The Batlord

Eat **** and die. I could swear I remember liking Angry Machines, but I can't remember what it sounds like TBH. But Strange Highways is ****ing sick. Right along with Black Sabbath's Dehumanizer it's a totally underrated and heavy-as-**** album. Kill yourself.

And either the album or the title track, but I think you'd love the album.

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Trollheart

Title: “Breaking the silence”
Format: Album track
Written by: ?
Performed by: Heathen
Genre: Thrash Metal
Taken from: Breaking the Silence
Year: 1987
Acclaim: n/a

Well, as nobody but Batty suggested tracks I may as well do his first. Not surprisingly, it's a Metal one, though he says I should like it. Interestingly, I see the album is produced by the one and only Ronnie Montrose! But what about this track? Good energetic start (I'm going to try not to use the IM comparison) then the whole thing speeds up and the vocal cuts in, sounds a little raw but understandable. Great guitar work, and it alternates between slow, grinding riffs and fast slick breaks. Smoking solo there. My only complaint would be that they don't sound very different, though in fairness this is thrash metal; but it's hard to see Heathen stamping any kind of individual identity on at least this track. Very competent though.

Things I like about this :

1. The guitar riffs
2. The overall energy
3. The alternating between fast riffs and slow grinding

Things I don't like about this:

1. A little generic; could be any thrash or speed metal band
2.

Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “Silence and I”
Format: Album track
Written by: Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons
Performed by: The Alan Parsons Project
Genre: Art Rock, Prog Rock
Taken from: Eye in the Sky
Year: 1982
Acclaim: n/a, though this album was their biggest selling ever. Which I readily admit is not saying much.

If you ask someone about The Alan Parsons Project, they may be able to quote the title track to this album, or possibly “Old and wise”, but the fact is that if you attended a sports event in the US, especially if you're a Chicago Bulls fan (they play something called “American Football”? ) you're likely to have heard the opening track from the album, an instrumental called “Sirius”. This may have contributed to the album's sales, along with the relative success of the singles, however this is the longest track on the album at over seven minutes, and deserves to be better known than it is.

Opening on a soft piano track, it soon ushers in the soft gentle voice of the late Eric Woolfson, and you get the feeling this is a ballad. You'd be right. More or less. Halfway through it metamorphoses into an uptempo instrumental which utilises the trademark APP sound and pulls in elements from previous album Pyramid's “Pyramania”. It's a bit weird, and you have to assume the guys were searching for an instrumental idea to sandwich in between the two halves of the ballad and landed on the idea of resurrecting the midsection of that track. It kind of works, though it's confusing, and to be fair, the song would be half as long and would survive just as well without it. But it is, as they say, what it is.

We end then as we began, with a guitar solo fading away into the reprise of the ballad and out to fade. It's a lovely song, but I do feel that the ideas are a little mixed, if not actually confused on it, and without question it's longer than it needs to be.

Things I like about this :

1. Piano intro
2. Woolfson's vocal
3. Orchestral APP motif
4. Lyrical content

Things I don't like about this:

1. Confusing fast instrumental midsection
2. The fact that it's rehashed from an older song



Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “Enjoy the silence”
Format: Single
Written by: Martin Gore
Performed by: Depeche Mode
Genre: Electronic/Pop
Taken from: Violator
Year: 1990
Acclaim: Top ten in most territories, including US and UK

Just shows you: I could have sworn this was a single from the eighties, but the internet, she don' lie, and apparently I've been corrected. Depeche Mode were another of those, to be unkind, puff bands I hated when I was young. Peer pressure, sure: everyone was into rock and nobody wanted to be listening to, or accused of listening to, pansy synth pop bands, but that's not the point: I wasn't pressured into ignoring a band I liked. I never liked Depeche Mode, same as I never liked Duran Duran or Human League or basically any band that could not be called a rock band, using my own narrow definition. I could not say whether I still hate them, and given that my experience of them was and is limited to their hit singles, maybe they're worth getting more into. I did find something lurking within Gary Numan's music – music I had always despised and reviled – when I reviewed a trio of his albums back in 2013. But I'm unlikely to do this with Depeche Mode. I'm just not that interested.

I always found them to be very dour, even on uptempo songs like “Just can't get enough”. Something about Dave Gahan's voice always seemed to me to be devoid of emotion, rather like (I thought, and still do, to a lesser extent) Mr. Numan. But this song is at its heart a love song, with the singer glorying in the fact that he is alone with his lover and no words are needed; they can enjoy the silence. But it contains what I used to think of as, and still do mostly, the cold, soulless, blank synth line that seemed to cut through every song of this type of band. It has to do with the way the synth players played, too: I seldom saw one who seemed to be enjoying himself. They seemed to push the keys, looking ahead with what looked like dead eyes, emotionless, as if they were bored, or above their audience. I'm sure it was all part of the image, but it annoyed me. I want to see my musicians enjoy themselves, y'know?

Anyway, there's no getting away from the fact that it's a good song, very powerful if still what I consider lacking in emotion considering it's a love song, and it was covered by Lacuna Coil at one point, so that can't be bad. Not my type of music, certainly, but this one is a stayer.

Things I like about this :

1. The basic melody
2. The lyric
3. The keyboard run later in the song
4. Outro

Things I don't like about this:

1. Goddamn puff bands!
2. Devoid of emotion, to me
3. The pointless acapella bit at the very end after the fade.


Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “Don't speak”
Format: Single
Written by: Gwen Stefani and Eric Stefani
Performed by: No Doubt
Genre: Alt-Rock
Taken from: Tragic Kingdom
Year: 1996
Acclaim: Number one just about everywhere, No Doubt's most successful single

Who doesn't know this song? The single I guess that, with the album Tragic Kingdom catapulted singer Gwen Stefani to international solo stardom, and charts the demise of her relationship with a fellow band member. It's a lovely little ballad played on soft guitar, with probably the bitterest edge I've heard in a long time on a ballad. The verses are gentle, even twee in their own way, but the chorus punches a hole of reality right through the fantasy, and there's real anger there. The idea in the song that she doesn't want to hear his excuses, the reasons why he's breaking up with her, probably resonate with everyone who has ever broken up with their lover and feels shocked betrayed and sad all at once.

Things I like about this :

1. Deceptively soft intro
2. The classical guitar passage
3. The fact that it's the story of a real breakup

Things I don't like about this:

Nothing really


Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “The sound of silence”
Format: Single
Written by: Paul Simon
Performed by: Simon and Garfunkel
Genre: Folk rock
Taken from: Wendesday Morning 3 AM
Year: 1964/1965
Acclaim: One of the most loved Simon and Garfunkel songs, indeed one of the most loved songs of all time. A total failure first time out, it hit number one after being remixed and re-released (hence the two recording dates), and is seen as such an important song that it is part of the Library of Congress's collection in the National Recording Registry, an honour given few songs and fewer artistes. The success of the single made stars of the duo and ensured their second album was received with far more favour than their debut, which had initially flopped.

Again, who cannot know this song? It's part of the human culture now, with its soft acoustic intro backed by the pair in harmony, then the slight trip of percussion as it takes off very slightly, but always remains a restrained, low-key song, though Simon's vocal gets more impassioned as he tries to reason with the crowd in his dream. No point in me describing it; if you for some mad reason have never heard it, make it your business immediately. One of the most important songs of any generation.

Things I like about this :

Ah, everything. What's not to like?

Things I don't like about this:

Nothing. It's perfection.


Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “The silent sun”
Format: Single
Written by: Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford
Performed by: Genesis
Genre: Folk Rock
Taken from: From Genesis to Revelation
Year: 1968
Acclaim: None, unless you count that it was Genesis's first ever single. And it bombed like a good one.

Anyone who has read my history of prog rock journal recently will have seen my review of the first Genesis album, and that I'm a little scathing of their fusion of folk rock and hippy-dippy shit on it. It's nothing like later albums, and for this I mostly blame Jonathan King, but never mind that. Although there are far better tracks on the album, King in his wisdom seemed to think that this would be a good single to release from it. Listen to it and you'll understand why he quickly dissociated himself from the band and went on to become such a successful kiddy-fiddler two decades later. Awful. But significant I suppose in that it first introduced us to (inflicted us with, some would say!) the band which would go on to take prog rock to the heights it eventually rose to, and when it fell like the proverbial Plant, Page, Bonham and Jones, jump overboard and catch a ride on the passing ship the SS Pop Crap.

Things I like about this :

1. It was the first Genesis single. That's it.

Things I don't like about this:

Everything else. It's nothing like the Genesis I came to worship. Bah.


Rating:

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Trollheart

Title: “Quietus (Silent reverie)"
Format: Single
Written by: Simone Simons, Mark Jansen, Coen Janssen, Yves Huts, Jereon Simons and Ad Sluijter
Performed by: Epica
Genre: Symphonic Metal
Taken from: Consign to Oblivion
Year: 2005
Acclaim: n/a

I always go back and forth with Epica. While I can respect the connection with Kamelot, their music often seems very formulaic and over-dramatic. What? Says Batty: surely not! Symphonic Metal, formulaic? To which I say, haven't you a Kesha poster to rub up against? But Epica's usage of mezzo-soprano female vocal juxtaposed against male growls and grunts seldom works for me, and it does make many of their songs a little, shall we say, predictable? Still, if you're into Symphonic Metal, that's what you have to expect I guess.

This starts kind of as you might expect, a Celtic style reel or whatnot, then the voice of Simone Simons joined by the Epica choir (look it up) but so far no growls. I'm sure they're on the way though: been a while since I listened to this. It's relatively short for an Epica song (clue is in the band name, guys!) clocking in at less than four minutes, and it has a nice driving rhythm that's not too dramatic, as their songs often end up being guilty of. Good instrumental section, with the Epica orchestra (yeah, they have one of those too!) in fine form. Oh look at that! No growls. Boss.

Things I like about this :

1. Good vocals from Simone
2. Good but not overblown effort from the choir
3. The orchestra works well without taking over the tune
4. No male growls
5. Celtic sort of feel to it

Things I don't like about this:

1. Nothing. I was going to say growls, but growls there are none, so Trollheart is happy.


Rating:

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The Batlord

You didn't forget "Silent Lucidity", right?

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The Batlord

Find me another pop star who sounds like Ke$ha and I'll suck your dick.

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