My first thought is that I’ve heard this all before. Simple riffs, top end screaming interspersed with a lower singing style. Think Killswitch Engage mixed with 36 Crazyfists and you’re pretty much there.
It’s a good solid performance of a style that reached it’s peak a few years ago. In come the late runners not realising that they’ve missed the boat and we’ve heard the pinnacles of the genre in other bands and we’re not that interested in having a band that does it quite well, but not as good as the other people who’ve done it.
They do have a slight twist to the genre though, as they sneak in some bits that sound like emo into the mix, which I assume they think will hit the mass market, but these bits are so small that they fail to dominate enough to cater to that audience and just causes irritation to those who aren’t that audience.
If you’re a huge fan of this type of music and just can’t get enough of it, then you may find a space for this album but if you’re a casual listener, then you’ll enjoy it, but not for very long.
Listen to this album: Spinning around with your arms out.
A mixture of excreting barbed wire and being slapped in the face.
A collection of messy riffs, bland screamy vocals and monotonous double bass drumming that sounds like a wood chipper which has had a cement mixer shoved in it. Most of what I’m hearing is nothing short of boring. Just because you’re ripping your vocal chords and talking about the dead rising to rip out the vital organs of everyone on the planet does not stop you from being entirely boring and causing me to slip into some sort of coma.
It’s a shame that Legion of the Damned seem have glued their face to a sheet of paper that reads “Do really boring death metal” because there are some glimpses of really interesting ideas that are more versatile styles into the mix and cause a random spasm of interest in my tiny mind that did drag my through the album and help to relieve the boredom.
The bits that seem to cause the most excitement in the album are the breakdowns, bridges and middle eights, which elevate from the standard rhythm and single tone screaming that fills the rest of the tracks. These slight nuances are very engaging and really do stem the tedium that the rest of the album brings. These sections alone are not enough to save the album from the pits of my bin, but they are enough to keep me listening to the end and even listen to the album more than once, which is more than most albums do.
Listen to this album: With rotting flesh and pierced eyelids.
Their first (major) album, full of screamcore and shoutmax. They tour with Machine head.
Their next album, full of thrash and Metallica copies. They tour with Metallica
This album, a mix of the 2 styles, with the singing less Metallica. They’re touring with All That Remains and 36 Crazyfists.
This band really is an skeleton key to the many metal boxes.
The thing is, that it doesn’t fit together properly. The styles are dumped on top of each other and overlap in a horrible way that confuses you as to what this band actually are. It’s not like they’ve cleverly found a way to incorporate the different styles into a format that flows nicely between the two in a really nice way. No, they just slap them one on top of the other, like three different jigsaws that have been put in the box, but nobody knows what the pictures are supposed to look like.
This causes each of the styles to lose a lot of substance, especially the screaming parts, which I feel that the band are only doing to appease their fans who were outraged at the complete lack of vocal chord grating that went on in the last album. You can almost hear Heafy sigh and say “Oh, okay then, if you want me to” just before each time he screams.
The singing parts I prefer on this album, because they are more individual to the band, and not just a blatant rip-off. While I still don’t like the singing bits, the fact that they sound like a unique band, I have to give some kind of credit.
Overall, by trying to please everyone, and still keep their integrity, I think they’ve produced an album that will please nobody and has really let the band down.
Listen to this album: While drinking a weak lemon drink.
Rating:55%
Extracts from ‘Kirisute Gomen’, ‘Down from the Sky’, ‘The Calamity’ and ‘He who spawned the furies’
Slipknot’s third album caused a great number of fans (myself included) to lose a lot of faith with the band and saw a lot of similarities between Slipknot and Corey Taylor’s other band Stonesour. This caused a lot of us to think that Croey was taking over Slipknot and making it more what he wanted to do and less what we wanted from the band.
Like Metallica, I found a lot of lost respect for Corey Taylor when he stood in for an ill Jon Davis as Download ‘06 and was like a child at Christmas being able to sing these classic Korn songs that he obviously loved.
Now comes Slipknot’s next album, and what do we get? Well, it’s kind of a mix of everything that SLipknot have done before. There’s some of the really heavy riffs that we saw in Slipknot (album), we have the tight clean lines of Iowa and we have the weak, Corey Taylor singing styles of Vol III. This all mixed together causes some of the songs to start really well and drift off, some are good, others are terrible and some start weak and end good.
The first listen I had, I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually good’ and I went around telling everyone that Sliipknot are good again, but the more I listen to it, the more I find that’s not what I wanted from this album, and find bits that really stick out like a sore thumb.
The song, ‘Gehenna’ is one of those that starts well and fades away. The start is deep and dark, similar to the start of Iowa (song) but as we get to half way, Corey starts singing out of tune and this one line of tuneless singing repeats and repeats and…
It really is awful, I can’t stand to listen to it and have to turn it off.
You have to feel sorry for Corey as he did destroy his voice by doing so many gigs. I think this is one of the reasons why he wants to sing more. He also came out defending people who pirate music this last week, saying that the companies cause the piracy by bringing out lots and lots of rubbish music, so you have to admire him to an extent.
Overall the album is quite enjoyable, but the bad bits are really bad. Really, really bad. Take these out and you have a reasonable album.
Corey’s name has appeared too much in this review, so here’s the names of the others:
After St. Anger, a lot of people lost faith in Metallica.
We all know what happened, we all got very annoyed at the way they blamed us for their less than adequate album selling precisely -1 copy (I stole it from the shop and then returned it) and this has really damaged the reputation of Metallica, and still people feel very bitter about it, and so it’s very hard not to have this at the back of my mind while listening to this album. They need to do a lot to make people forgive them.
One thing that helped my forgive them was seeing them live on their Master of Puppet’s 20th Anniversary tour where they were amazing, simply one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen. This was a help to me to listen to this with a completely open mind.
Fist off, this album is not going to be a classic, although, after half a dozen listens, I am enjoying it more each time.
I’ve seen a lot of poor reviews claiming the death of Metallica and saying that this album is poor, but I think that it’s hard for a band with such legacy to bring out an album that ends up being critically acclaimed, somebody name me one band where people say that their 20th album is their best.
So lets take it from the start.
We start with a slow intro into That Was Just Your Life, the guitar plucking your ear hairs as you wait expectedly to hear what’s in store. Blaw Blaw, some nice heavy riffage comes in and drum, blam, drum, blam and we’re off with a nice fast number that reaks of olden day Metallical. I find myself nodding and tapping.
We continue on through some nice tempos and rhythms, breaks and some nice singing from James Hetfield.
At times the songs sound very similar to other Tallica songs of old, but these similarities are at the edge of hearing that twang some memory. Like when you see something that reminds you of the dream you had last night and you go ‘hmmm, oh well.’
The album is mainly heavy with a few flecks of soft music in there, with only one purely soft song ‘The Unforgiven III’. I’d say they succeeded in capturing the style of old; sometimes bands say that their next album is going to back to the style of their old material and when you listen to the album, there’s nothing about it that resembles their original material. I refer you to Korn’s more recent albums.
This album will be hated by many Metallica purists, but no matter what they did, those people would hate this album no matter what it sounded like, but with an open mind, and having forgotten all about St. Anger (what album?) I find this a very wholesome and rewarding album that on it’s own merit, is very servicable.
Listen to this album: While riding a horse, wearing armour.
78%
Extracts from ‘It was just your life’, ‘All nightmare long’, ‘The Unforgiven’ and ‘My Apocolypse’
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
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’
Although nothing that 36CF have brought out since Bitterness the star has been as good as that début album, they have been a solid supply of good metal, but this album steps it up a notch. This album has a good selection of really heavy riffs and screaming fun along side a good slopping of wailing and wobbly long notes that we find so amusing.
My favourite songs on the album are the really heavy ones, ‘Clear the coast’ and ‘We gave it hell’ are especially strong tracks.
The whole album is tight and strong and powerful and leaves no room for any of your nonsense.
Listen to this album: While carrying a hand-held video camera.
Rating: 77%
Extracts from ‘Clear the coast’, ‘Waiting on a war’, ‘Absent are the saints’ and ‘Northern November’
It really confuses me when I listen to an album that is very well performed and contains some very good music, but it just doesn’t inspire me.
Hardcore Punk is one of those genres that has a small margin between brilliant and very poor, and this album is very good, but it’s quite formulaic and I think it’s this that causes me to be less than excited about the album. Maybe it’s also because I’m lying in bed, at 10:50am and this isn’t the correct position to be listening to the album. I can imagine loving the album if I heard it performed live at a rock festival.
Another complaint about the album is the same complaint most people have about Formula 1 racing, that it kicks off at 200mph and goes round and round at that speed until the end and nothing much happens. This is true up to the tracks, ‘Bastard Waltz’ and ‘Sorceress’ which is like the pit-stop of the album. These tracks happen and suddenly there’s lots of excitement going on and people are racing all over the place and there’s lots of change and variety and fun.
After these two songs, it goes a bit bland again, until the last three songs, which again pick up and take us to the end of the album. This kind of trickery, to end the album on a high, tries to make us regard the album as better than it was and make up for the slightly uninspiring rest of the album. This trickery doesn’t work on me. I see through your lies.
This album is on par. It should have been at least a birdie.
Listen to this album: While angry.
Rating: 77%
Extracts from ‘Deathsmarch’, ‘Bastard’s Waltz’, ‘Sorceress’ and ‘Lucifer’s Rocking Chair’
Techno-metal-punk-type stuff all boxed in a small explosive package that is left in a bin in a train station.
I find it strange reviewing an album of a band that I have liked for a while. I become very biassed and want to just rave about the album. I also end up just comparing the album to other albums by the same artist and become very objective about it.
MSI’s style is very unique and contains big drums with keyboards, punk guitars and the very unique vocal style of Jimmy Urine.
MSI are one of my very favourite bands and you definitely need to hear them and also see them live. I saw them live and it blew my mind, they are just so animated and fun and entertaining. But this isn’t about the gig, it’s about their new album. It’s just important not to take MSI too seriously.
The first song introduces everything I would expect from an MSI album. It’s loud and lewd and brash. It makes me very excited and I start to perspire. After this song I wonder what happened. ‘Evening Wear’ is weak and melodic and it’s not very good. We then go into a rhythm of one on, one off until ‘Get it up’ which is just abismal. ‘Get it up’ may not only be the low point of this album, but the low point of the entire album. It’s quite simply an awful song.
Then we get to ‘Revenge’ and suddenly, out of the ashes of a crumpled, weak version of a band that I love comes a ten armed monster attacking me and ripping my head off. Songs 7-15, quite literally blew my socks off, so as far as I’m concerned, MSI owe me some new socks.
Why they couldn’t be this good for the whole album is beyond me, but all I know is that the first 6 tracks fade into my distant memories as I am filled from toe to head with a mist of love for a band that I was begining to doubt and I’m sorry for this.
The final song is a bit wierd and contains a number of interludes and strange singing bits. This is like a little extra bit of nonsense that bares little relation to the rest of the album, but is interesting nonetheless.
Overall, there are a couple of weak points in this album, and I’m probably a little over sensitive about it, becauase I love the album so much, but don’t let me put you off.
Listen to this album: With big comedy boots on.
Rating: 78%
Extracts from ‘Never Wanted To Dance’, ‘Evening Wear’, ‘Get It Up’, ‘Revenge’ and ‘Mastermind’
