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03-31-2012, 05:47 PM
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#1092 (permalink) | |
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Horribly Creative
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: London, The Big Smoke
Posts: 8,265
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Page 10/11
I See you like Jadis and have been meaning to listen to them again. I also like the sound of Silent Edge, Narnia and Glass Tiger!!! Thanks for reminding me about Glass Tiger, had long forgotten about them and want to listen to them again. Tygers of Pan Tang- Spellbound is one of my favs from the NWOBHM (thanks to John Deverill and John Sykes who were missing from the debut) and it had the perfect marriage of the elements that made up the TOPT sound. The debut though, is I supppose a basic one trick pony which is let down by poor instrumentals and Jess Cox's poor singing. I really don't feel it was worth your time and effort to review it.  Tiamat- I love your taste more and more, I used to go on about this band on the forum and it largely went unnoticed, on Wildhoney and A Deeper Kind of Slumber they really pushed metal boundaries and when the band moved out of metal territory proper, they still kept their style and Judas Christ is a great album, despite it getting a terrible review. ZZ Top- Eliminator the album where the bearded ones embraced AOR and added synths and boy did they do it well, this album is so polished and as you said thooooose videos full of slick cars and those chicks in mini skirts  Most people on the forum are probably too young to know just how hip ZZ Top were at this time. Not many bands could transform themselves as well as ZZ Top did at that time, from a boogie blues outfit into a slick sounding AOR outfit.Noticed you reviewd Berlin, I used to have that album too. Ric Ocasek- Quick Change World and Negative Theater what a muddle with those two! I wished it could have been released how Ric wanted it to be released and we may have salvaged something there. Now Troubalizing is one of the great Ric Ocasek releases and even better than Fireball Zone. You can see Ric Ocasek really went for broke on here and really made the effort. The album is guitar heavier than some of the previous stuff and Billy Corgan's input has helped Ric Ocasek immensely, this was probably one of the best releases of 1997. YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS ALBUM. Next time I'll look at rest of page 11 and 12, and also for certain pt.2 of NWOBHM finally.
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Power Metal Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History |
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04-01-2012, 06:12 AM
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#1093 (permalink) | ||||||
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,994
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Glass Tiger I got into on hearing the single "Don't forget me when I'm gone" and assuming it to be Bryan Adams. I was actually looking for the album that's on, "The thin red line", but no-one seemed to have it. Later on I found "Diamond sun" and decided to give it a go. Glad I did! Another band who seem to have faded away sadly. Quote:
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Ric Ocasek- Quick Change World and Negative Theater what a muddle with those two! I wished it could have been released how Ric wanted it to be released and we may have salvaged something there. Quote:
Next time I'll look at rest of page 11 and 12, and also for certain pt.2 of NWOBHM finally.[/QUOTE]
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04-01-2012, 11:44 AM
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#1096 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,994
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Okay, well I'm not one to turn down a recommendation, even if one of the two didn't pan out, for me at least. Having been advised by several people who should know, that Bon Iver's self-titled was well worth listening to, I did. I was, as you'll see from the review, less than impressed. Though I didn't hate the album --- nothing like it --- I was not blown away in the manner I had been expecting to be. Perhaps that was just me, building the album up so much through the opinions and enthusiasm of others, to be so much more than it turned out to be. I would not say it was a total disappointment, and I may listen to it again sometime, but to borrow a phrase used when I was growing up, which probably no-one but an Irish person of my age or older will understand, it didn't change my mind about margarine!
Nevertheless, a rec is a rec and as I say I'm not going to assume that if one doesn't impress me that the other(s) will fare similarly badly. I've been told that this is an album I should listen to, and although I acquired it a little while ago, things have been so busy that it's only now I realise it's been sitting on my hard drive unlistened to. So today I'm going to right (and write!) that wrong, and see if “Bon Iver” was a hiccup, and if I really have missed out on something good by not listening to this artiste before. Metals --- Feist --- 2011 (Arts and Crafts Productions)  The fourth album from Canadian singer/songwriter Leslie Feist, who goes under her surname professionally, “Metals” slipped it at the number seven slot in the US charts, earned its creator a nomination for a Brit Award, was named best album of 2011 twice, and has already been certified platinum. Interestingly, it seems there is a link with the aforementioned Bon Iver, as they are opening for her on some of her concerts. Opening track “The bad in each other” starts with clomping percussion then piano and a whole lot of weird instruments, most of which I don't recognise. Feist is apparently known for using “natural” or “organic” instruments, so could be anything I guess. There are things like viola, cello, various horns, something called a euphonium as well as synth, bass, guitar and so on used in the album, so hard to know exactly what's being played. This is a sort of mid-paced song, with accompanying vocals from Bry Webb which complement Feist's own, and some nice guitar work and piano with a great horn burst near the end. Kind of puts in me mind of some of the earlier work of Neil Hannon on the Divine Comedy. “Graveyard” is carried on acoustic guitar and piano, with a forlorn vocal from Feist, some Waits-style backing organ, a much slower song with sort of muted percussion, an almost ethereal feel about it. There are only four tracks of the twelve she does not write herself, and on those four she collaborates. This is one of those four. Nice horn section at the end, very funereal, which of course fits in well with the theme of the song, but then the music comes up in a more optimistic vein, with a high, lilting, sort of chant from Feist and backing vocalists. There's a very folk guitar sound about “Caught a long wind”, with some ghostly piano and synth, which settles into a low-key piano line that accompanies her on another collaboration, then soft violin and some sort of bell sounds slip in, fading back out quickly as the piano takes up the melody again, getting a little stronger as the song develops. A really effective string section then, with violins, viola and cellos, the percussion then kicking in a bit more, almost like slow handclaps, the song fading out on a lonely horn note, and we're into “How come you never go there”, with a bit of a jazz-like beat, guitar a bit more to the fore than it has been up to now. Even at that, it's a fairly low-key song and it soon gives way to the more electric-based “A commotion”, with a sense of building tension in the melody and also in Feist's vocal. Somewhat blindsided by the almost punk-style shouts of the title then by the male backing vocalists; just seems to come out of nowhere. It also doesn't help that it sounds like they're shouting “locomotion”, which conjures up images of a young dancing Kylie! Can't really say I liked that. There's an electric piano foundation to “The circle married the line”, kind of Carly Simon-ish, but I'm sorry to report that at this point we're halfway in and I'm getting bored. It's not that the songs aren't good, or that Feist isn't a good singer, it's just this is not interesting me. Maybe it's just not the kind of music I prefer. Nothing wrong with the album I'm sure, but I'm starting to feel that it's not for me. Becoming a little bit of a struggle to get through it now, which is never a good thing. Of course, I have reviewed albums before that seemed to be going nowhere and suddenly came to life with a late spurt right at the end, so I'll continue listening. I have never yet cut a review short, and I'm semi-professional enough to ensure that never happens. But... “Bittersweet melodies” is another nice, laidback, harmless ballad with some nice instrumentation, the trouble I think being that I can't find anything different, interesting or attention-grabbing in any of the tracks I've listened to so far. There's some lovely violin and cello here, yes, but it's not enough to mark out this song from the six that have preceded it, and I feel a cold certainty that the five still to come will be similarly unremarkable. And the next one is the longest! At five and a half minutes, I have to say I'm not looking forward in eager anticipation to “Anti-pioneer”, and indeed it's slow, lazy, low-key and, well, sorry, but it's boring. I would actually equate the lack of enjoyment I'm getting from this album to the experience I had listening to Dido's “No angel”; although they are different singing styles and genres, there's a fair bit of common ground between the two singers. And I'm as bored now as I was then. A really nice sax break halfway in and some interesting guitar, but they're just flashes in what I'm seeing as a grey sea of tedium, and I don't like to admit this. I don't want to put any artiste down, and every time I press play on an album I haven't heard before I'm hoping to be, if not gushing praise, at least saying positive things about the album or artiste. I hate having to pan something, or admitting it's not what I had hoped it would be, but then, honesty is the bedrock upon which music journalism --- mine, at least --- is founded, and the cornerstone, to carry the analogy further than it has any right to be carried, upon which this journal is built. If I'm not honest, if you're not reading my true, unvarnished, sincere beliefs about what I listen to and review, then I may as well not be writing them. So, hard as it is to say, to this point at any rate “Metals” is getting a big thumbs down from me. Maybe it's that there's too much downbeat, slow, almost dour music on it. I don't know. At least “Undiscovered first” attempts to break out of this constricting mould by hitting out with some heavy drumming and some guitar which, if not actually angry, is certainly a little miffed. Feist's voice even rises a bit so that it doesn't seem like she's just singing in her bedroom, a form that annoys and frustrates me. The horns are kind of the saviour the album has, if it's going to be saved: they come in at just the right time and in the right measure, and they lift the whole thing out of what I perceive as the general gloom surrounding the music. This track, in fact, breaks out in an almost Suzi Quatro-style rocker, though still retaining Feist's restraint enough that you're in no danger of tapping your foot or your fingers, or whatever part of you you normally move to music. Still, it's a start. Maybe. Back we go to acoustic guitars and low-key singing for “Cicadas and gulls”, and the initial enthusiasm engendered in me by the previous track crashes to earth. It's a nice song, but maybe that's the problem. The album seems to consist of nice songs, songs that don't shout or get angry or protest, and whereas obviously not everyone has something to protest about, or wants to do so in their music, it's nice to hear a bit of energy, a bit of life in songs, and these are, pretty much almost totally, far too restrained and low-key for me. It slips into the very folk ballad “Comfort me”, as I fight to keep my eyes open... well, not literally. But I am fighting to try to keep some level of interest, and try to pick out any good points to report. Okay, well that's at least a surprise. Halfway through this kicks into some sort of life, with thumping drums and harder guitar, good strong backing vocals and even Feist's own voice getting a little more animated, but still, at this point it's a little hard to care. I'm just waiting for the closer now, and as “Get it wrong, get it right” shows me the way out, I can really only feel a sense of relief that this album is now over. Perhaps that's harsh, as the closer does seem to be a pretty decent little song, but any possibility of enjoyment I had from this album has been leeched away by the droning, uninteresting and quite frankly annoying voice of Leslie Feist. Again, I know I'm in the minority, given the general acclaim the album has got, but then, this is my opinion and my review, and if you just wanted to hear your own opinions regurgitated you would most likely not be reading this journal. If you're a regular reader, you know by now that I speak my mind; regardless of what ninety-nine people have said about an album being great, if I'm the hundreth to review it and I don't like it, I'll always say so. May make me seem the eternal pessimist, may make me look like a perfectionist, may upset or anger some people, but hey, that's me. Honesty is my currency, and I ain't buying this. Well, I did, but you know what I mean... TRACKLISTING 1. The bad in each other 2. Graveyard 3. Caught a long wind 4. How come you never go there 5. A commotion 6. The circle married the line 7. Bittersweet melodies 8. Anti-pioneer 9. Undiscovered first 10. Cicadas and gulls 11. Comfort me 12. Get it wrong, get it right
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04-02-2012, 09:04 AM
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#1098 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,994
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 Not one of the big hits or even better known tracks from the album, the worm still really likes this, from Dire Straits' classic album, “Brothers in arms”, this is “The man's too strong”.
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04-02-2012, 11:33 AM
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#1099 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,994
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 Yay! The Beast is back! Well, on the road, at least. While it's generally accepted that no live Iron Maiden album will ever come close to the seminal “Live after death” --- an opinion I can't back up, as I, to my eternal shame, have never listened to it --- it's nice to see a new Maiden live offering. It's been three years since the last one --- more a documentary set to music than an actual live offering, and concentrating mostly on the older material, mainly from “Somewhere in time”, “Powerslave” and “Number of the Beast” --- and four years for the one before that, so perhaps we're due a new live album from the boys. En vivo! --- Iron Maiden --- 2012 (EMI)  Released as both a double CD and a DVD, “En vivo!” --- which in case your Spanish is really bad and you can't figure it out is “live” in Spanish --- is part live concert, part documentary (what they refer to as a “video record”) of “The final frontier” tour, filmed almost exactly a year ago in Santiago, Chile. The DVD comes with the documentary and other features of course, but here we're just concentrating on the music that fills the two CDs. And a pretty representative selection it is, albeit weighted heavily with material from the last album, as you would expect. It opens with the first track off “The final frontier”, the fairly epic “Satellite 15 … The final frontier”, although here it's split into two separate tracks. As an introduction it's not the worst, though there are better tracks to have started on I believe, but then if this is the tour for that album then I suppose they would be expected to open with the track that starts the album. For me, Bruce's voice is a little low in the mix, just here at any rate, something which hopefully will be addressed and corrected as the album moves on. I'm used to the Maiden frontman's voice commanding and controlling the performance, and indeed as the first part ends and the title track gets going you can hear him more, his voice stronger, but even at that, it's not as to the fore as I would prefer. The crowd (50,000-strong, apparently) respond as you would expect, chanting “The final frontier” along with Bruce in ecstasy and admiration, while Janick Gers, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray do their thing on the triple guitar attack, Nicko kicking the crap out of his drumkit while Steve keeps a steady, even hand on the other half of the rhythm section. It's his humming bass that kicks in another track off “The final frontier”, the rockin' “El Dorado”, and it's clear Bruce is enjoying himself as they segue directly into the first track not off the last album, “Two minutes to midnight” from “Powerslave”, which is great to hear, even if Bruce gets the year wrong in his introduction! It's a track that really benefits from more and more guitars, and the boys definitely pile it on. One thing about singing live I guess is that sometimes you can just let the audience get on with it and essentially sit back, and for parts of this song that's just what Dickinson does. The audience enthusiastically sings the chorus, where at times Bruce's voice seems just a little ragged. Of course,at this point they had been almost a year on the road, so it's not a huge surprise when he sounds a little worn out at times. His constant cries of “Scream for me Chile!” get a little wearing: this is only the fourth track and I've already heard him say it about six times. Small quibbles though; it is unintentionally funny though when, at the end of the song, he roars “You sing it!” and the crowd stays completely silent! Oops! We're back to the current album then for “The talisman”, with a nice gentle guitar opening, which fools no-one, not even those who may not have heard “The final frontier”: we know a Maiden ballad is about as rare as an honest bank chairman, and indeed it soon explodes into life, though I have to say Bruce's voice does sound much better here, stronger and more authoritative as he competes with only the lone guitar and bass. It remains to be seen whether we can still hear him when the rest of the band power into life. Well, in fairness, yes, he does keep up with them and this is more like the Bruce Dickinson I know and love: he's powerful, strong, commanding and charismatic as he yells above the music and there's no argument as to who's in control here. “The talisman” is a great rocker, something of a slowburner that suddenly pumps up the volume and tempo, and you'll shake a good head to this no question. One of the “new generation” of Maiden songs, it's a long one, almost nine minutes, and indeed one of the better tracks on “The final frontier”, plenty to get excited about. Not so much in the way of crowd participation in this, not surprisingly, as it's really just a case of headbanging and playing your air guitar, and again some in the audience may only just be getting into the “new” album, as I really only heard them singing along to the previous track, and for the opener they just chanted the name. “Coming home” is another offering from that album, a slower cruncher than the previous, with on-the-road keyboardist Michael Kenney adding his own flourishes and embellishments to Maiden's guitar-centric music. There's great power and passion in this song, which probably attained even greater poignancy when they played Knebworth a few months later. There's only the one track from “Dance of death” (and none at all, surprisingly, from the album previous to “The final frontier”, 2006's “A matter of life and death”) and it's the title, but it seems to go down a storm with the crowd, who go into raptures when the voiceover announces ”There are more things in Heaven and Earth/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy!” and the opening guitar chords from “Dance of death” echo around the Estadio Nacional. Bruce outdoes himself on this, a figure of menace and warning, no doubt striding purposefully across the stage under a huge Eddie (I'll be watching the DVD at a later date, but I don't think this is a bad bet). Cheers ring out around the arena as the “slow bit” comes to an end and almost Irish jig guitar melodies take the song into its heavier, faster sections. I must admit, I would have expected something like “Paschendale”, or certainly the standout “Journeyman”, if only as an encore, but they choose not to include these tracks, or at least not on the discs. Nonetheless, this is a great track and again gives the “three amigos” room and scope to shine as we know they can on their combined guitar work. The problems, as such, with the vocals have now been well and truly ironed out, and it's full steam ahead as we power into “The trooper”, one of three tracks included from what must be seen as their most famous, successful and favourite album, “The number of the Beast”. One of the biggest cheers of the night goes up for this well-known and loved standard, and you can just feel the buzz around the stadium, fifty thousand heads shaking side to side, fifty thousand shoulders jumping up and down, arms around each other as each tries to outdo the other on air guitar and headbanging, lots of cries of “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!” rising up into the warm night air (well, it's South America: it's got to be warm, yeah?) as Maiden counterbalance the longer, more progressive tunes of recent years with a lookback to their earlier, heavy but shorter and snappier songs like this and “The wicker man”, up next. One of only two tracks from what is seen by many, myself included, as their comeback album, 2000's “Brave new world”, it is in fact the opening track, and it's classic Maiden reborn, another big cheer as the familiar guitar chords introduce the song. A delerious crowd chant and singalong ”Your time will come!” although it's quite obvious to anyone listening to, or watching this, that Maiden's time came a long time ago, and it will be an equally long time before it goes, if ever. Pure, honest heavy metal like that which Iron Maiden purvey --- without the need for tags like nu-metal, metalcore, or even classic metal --- is timeless and always welcome wherever rock is appreciated. Bruce and the boys now play with the effortless ease of premiership footballers or winning formula 1 racing drivers: they know they can do their job and do it well; they have little if anything left to prove to anyone, and can just enjoy making their music and having a good time. And when they're having a good time, you can bet the crowd are too! And that's it for disc 1, as the cheers and applause ring around the arena and fade out, taking us into the second track from “Brave new world”, instantly recognised by and picked up on by the crowd, the excellent “Blood brothers”, wherein again Michael Kenney excels on the keyboards. A real “you're one of us/we're one of you” anthem, it's clearly appreciated by the crowd, and then we're into the final track from “The final frontier”, and the longest on this CD. At just over ten and a half minutes, “When the wild wind blows” is ambitious even for Maiden, for whom people used once to shake their heads and ask was “Hallowed be thy name”'s seven-plus minutes a bit long for a metal band? But it's a powerful song, with growling guitars and bass, thunderous, military-style drumming and Bruce at his dark best, and the crowd love it, you can hear that. Let's be honest: for a song that long to keep the attention and get the applause it does at the end is a testament to the fanbase Iron Maiden have, and the reverence with which the band are treated. After that it's all standards, as the powerful steam locomotive that is “The evil that men do” throws down a marker for “Seventh son of a seventh son”, unfortunately the only example from that opus, then the title track from the largely disappointing “Fear of the dark” gets a great reception, Bruce in fine form as he struts and menaces the crowd with no doubt a big evil grin on his features. He even smilingly notes the word “chilly” in the lyric... All the expected classics come then, one after the other, with a few notable exceptions. No “Phantom of the opera”, strangely, with the debut album represented by its title track, still a great song but I would have really liked to have seen “Phantom” in there. Interesting to hear Bruce sing it though, as this is the first time I've heard a post-D'ianno version. Yes, I did see them live in Dublin. Just the once, but they didn't play that song. There's also “Running free” to close, but more of that later. It's time to return to “The number of the Beast”, with the title track sending the crowd into paroxysms of delight and setting light (metaphorically, I hope!) to the whole stadium, the audience even shouting along with the spoken intro, then the familiar chords pounding out and shattering the not-so-still night and leading into what I would see as the climax of the whole gig, my all-time favourite, both from that album and from this band, the unutterably brilliant “Hallowed be thy name”. There is, however, something freakishly surreal about hearing 50,000 heavy metal fans bellowing part of the Lord's Prayer out into the sultry Santiago night! A seven minute-plus version of “Running free” is, for me, an anticlimax and completely unnecessary: I never liked the track originally, so a longer version to close this album is not what I would have hoped for, but there it is. It provides of course an opportunity for Bruce to interact with the audience, introduce the band, the usual thing, with mostly Harris's bass keeping the beat as Bruce tells the ecstatic crowd “Two hours of yellin' and screamin'/ We're just getting' started!” Of course, they're not, as this is the finale, the encore. But that's rock and roll, as they say. Let's be honest, it was not even slightly likely that I was going to have anything bad to say about this album, now was it? Possibly one of the easiest reviews I've done in a while: I loved listening to the album as I wrote about it, and I could even write some in advance, knowing how good the music is. As a slice of Maiden on the road it's a winner, as a selection from their catalogue it could have been better balanced, though as it was the tour to promote “The final frontier” it was expected that that album would form the lion's share of the music. Still, a few better picks would have improved the overall tracklisting. I missed “Run to the hills”, “Can I play with madness” and bad as it was I wouldn't have minded hearing “Angel and the gambler” thrown in there. But of course, this is the case with any live album, or indeed any live gig you go to. The older and more established the band is, the more material they have and consequently the more they have to leave off the set, otherwise they could be playing for four or five hours a night. So inevitably some better songs will get left behind, as the band try to balance the set with old classics, their own favourites and also try to push their new album as much as they can, so there's no hard feelings. But I could have definitely done without “Running free”. Disc one, then, is top-heavy with tracks from “The final frontier”, with a few from earlier albums, while disc two is given over almost exclusively to a sort of whistle-stop tour of their better known classics from a career that spans over forty years now. So if for some reason you didn't like the last album (and why not?) then you could, largely, skip the first disc. But that would be a mistake, take my word for it. This is an album that deserves to be listened to, luxuriated in, experienced to the max. Only that way can you feel something the same as fifty thousand lucky Chileans did one hot April night last year. In the end, all I can say, predictably, is “En vivo? Bravo! Encore!” TRACKLISTING Disc One 1. Satellite 15 2. The final frontier 3. El Dorado 4. Two minutes to midnight 5. The talisman 6. Coming home 7. Dance of death 8. The trooper 9. The wicker man Disc Two 1. Blood brothers 2. When the wild wind blows 3. The evil that men do 4. Fear of the dark 5. Iron Maiden 6. The number of the Beast 7. Hallowed be thy name 8. Running free
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