Since the only real place to write album reviews here are on a band's specific thread and that is as the album is being released, I thought I'd make this thread so anyone could write a review of an album that they have listened to in the past. The only stipulations are that it can't be a first time listen (duh), and the album has to at least be a year old (the older the better). The reviews can be short, long, track-by-track reviews, or whatever your little heart desires. But it would be nice to see some longer, well written reviews in here. It would also be cool if you guys compare how you felt initially listening to the album to how you feel now. So go ahead, please fill up this thread!
TL;DR: This album is pretty fucking cool. [thumb]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZUyYJYncBuE/UInk9FwNlAI/AAAAAAAAAKI/oA9l3snjXOA/s1600/cover-big.jpg[/thumb] "There is no forgiveness in these eyes... dispel the mist for now. Melinda is the reason why I've come" Released in 1999, Still Life is the fourth studio album by Swedish Progressive Metal band Opeth, known for their seamless blend of Death Metal, Progressive Rock, and more folky, acoustic oriented music. Still Life is a concept album that tells the tale of a former priest who returns home to find his love, Melinda, after being shunned for losing his religion. Still Life is a landmark album in Progressive Metal for many reasons, some of which I will try to detail. The album means so much to me because, in many ways, it was a "gateway drug" into more extreme Metal and artful Progressive Rock for me. Before hearing of this band and listening to this album, I had been mostly exposed to Extreme Metal bands such as Cannibal Corpse, which gave me a false perception of what more extreme music was all about; gore, guts, KILL KILL KILL, subject matter such as that. Still Life shifts its focus from clichés such as that, and is more about internal pain, being an outcast, and love. Yep, a story about love on a Metal album. Weird, right? Even if the lyrics and concepts of a particular album are pretty great, at the end of the day, it doesn't mean anything if the music itself is poor, and boy, does Still Life deliver. Many people could be turned off by this album's length, as it is a seven track, hour long affair with an average song length of ten minutes. However, if the listener goes in with an open mind, they will be very much rewarded. Of the seven songs on the album, there is one that is the most noteworthy: The Moor. The Moor is argubly the greatest Opeth song ever written, and for two main reasons. One, it is a fantastic representation of what Opeth is all about. Death Metal? ✔ acoustic passages? ✔ fantastic lyrics? ✔ Captivating clean and harsh vocals? ✔. Everything is there, which brings me to point number two: They're doing what they do well at the best they've ever done it. The song grabs your attention the second the distorted guitars kick in, and doesn't let up until the nearly twelve minutes has passed. Being the opening track of the album, it sets up the story very well, and does great at tapping into one's emotions. My main qualm with The Moor is nothing against the song itself, it just was my first Opeth song. Though Opeth has a fantastic catalogue, nothing ever quite reaches the heights that this song does. Still Life is an absolute classic of an album, and is a must here for anyone who is remotely interested in either Metal, Progressive Rock, or both. I implore anyone to at least give one of their more longer tracks a chance. Progressive music is progressive for a reason; it's constantly changing. The song you hear at the beginning of a track may be something else entirely by the end of it. Rating: 5/5 Recomended tracks: The Moor Godhead's Lament Moonlapse Vertigo
Great review Gibs. It was you that made me check out Opeth and they are one of my favorite bands now - so thanks for that. Still Life is close to a perfect record for me, while I think their overall sound and production reached its peak with Blackwater Park, I still think that Still Life has the better songwriting and concept/story behind it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- La Dispute - Wildlife Released: October 4, 2011 "It's there in the stories, or whatever they are. You can see it. Anybody could if they could Look. I wrote some notes in the margins explaining it. The rest is in between lines or in the fine Print. First, the feeling of abandonment, then trying to cope. Then death and hope and the thing Itself, waiting for me. It's all there in the pages ahead of here. It's there waiting for you. Or for me. I'm not sure. The whole story." Genre/Style: Post-hardcore, progressive rock, spoken word --> (also includes) blues and folk. One of the biggest bands from the "New Wave" of post-hardcore. Concept: In the vision of the band the album is a collection of unpublished "short stories" from a hypothetical author, complete with the author's notes, and sectioned thematically by the use of four monologues. The stories are told in parallel to the author's own ambiguous loss and struggle, and the lyrics are a combination of Dreyer's(lead singer) fictional stories and his interactions in life, including true stories from La Dispute's home town, Grand Rapids. The four monologues in question project the loss and the struggle of the artist with the introduction 'a Departure', and the three interludes, 'a Letter', 'a Poem' and 'a Broken Jar'. If people are interested in digging deeper into the lyrics on the album(which they should, because there's a lot of things to unpack) I would recommend listening to these "conversations" where the lead singer explain the stories behind each song: [video=youtube;J-lq6sJbMtU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-lq6sJbMtU&list=PLHIh9VivvC0Q-Al_Nwkx4ItRIWMcssdWR[/video] Review: I could go on and on about what each song on the album is about(and how they all connect on a thematic level) but I would probably ruin the experience. To me this album reflects, more than any other record I have heard, the deepest and most desperate of human emotions. The stories told on this album aren't something you will be able to forget - they will stay with you for a long time: (Spoilers) The story of about two religious parents losing their seven-year-old child to cancer(I See Everything): "Before the moment he left he briefly wrested from death, suddenly opened his eyes, said, “I SEE EVERYTHING. I SEE EVERYTHING.”, The story about a drive by shooting that is portrayed in the seven minute monster King Park. The song focuses on inner-city gang culture and follows the perspective of an individual who is engrossed by a drive-by shooting; and also follows how the drive by shooter, plagued by guilt, commits suicide - as he screams: "Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?" And all of these stories are based on real persons'/situations' that the vocalist has met or experienced first hand, which is incredible. The vocalist has a way of presenting these stories with a real sensitivity and melodrama, that may throw some people off. But for me the performance, while being extremely passionate, is only a gateway for these stories to be told. The same goes for the instrumentation, that while being amazing, is used as a backbone to these stories - with a good mix of slow and moody blues rock and post-hardcore influenced crescendos. This album remains one of my favorite albums, and therefore I think rating it will be superfluous. I recommend this record to everyone who loves being emotional invested in an album, and are interested in hearing what horrible things humanity is capable of.
NINE INCH NAILS - WITH TEETH Released May 3, 2005 [thumb]https://audioeclectica.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/36430ed9885892951d4b9acbc126c7d1.jpg[/thumb] ""What if all the world's inside of your head Just creations of your own? Your devils and your gods all the living and the dead And you're really all alone You can live in this illusion You can choose to believe You keep looking but you can't find the woods While you’re hiding in the trees..."" With Teeth is by far Nine Inch Nails' worst studio album, as agreed on by most fans. But does that make it a BAD album? The word "worst" is a very subjective term. It has a connotation of meaning "bad" when, in reality, all it means is it's at the bottom of whatever list of items you are comparing. Austin Rivers is the "worst" player on the LA Clippers roster, but if you were to put him in a pick-up game with casual gym-goers, he would be the "best". Even a molehill can seem like a mountain to an ant. Worst does not mean bad. It CAN mean bad, but again, that depends entirely on the comparisons being made. So, With Teeth. Worst album? Yes. Bad album? Not at all. The first track of With Teeth, All the Love in the World, is easily one of my favorite songs by the band. The interesting percussion and build-up of the song draws you into the apex of the song, which is a vocal polyphony of chaos layered over piano, drums and bass. The back half of the album, Sunspots, The Line Begins to Blur, Beside You in Time, and Right Where It Belongs are a very strong series of songs that close out With Teeth in epic fashion. The B-Sides of the album were fantastic as well, including a reinterpretation of ending track Right Where It Belongs and cut tracks such as Home and Non-Entity. If it were anyone other than Trent Reznor, this would be considered a fantastic album. Most bands would love to include an album of this calibre in their discography. Yet this is the weakest outing Trent has released under this moniker. Why? The problem lies not with With Teeth itself as much as its older (and, as this is a retrospective, younger) siblings. In short? A 3.9 GPA would look disappointing in a sea of 4.0s. At length? Each NIN album has its own set of accolades and opinions swaying fans and critics in their favor. The fun thing about Nine Inch Nails is there really isn't a RIGHT answer to the question "Which is your favorite NIN album?" Pretty Hate Machine brought the sound of industrial to the mainstream audience with an unabashed synthpop treatment. To this day, one of NIN's most breakthrough songs comes from this album in the form of Head Like A Hole. There's an approach to the entirety of the production of that record that makes it incredibly timeless - something you can't say for many albums produced in 1989. Broken, although an EP, showcased the drastic change in sound that came from learning to perform in a live setting. Trent has gone on record as saying he originally considered taking Pretty Hate Machine on the road as a one-man performance. Broken is the direct result of reversing on that decision. NIN's live performances could, to put it mildly, be considered an insane affair. Instruments were frequently destroyed, members of the band were unafraid to punch each other, while still giving an energetic and unforgettable show. The atmosphere of NIN is perfectly captured in this EP with songs such as Wish, another ubiquitous song in the NIN repertoire and Happiness in Slavery. Anyone who knows anything about NIN knows The Downward Spiral. Many call it Trent's masterpiece. His artful use of leitmotifs (the Closer mellotron line at the end of the song appears in several other songs in different forms) and reoccurring lyrics (particular the phrase "nothing can stop me now", seen in Piggy and Ruiner) all fall in line with a concept story that depicts, well, a downward spiral. This culminates in the fantastic finale that is Hurt, which along with Closer are well-known songs to even the most casual fan of the band. Where many call TDS Trent's masterpiece, many more consider The Fragile his magnum opus. This was a sprawling two-disc affair that took leitmotifs to an extreme not seen in the previous album. The piano melody of The Frail is a guitar solo in the title track. The piano ending of We're In This Together comes back in La Mer. The bassline for La Mer comes back for Into the Void. The Great Below features the lyric "and all that could have been", which is the title of a B-Side for that album (coincidentally, the two tracks also share an identical sample of vocal harmonies). I could go on here, but this is still a review of With Teeth. Which, Still aside (and oh how I could go on about Still), leads us to the album this review is supposed to be focused on. With Teeth is very much Trent's opinion on the current state of the alternative rock genre at the time. Let's take a look at what was going on during the early 2000s. Post-grunge was already on its way out by now, and there was an unspoken battle of where alt-rock needed to go, and if it could still survive as a market in its current format. Elephant by the White Stripes, a garage rock/lo-fi affair very struck it huge 2 years prior to With Teeth. On the other side, you had polished efforts in the alt-rock scene with albums like Hot Fuss by the Killers. Queens of the Stone Age brought their spin on the stoner rock of the Western US. American Idiot by Green Day repopularized the idea of political anthems. X&Y by Coldplay solidified that pianos could in fact find a place on radio stations like KROQ. Nu-Metal had come and gone like a flash in the pan, giving rise (and fall, to an extent) to bands such as KoRn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and Deftones. The rise of social media and widespread use of the internet brought a new generation of talent that came with homegrown fanbases or unconventional but unique styles. These are your MySpace bands, Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy. Your virtual bands, like the Gorillaz. Your unlikely progressive uprisings in the form of the Mars Volta. Suffice to say, the genre was expanding into new territory while also retreading into older, previously explored expanses of sound. What is With Teeth in all this? Well, all of them, really. There's a little bit of each in this NIN record, from the lo-fi sound in Getting Smaller to the super-polished sound of Every Day Is Exactly The Same. The Hand That Feeds is your political anthem. All the Love in the World (and the entire album in general) makes heavy use of pianos. Only has a very rap-like delivery in the verses, similar to that first single Down In It from Pretty Hate Machine. Aside from sound, Trent's strong internet presence meant that fans were constantly getting previous in the form of Q&As, art-in-progress, and pictures from the studio that you'd be just as likely to see from the MySpace generation. What this all amounts to is a statement of relevancy. That yes, Nine Inch Nails, at that point in time a lengthy 16-year-old entity was still around and could still kick it with the big bands of that era. That Trent Reznor, now drug-free and sober, could still write music. And With Teeth very clearly delivered that message. It's no surprise that were no less than five covers of NIN songs within a mere 2 years after the release of WT, from the likes of groups such as metalcore band Still Remains, Flyleaf, and future touring mates Dillinger Escape Plan. NIN was still big and meant a lot to many people. So how does all of this factor into the weak reception of the album from NIN fans? Very easily, in fact. Take into account the very clear direction of the previous NIN albums. There is always a succinct theme or sound that can be found in each album. With Teeth did not benefit from such direction. The best comparison one can make of WT is that of a mixtape. It's an interesting collection of great songs, but that's it: a collection of great songs. Nothing more, nothing less. NIN albums have a way of being more than the sum of the parts. If a new listener were to ask any seasoned NIN fan where to start with Nine Inch Nails, the answers would vary, sure. But the one common thread of all of them is that they would give an ALBUM, not a specific song. These are meant to be experienced as a whole. With Teeth is very much a singular affair due to its varying sound and quality. Very rarely do you see someone recommend With Teeth as a whole. Usually you get 3-4 song recommendations from the album, and a list of what songs to avoid like the plague. That is how a NIN fan works, for the most part. Because as mentioned earlier, everyone has their favorite. The Broken fanatic probably won't enjoy Beside You in Time or Only. The PHM fan won't be as into Getting Smaller or You Know What You Are? And that multi-faceted approach to music is eventually what earned WT my respect. It showed that Trent could do whatever he wanted, within the confines of what alt-rock was in the early-to-mid 2000s and still be unmistakably Trent Reznor. Despite your opinions on Song X or Song Z, you can't deny that each song on there is very much Nine Inch Nails. It may not be your particular BRAND of Nine Inch Nails, but it's NIN regardless. I've taken to using this album as my go-to recommendation for anyone willing to discover NIN for the first time. It has a wide range of colors to choose from, and based on their overall thoughts and what appealed to them, it becomes easier to make more specific recommendations. With Teeth. Strong mix of songs. Not necessarily an album the way most NIN albums are, but a strong outing nonetheless. Is it still the "worst" album of the lot? Absolutely. But it's not bad by any means. Final Verdict: 4/5
That was a fantastic review Minus. Props. The argument could be made that Blackwater Park is the superior album, and if one looked at it objectively, it probably is, since the music there is a bit more varied. Still Life reigns on top for me because of its fantastically pulled off concept / story. The songwriting is absolutely impeccable.
A revival started in the early 2000's. In the midst of the nu-metal, another sort of movement began, as the likenesses of Joy Division, Bauhaus, Talking Heads and others were coming back in the form of young, new, promising bands – a happening we now call the post-punk revival. New York City's Interpol were one of these bands, and it was clear from the very beginning that they were a group of astonishing quality, their debut album Turn On the Bright Lights becoming an instant favourite of contemporary music critics and making it to many an end-of-the-year top 10 list. The following is my own interpretation of why the album has deserved this treatment, because, yes, this is very much a positive review. High, tender notes of the electric guitar drenched in delay open "Untitled", and thereby the album. They set the tone for both. A sense of loss engulfs the song; sadness, sorrow, guilt, injustice, the beauties and wonders of the world, the hidden feelings and the shared, love and hatred and the actions of everyone who has ever lived... yet despite the sense of loss, despite the sense of sorrow, a mesmerizing vocal performance delivers lyrics that are so brief, so bleak as the song itself, but hopeful, positive, even... playful. Surprise, sometimes, will come around; I will surprise you sometimes, I'll come around – when you're down. As Eric Carr of Pitchfork so eloquently puts it: The words are plaintive yet assertive, in agreement with the unsteady warble of the background, and they set the tone for an album that is equally paradoxical – often bleak, but surprisingly uplifting. Each of the album's eleven tracks evoke raw, unsettling need suffused with delicate serenity. It can be difficult to absorb this much emotional relentlessness, as Banks unflinchingly confronts you with it at all times, but it's precisely this challenge that makes this record so staggering. Now that the untitled opener has gotten the record started, "Obstacle 1" gets it going. Whilst confronting the listener with more of Daniel Kessler's haunting signature guitar style, it introduces the other main components of a standard Interpol song: sharp, rolling, snare-heavy drumming, a never-still, rhythmic yet melodic bass guitar, Banks' desperate yet determined vocal delivery, with the entire band delivering highly memorable melodies carried by the abstract, odd but poetic lyrics which, with Interpol, are always a given, though it is not hard to deduce that the many troubles of love are not seldom what they speak of. Oh, it's up to me now; turn on the bright lights, echoes the characteristic tenor-bordering baritone of Paul Banks over a tremolo-picked guitar and an especially driving drum beat in the confessional ballad that follows, its title "NYC" a play on words the acronym for the city, actually standing for its chorus line, New York cares. The album is now on. You, the listener, are waist-deep in the black, bittersweet, sticky sea of Interpol. Around you is darkness and reminiscence, and you love it. Well, I hope it is so. If not, listen to the album over and over until you feel like so. If you never do, god, I am sorry. After the sharpness of the harsh/sweet "PDA", "Say Hello to the Angels" sends you in a swift march, bringing in parts a rap-like delivery from Banks. Yet like "PDA", the song is a shape-shifter and will never hold still, with the unsettledness that first seems to make it barely finding its way to the outro, when the command of the title is delivered. Say hello to those god damned angels. The shortest of the album, three-minute "Hands Away" is also the quietest, and one of the most haunting. To make sure its somber melodies don't put you to sleep, the bold beginning of "Obstacle 2" is sure to catch your attention, with Banks' statement-like lyrics and delivery accompanied by nothing but a guitar. The song proves to be another affair of upbeat mastery from the band. How is this album a debut?! "Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down" is the best song you shall ever hear about oral sex, period. I shan't say more of it. "Roland" marks the beginning of the end of Bright Lights. It is as if every component of the song is fighting for the spotlight, whether it's Paul's distorted vocal, Kessler's riffs, Dengler's dirnts or Fogarino's urgent thumping, with an especially memorable instrumental loop during the chorus. The song is followed by "The New", the penultimate track on the record's tracklisting. The impression of undoubtedly one of the most beautiful songs on the album is upheld by the very smooth vocal performance from Banks, contrasting the digital crookedness of its "Roland" counterpart. Halfway through the song, a breakdown ensues, and the lyrics prove to be a very insightful portrayal of uncertainty and indecisiveness, howling over the wordless emotion the guitars carry so sharply over a splendid bassline. The exactly four-minute-long "Leif Erikson" marks the end of the reverb-drenched journey, and is suitably dark, ponderous, and beautiful, with Banks once again proving himself a genius of metaphor. Now, what makes this album so great? To start with, the band radiates certainty. It is as if a mistake is out of their reach; they are on-point all of the time. Nothing is out of place, there isn't one moment on the album that I, at least, could point out to you and say "they didn't really know what to do there," or "they should have done it this way instead, would have been better." Each of the songs, instrumentally and lyrically, is either perfect, or very damn close to it. Also, this album takes me to a place. It's a place I love to be; it's sort of my spiritual haven. It's hard to define, but music is one of the things that brings me there, and Interpol do it with every album; when I was counting up all of those things when describing "Untitled", or when I was mentioning a black sea, darkness and reminiscence, I was talking about that place. I know this may seem odd, but it really is something I feel, and something that, hell, I maybe even live for. 9/10