track ‘It tastes better than the truth’ is obviously about the eating of human flesh by the ravenous beast, the track containing appropriate screaming and sounds of doom.
Overall, the album is simple, powerful and strong. There is little in the way of interesting new ground covered in this album as it plods its way along, with the odd outburst of faster, more flewant music.
Listen to this album: While slowly sinking up to you neck in mud.
Rating: 74%
Extracts from ‘The Kicking Machine’, ‘Dies Iraea’, ‘The Smiling Cobra’ and ‘It tastes better than the truth’
Tricky apparently loathes the term trip-hop to describe his music, but I would say it’s the best way to describe the music. It is more rounded and full than most trip-hop encompassing quite a lot of singing and guitar, in with the whispered rapping style and low-fi segments of the album.
There are some very contrasting styles, the very slow, minimalist and poetic Joseph, is closely followed followed by a guitar, and keyboard led C’mon Baby and the loud hip-hop shoutings of Council Estate. This contrast of styles creates a nice blend of colours, but doesn’t stray to far from the original objectives.
As well as variants to the left and to the right as far as style, there’s also a vertical shift between the light and dark, as far as the tone of the music. There are some very chilling pieces on the album, the most note worthy being Past Mistake, which send lightning bolts down my spine and nearly caused me to jump out of the window. One of the happier songs, Slow, is about dancing, how much happier could you be?
The album, slots together quite well, all of the pieces fit together smoothly and the finished product is quite wholesome and rather enjoyable.
Listen to this album: While hanging upside down
Rating: 80
Extracts from ‘Joseph’, ‘C’mon Baby’, ‘Slow’ and ‘Far Away’
While this album is quite superb, it seems like the band aren’t even trying that hard and it feels like they still have 50% left in the tank and that they could release this at any point. But they don’t.
This album complete’s all it’s objectives and can claim success with every element of this album, but it feels like just another day at the office, and this stirs up a sense of unease about this album. Why didn’t they give me 100%?
So, is this album great, or not? Well, I don’t know. I’m in completely two minds about it. Maybe it’s the fault of the producer that it feels as though there’s something missing.
Surely, if you are a big heavy metal fan, you will like a lot in this album, and believe me, there is a lot to enjoy from this album, but I believe that the enjoyment is going to be short lived.
Listen to this album: While climbing a really really tall ladder.
Rating: 79%
Extracts from ‘The man who would not die’, ‘Samurai’, ‘Robot’ and ‘Voices from the past’
http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/BlazeBayley.mp3
This album has all of the elements of skate punk, eccept for it has all of the good bits taken out. It’s far too slow, it’s far too flat and it just insults me.
The only previous work that I can clearly recall by Alkaline Trio, is their first two singles, ‘Stupid Kid’ and ‘Private Eye’ and I think these are really good songs, and I seem to remember them being really good in the early naughties, but this album is tired and grey.
We need to wait until the fifth track to hear an ounce of energy from any of the songs, this is not acceptable. The rest of album is stuffed full of love songs are ballads with very slight rock undertones.
I haven’t heard anything that they have done since ‘From here to infirmary’, so, this mediocrity may have been a long time coming and the current fans of the band may already know what they are getting themselves into, but for me, it was a huge disappointment.
This album is not even a smack on the arm, (they were never a smack in the face).
Listen to this album: While ice-skating on your own, at night.
Rating: 61%
Extracts from ‘Calling all skeletons’, ‘I found away’, ‘Live young, die fast’ and ‘Love love, kiss kiss’
You know how rock albums will sometimes have a short interlude section to split up sections of the album and cleanse your pallet to get you ready for the next onslaught of music. These sections are usually quite slow, bland and boring, but act as a breather for your ears. Like when you have a sorbet at a restraint between courses. This album is a collection of songs like that.
Usually these interludes last between 30 seconds and a minute, which is the perfect length for something like this. Sigur Ros make them last for between 3:33 and 9:23 which is far to long for something so dull. It’s like they are good at having the initial inspiration for music but then don’t know now to develop that into a song.
Sigur Ros are an Icelandic ambient, post rock outfit, made from four Icelandic people singing in Icelandic. Backed by boring musical notes.
The whining voice of the lead singer is pitiful and weak and while it may make young, loveless females swoon at his soul wrenching wailing, it makes me want to give him a slap.
I don’t speak Icelandian, so cannot understand what Jón is singing about, but frankly, I am not compelled to find out and can assume it’s something along the lines of ‘Oooh, I’m boring and nobody likes me, please someone like me, I’ll try to be less boring.’
If you are an open fan of boring music, then this might be for you, but if you think that boring music is boring then don’t listen to this cause you’ll find it boring.
If you cut each song down to 90 seconds, you would probably get a good album, of nice music but listening for longer than this length of time is, well, boring.
Listen to this album: To numb your mind of all sensation.
Rating: 58%
Extracts from ‘Inni mer syngur vitleysingur’, ‘Festival’, ‘Illgresi’ and ‘Straumnes’
Disturbed’s first two albums were big metal balls with spikes protruding from all angles. These spikes were incredibly sharp and stuck into you, ripping your flesh from the bone, but as with any sharp metal object, with use, it gets blunt. Ten Thousand Fists was slightly blunt, the sharpness had gone, and so Disturbed went to the grinding block and began to sharpen themselves back up.
Indestructible is nearly as blunt as Ten Thousand Fists. It’s really smooth, flows around you, rather than sticking in to you and causing tissue damage. David Draiman’s vocals, seem quite effortless and not nearly as rugged as they have been previously. We all remember where we were when we first heard the infamous ‘ough agh agh agh agh’ in Down with the sickness, that punch, the aggression, the passion, the humanity has been lost and all we’re left with is ball bearings that roll around and the only way they would injur you is if you stood on one with bear feet, or slipped over them in a Hannah Barbara fashion.
There are a couple of tracks that capture the original vibes of the band. these are the more simple tracks on the album, the ones that are what they are and don’t try to be too clever or complex. Perfect Insanity and Criminal are the main tracks that achieve this. These are the more shouty, punchy tracks, so maybe it’s that which I like more and it’s the singing in the others that I feel is lacking, I certiately feel that they lack punch.
Another thing that slightly saves this album is the live bonus tracks, which I believe are only included on the online download version. These are live versions of a select number of great Disturbed songs…says it all really.
Sorry Disturbed, but you have failed me again.
Listen to this album: While feeling mildly annoyed with the world.
Rating: 70%
Extracts from ‘Perfect Insanity’, ‘Enough’, ‘Criminal’ and ‘Façade’
It’s been a while since an album has been released that I feel completely indifferent about. This album succeeds at not making me hate it. While it’s another indie by numbers album that has no unique ideas or interesting development anywhere in it and thus should be condemning the band to a firey death and embarking on a quest to remove any trace of this band from the earth, but I couldn’t really care about the band or what they do. I feel absolutely nothing while hearing these songs. It’s as though I’m not listening to anything at all.
Is it worse to have a band that doesn’t even inspire you to hate them? Can they get any percentage mark at all?
Listen to this album: ?
Rating: -
Extracts from ‘The Glorified Collector’, ‘I’d be lying to you’, ‘People Watching’ and ‘How do I end this?’
You can tell by listening to this album that it would be so much better if you were experiencing it live. It has an energy and entertainment potentiality that is mainly lost on the recording.
I really fell like I’m missing out while I’m listening to the album, not to say that it isn’t a really fantastic album, but the feeling that I’m not getting everything I can, from a band that I know is great, leaves me feeling cheated. I don;t remember their previous albums having this same sense of live expectancy, and maybe it’s because they were more complete albums and this has something missing, or what.
I do feel myself wanting to dance while waiting for my train, while I listen to this album. The beats are really good, the lyrics are not the most profound of intellegent, but it’s all filled wiith fun, and you can tell that NERD really wanted to do this, and loved every minute of it.
The bass is heavy, the drums are big and the energy is fantastic. Go see them live and tell me if they are better live.
Listen to this album: While they perform it live.
Rating: 84%
Extracts from ‘Anti-Matter’, ‘Spaz’. ‘Kill Joy’ and ‘You know what’
‘
To begin with, the first track comes on and floods me with horrible repetition, bland beats and boring lyrics. Good start, I’m beginning to dread the next 78:17 of this Forever edition of the album. I think it’s called Forever, because that’s how long this album is feels like it takes to finish.
The rest of the album, I can see what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to make R&B less rubbish, by adding some of the more fashionable styles in hip-hop to his music, There’s flavours of every rap, hip-hop and R&B style in there all at once and it just sounds terrible.
It just sounds messy, like they’ve really tried too hard and the strain of doing the album made them really ill, but instead of taking time off, they rushed through it so that they could go to bed.
I really feel physically uncomfortable listening to this album and I really needed to struggle through it.It really wasn’t worth it
Listen to this album: Laying on marbles, it might make it a more comfrtable experience.
Rating:59%
Extracts from ‘Picture Perfect’, ‘Help Me’, ‘Nice’ and ‘Superhuman’
Until hearing this album, I was on the ‘NOT’ side of the impressed scale for Death Cab for Cutie, I thought that they were bland and pointless and stupid. There are songs on this album, that still fall into this category. After an interesting start to the album, I do not want to turn it off and am being sucked into this album, like a pea in a black hole, they decide to turn the suction to reverse with the rest of the album. At first I was hopeful, and thought that I was going to get some interesting variation on the standard indie by numbers format, especially when reading that the producer of the album say ” “thus far it’s pretty weird and pretty spectacular; lots of blood. It’s creepy and heavy…” I was really expectant, but all I am now is thoroughly disappointed and think that producer, Chris Walla is a liar.
There are some interesting points to the album, ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’ and ‘Grapevine Fires’ are different and refreshing in a dessert of never-ending blandness. I must admit, this is better than a lot of the indie that is around at the moment.
Listen to this album: While eating sand.
Rating: 69%
Extracts from ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’, ‘No Sunlight’, ‘Grapevine Fires’ and Long Division’
