Trollheart

And here I come with Marillion info!

First, Misplaced Childhood was their third and most commercially successful album and contained their two big hits of the time, "Kayleigh" and "Lavender" (their other was "Sugar Mice" off the next album) so that may be why you recognise the cover. You realise of course that MC is a concept album? That's why all the tracks flow into each other, and it makes it a little difficult to appraise tracks on their own. Still, I'm glad you seem to have enjoyed it. Definitely one of their better ones and the most commercial by a long way.

The singer on that one, and Fugazi, is called Fish (real name Derek Dick) and he lasted with them till the fourth album, whereafter he was replaced by Steve Hogarth, whom you heard on the Made Again album. I don't actually know that one but I see the second side is a full run-through of Brave, their 1994 effort and one of my alltime favourites of theirs, my number being their debut. After Fish left Marillon toned back on much of the progressive rock elements and turned in a more kind of pop/rock direction, which you probably noticed on Made Again. Brave is their darkest album, another concept album, centred this time around child abuse, and well worth looking into.

I'm glad you didn't dismiss them out of hand. Their earlier efforts are very Genesisesque, yes, but I don't mind that. They certainly evolved a little over the span of their career. And yes, Fish comes from the Peter Gabriel/Peter Hammill school of singers.

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MicShazam

I'm checking out some of their Steve Hogarth albums when I come back to Marillion again eventually. They're one of those many bands that seem very familiar to me - like I've heard about them a lot and know their album art and band logo - but somehow I don't really know the music.

I did see Youtube suggest several 'Fish' albums, so now I can see why.

MicShazam

I wrote down the six albums I listened to in a row yesterday so that I could write some notes about them later. Here they are:

Shannon Wright - Dyed in the Wool



I've heard two other albums of her's and they were both great, but this one quite possibly takes the cake. Just an amazing dark, gritty, melancholy vibe going on here. I will compare Wright to PJ Harvey, but I'm starting to think I like Wright better! The melodies, the textures, the song structures, the variety, the instrumentation, the vocals... It's just all so artfully handled and so interesting to listen to. Top drawer material, easily.




Judie Tzuke - Turning Stones



I seem to remember Trollheart saying this was one of his favorite Tzuke albums, and I see why! In some ways it is clearly stylistically different from the three other albums I have before this one (Sportscar, I Am the Phoenix and Shoot the Moon), yet much more in the vein of those than the last album I have (Left Hand Talking).

That latter album is pretty much an adult contemporary styled singer songwriter record, while all the rest are this very melodic style of 80's pop, complete with kinetic drum beats and lots of synths, guitars and bass lines.

Turning Stones feels set apart from the other albums in this style with its much cleaner, smoother production and in simply using different sounds. It somehow feels very much like the sort of thing Judie has done many times before, but at the same time completely fresh and rejuvenated.

Some of these tracks perhaps feel like they're made for a dance floor than anything she's done before.
Check out the first track of the album for an example.

"We'll Go Dreaming":


I'm actually not really into 80's pop, but Judie Tzuke kicks so much ass at this that I love it anyway.

The songs are generally very memorable, loaded with atmosphere and the album is pretty varied too. I had a very enjoyable ride my first time through this one.

I'm still not sure which Judie Tzuke album I like the most, but this one is certainly a candidate.


Helion Prime - [self titled]



I've been itching to hear all of this album for a while since I've been re-playing the single Life Finds a Way a million times over the last couple months. The album didn't disappoint!
It's a load of power metal of the less fruity variety, with more of a heavy metal feel. The singer is a woman with a fairly rich and strong voice and I'm actually a bit bummed that they already replaced her after this debut album came out just last year.
There's a vague sort of theme to the album, about exploring new worlds and such, but it doesn't feel like a concept album as such. There's 10 tracks on this and pretty much no duds. Lot's of catchy hooks, creative guitar solos and wild keyboard solos.
I feel like the album has really nice sound, but I still hope they find a guitar sound with a bit more character for the next album - which they're already working on by the way.
I don't buy many metal albums anymore, but this one convinved me. Can't beat a good song, and this album has plenty.




Bryan Ferry - Frantic



This is what I've usually considered the last Ferry album worth listening to. After this, he contracted a terminal case of boring and I didn't even consider the album all that strong. An album of a handful good songs and a handful or two of blandness.

This isn't exactly a new album in my collection. I've owned it for years. It had been a while since I last listened to it, so I thought that maybe a re-appraisal was in order, especially considering how I'm listening to a lot more low key music now than I used to (metal 24/7) and... lo and behold, now I found it to be pretty damn good all the way through! Even the Bob Dylan cover Goodnight Irene seemed appealing to me this time round, and I used to skip that one without any hesitation.

This just goes to show that our tastes in music aren't etched in stone. So, now I guess I'm actually going to recommend one of Bryan Ferry's "weakest albums"? I find it to be a very tasteful, nuanced piece of work with a lot of subtle character and flavor. There's even a good amount of variety on this.

Probably my current favorite off the album:

Nobody Loves Me:



Melody Gardot - Worrisome Heart



I'm going to shorten things from here on so I can get through this today.
Basically, I dismissed as boring when I heard her music some time last year. Then I saw Ted Gioia recommend one of her albums on his personal blog, which I found early this year. I have found dozens of amazing music on his blog and respect his tastes quite a bit, so I thought that maybe I was just plain wrong and should try again. I did and... To my surprise, after a bit of time went by, I saw what's supposed to be so great about her.
Man, does this lady have character! She's so much fun to listen to once you get past the fairly been-there-done-that vocal jazz facade of it all. I especially love when she's scatting or otherwise livening things up vocally. Sultry is another adjective you can throw at her and not miss.
That she apparently walks with a cane in real life due to some bicycle accident just adds to her character.
Good album!




Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day



I got my hands on this one a couple years ago or less and have loved it ever since. The story goes that Vashti released this way back in 1970. Her debut album barely sold any copies and she gave up on having a professional music career. Then, over the decades, her album became a sort of cult favorite. An album folk music fans would share with each other as being a true hidden gem. Now it's pretty much considered a must-listen. Vashti even came back with a couple new albums in 2005 and 2014 respectively and I must admit I haven't checked the out yet. But I will, because Just Another Diamond Day really is all it's made out to be.

Here's my favorite track.
Rose Hip November:

Trollheart

That Judie album is certainly close to a favourite of mine, though I think it's hard to choose one. Sadly, some of her best albums, ie the first three, all have weak songs on them that make it hard to say they're perfect. This does come close. There's a kind of fragility to songs like "Sound of my sister's tears", "Let me be the pearl" and the title track that is balanced by powerful numbers like "Modern killers". But even this album suffers from the one-terrible-track-syndrome. I mean, "Run to win"? **** that ****. Luckily it's followed by the superb ballad "Don't go", and things just keep high quality from there on.

Glad you're getting into her music; nice to have someone who won't say "Judie who?"

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MicShazam

On my first, and so far only, listen through the whole album, no song struck me as bad, but I know from experience how my perception of albums tend to change with each listen.

Last Friday some friends came by for a night of board games and Judie Tzuke was one of the many artists that made it through my stereo. Some asked who she was when the Sportscar album and the Portfolio compilation album played and seemed to quite like her music. I think her music could appeal to many if only they got exposed to it somehow. I found her myself by nothing by dumb luck, and I was sold immediately.

Trollheart

It happens. "New Friends Again" on Welcome To the Cruise (terrible sub-disco song that prefaces the wonderful "Stay With Me Till Dawn"), most of Ritmo, "God Only Knows" on Left Hand Talking (sure it's a cover but why does it need to even be there?), "I Can Read Books" off Wonderland, "Racing Against Time " from The Cat is Out....
This has always been my belief too. It's not that her music doesn't or wouldn't appeal to a wider audience, just that most people seem never to have heard of her, or if they had, it's that one song.

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MicShazam

I still need to familiarize myself with all of her albums. I don't know even the ones I have in and out yet, so giving my full opinion about them will have to wait until somewhere in the future. I never feel comfortable judging an album that I like until I've lived with it for a while. Until then, any opinion I hold might change next week.

Ritmo being bad? Oh dear... I've put it on my wishlist for my birthday in October, so maybe I'll hear for myself soon enough. The only album that let me down so far is Left Hand Talking, but I only heard the whole thing once so I don't know for sure yet... (for the record, I only own Sportscar, I am the Phoenix, Turning Stones, Left Hand Talking and the Portfolio collection, so I haven't quite got by bearing yet. I'm especially interested in hearing all of her debut album, but it will take a while before I find a good copy of it.)

MicShazam

I'm going to try a new thing here and do some sort of short form, commented overview of a whole artist discography. I'm going to refrain from posting song links and instead just give my heavily compressed thoughts on each album and a rating of each. If I do this again later, I may well change the approach. It's an experiment and I'm not sure how helpful it actually is. Anyway, here goes:

Guide to my Favorite artists: Dir En Grey
Country: Japan
Formed: 1997
Status: Still active and fairly productive. A new album is probably not that far away.
Genres: An eclectic mix of J-rock, nu-metal, death metal, alternative rock, , pop hooks, progressive metal and other musical elements.
Members: Same lineup since the beginning.
Kyo – lead vocals
Kaoru – guitar, backing vocals
Die – guitar, backing vocals
Toshiya – bass, backing vocals
Shinya – drums, percussion

Discography overview:

Gauze (1999)

Their first album is a pretty raw and frantic sounding mix of J-rock and nu-metal elements. Pretty interesting and it's grown on me over the years. Kyo's vocals on this album sound a bit like he's caught a cold. It will be a few albums before his talents are truly unleashed. The best song on the album is the menacingly unhinged and frankly rather oddly named Mazohyst of Decadence .
8/10 - A solid starting point. Pretty rough around the edges, but brimming with energy an personality.

Macabre (2000)

A bit of a sophomore slump. It's not bad, but the songs aren't as memorable as on the first album and it doesn't sound as good. The best thing about it is probably that the band seems intent on being a bit weirder here than they were on the first album.
7/10 - A good album, but not where anyone should start with this band. This one is for the already converted.

Kisou (2002)

Very, very good! It's a more melodic, more refined evolution of what the band was doing on Gauze. Feels more matured, less histrionic. The song Embryo might just be the first true classic this band has produced. Kyo's vocals are still somewhat nasal and off-sounding. I think it works, but the next album is where he starts getting a lot better.
8/10 - I like this album a lot, but it is undeniably a bit uneven. Good place to starts, but not their peak.

Six Ugly (2002)

This 6 track EP displays a clear change in style. All of a sudden these very modern sounding Deftones and American contemporary metal inspirations heavily modify the band's sound. Not an entirely successful experiment and the songs aren't really all that good. It is however very interesting in how it foreshadowed the change of direction that would happen on the next full length album.
6/10 - It's allright for what it is, but pretty much the nadir of the whole discography.

Vulgar (2003)

This is where the band starts transitioning into the band I truly love. The front cover, back cover and all the pages of the booklet are mostly black, which is how the band would present their albums from this point on. Fittingly, the music is more abrasive, considerably darker and more metal influenced than the previous more rock-leaning outings. Kyo's vocals expand into growls, shrieks and more refined sounding melodic singing. His octave range also seems to have suddenly expanded. Instrumentally and structurally, the songs start getting a bit more complex, but there's still a lot of their old style left in the mix here. It's a transitional album. The sound of a band forging a new identity.
8/10 - Very good, but not their ultimate expression of this style. There are several classic tracks on the album, so it isn't skippable by any means.

Withering to Death (2005)

This is the first truly classic Dir En Grey album. I pretty much just love it front to back. One of my top 10 favorite songs of all time is on this album. Big words, I know! It's called Itoshusa Ha Fuhai Nitsuki . This song is the culmination of the softer side of the band in their new style. There are more amazing songs on the album in various styles, but if you only hear one, make it this one! Like most of their albums, this one is pretty over compressed in the sound, but it still has an amazing vibe to it. Easily one of my all time favorite albums and a pretty eclectic mix of styles. Not by any means the band at their most abrasive, even though some songs are rather frantic and heavy.
10/10 - I love it to death!

The Marrow of a Bone (2007)

This album is radically more harsh and wild than the previous album. There are moments of quiet, but this album is overall much like being beated to death with a set of heavy static spitting speakers. I don't think it's the strongest effort of the band and it's pretty hard to get through in one sitting, but I really do love the atmosphere of this album, plus there's some really solid tracks here. It doesn't quite measure up to the previous album, but some rate it way higher in the band's discography than I do.
8/10 - Good, but quite a mouthful. A pretty offensively overcompressed production job that's peaking and crackling all over the place. Death Magnetic go home, this album is a wall of migraine inducing noise. I like it, but damn does it test my ears.

MicShazam

I'm not sure how big a single post can be, so I chose to cut it here and make it a two parter. So...

Uroboros (2008)

Another one of the band's finest albums. It is eclectic, ambitious, challenging , memorable and chuck full of feeling, atmosphere and musicality.
Several songs stand out as some of my all time favorites, but Toguro would be my pick if I had to only choose one song to keep from the album.
A thing to note about this album is that two distinctly different sounding production jobs exist on CD. The original 2008 release is my favorite by far. The clattering drums, booming bass and raw mixing job is hard to get used to, but damn is it magical when it finally clicks.
A remastered version of the album leaves it sounding a lot more conventional and pretty. By no means bad. It actually sounds great, but I much prefer the more unique sounding original version. If you listen to this album and you immediately think "what the hell is up with the production?!", the you're listening to the original 2008 version without a doubt.
10/10 - Just amazing. Every time I listen to this album, I hear something new. There's no other album quite like it.

Dum Spiro Spero (2011)

Oh boy did this album blow my mind! This was my first album of theirs and I was just immediately sold. For a long, long time I considered it the best metal album ever made. It still might be. It's certainly an album that still impresses me whenever I listen to the whole thing. Doing exactly that is pretty challenging, since this album is long, frantic, complex, abrasive and frankly a bit weird. I'm a sucker for Kyo's vocals on this record. He spans god knows how many vocals styles, octaves and moods and I'm thoroughly impressed. Did I mention he's my number one favorite vocalist of all time? Well, he is, and this album is big part of the reason why. Listen to the song Diabolos, then to the song Vanitas. Mike Patton go home (I still love Patton, of course, so relax).
Not even sure what else to say about this. It's quite a journey, but not an album you can really digest in your first sitting. The songs are sort of structurally odd and will probably feel all over the place until you've heard most of them a few times.
10/10 - Simply impressive. One of the very best the band has made.

The Unraveling (2013)

A collection of B-sides and re-recordings of older tracks. What's really interesting about the re-recordings segment of the album is how the old songs have all been re-interpreted to conform to the current musical style of the band, lending them all an air of darkness and musical sophistication that they didn't quite have before. Some of them are better than the originals, all of them are interesting. Together with the generally newer and quite good b-sides, this disc ends up feeling like a very cohesive album, rather than the somewhat scattershot collection of tracks it really is. It basically feels like a legit album in it's own right and I think of it as such, which is why I've included it on this list. Note that the track listing varies quite a bit depending on what region it's from. The EU version (the one I have) seems to contain the most complete set of tracks.
9/10 - Just forget that it's a bunch of re-recordings. It's much more essential than it would seem like.

Arche (2014)

As if I havent't gushed enough about this band already. This album might just be their crowning achievement as far as my opinion is concerned. Kyo's vocals take the center stage this time around and that proves to be a very good thing. I don't know what training regimen he's gone through, but he's basically gained an entire octave of vocal range and a few new singing voices. He's also more on point than ever in terms of nailing notes and vibrato. The album makes great use of his vocals with an impressive array of excellent vocal melodies spread out across the whole album. There's also plenty of aggressive moments on the album, plus a bunch of interestingly idiosyncratic tracks that sound like basically no other band on this earth. Rinkaku is a great example of this. If there's any other band out there that sounds remotely like this, I'd love to hear about them!
I just love this album like few other albums. I've played it countless times over the last few years. More than all other Dir En Grey albums put together, probably. What can I say; fantastic musicianship, vocals, arrangements and production.
10/10 - Listening to all 14 tracks in one go can be intimidating, but I've always just taken very long albums in two sittings, so I don't actually consider that a noteworthy knock against this or any album. It's just a fantastic album and I'm worried that no matter what they do next, it will take me a while not to feel disappointed about it, considering it has to follow this one.

MicShazam

I don't buy nearly as many metal albums as I used to, but I did get a couple a few days ago. Trying to keep up with music in 2017, they're quite newly released.

Kobra and the Lotus - Prevail I


Released: May 12, 2017
Country: Canada
Genre: Heavy Metal
Chronology: This is their 4th full length album since their first in 2009.

I've known this band for a few years and found myself very impressed by their previous full length album, High Priestess. A small covers EP filled out the gap between that and the newest album and it was allright, if not essential.

This album feels a lot more slick and radio friendly than the previous album, which was heavy metal to the bone. Prevail I throws around quite a few power chords, focuses on vocal hooks more than riffs and at times even calls to mind some old Lacuna Coil.

You might think I'm about to call the album a disappointment, but that's not the case at all. If anything, Prevail I comes off as a very, very strong album after just a handful listens. Kobra Paige's voice is powerful and beautiful and she handles a healthy bunch of great hooks with flying colors.
Another thing I really like about this album is the simple, but creative guitar solos. They sound fresh and full of personality. Musically, the album is rather subordinated to the vocals though. This is no bad thing, but don't expect the drums or the bass guitar playing to be much more than "fitting".

As a collection of 12 catchy songs, all of which are rather accessible in nature, this is one hell of an enjoyable album. I'm finding myself humming the vocal hooks while cooking dinner - which is something very few metal albums manage to do for me.

For an example of what's so great about Kobra Paige's singing, check out the song Victim. They're all winners though. Just be warned that the music video for the song You Don't Know is rather corny.

Might very well turn out to be one of my favorite albums of 2017.
Very recommended - on the pretext that you actually enjoy basic heavy metal and vocal dominated metal.


Arch Enemy - Will to Power


Released: May 12, 2017
Country: Sweden, USA, Canada
Genre: Melodic death metal (that's starting to sound like power metal)
Chronology: This is their 11th full length album since their first in 1996.

I've been a fan of this band for many years. I'm sure they don't need any introduction among most people who listen to metal. Slightly against the general opinion on the band, I think they were pretty boring back in the Johan Liiva years. I like all albums from the Angela Gossow years more or less and the previous (and first) with Alissa White-Gluz on the microphone was allright.

I've seen all sorts of reactions to their newest album, Will to Power. Some think the band is completely played out and that Alissa ruined the band. Many complaints about Jeff Loomis not having enough to do, the lyrics being corny, alissa not being Liiva or Gossow... Video ratings suggest that most people like what they hear, so maybe it's actually a lot more well liked than a quick glance at the various seedy comment sections of the internet might suggest.

I've been spinning the disc many times over the last couple days and I've reached a verdict: Very, very fun to listen to. Possibly the best album the band ever did. Big words.

There's precious little left here that feels like death metal. Someone, somewhere said that the band is starting to feel more like power metal, what with the big, anthemic leads and the generally more colorful, softer guitar playing. I like this version of the band. It's been there for many years, but it is indeed the case that this album is more melodic and less extreme than any previous album.

I can't complain. Will to Power is simply stuffed with fun riffs, guitar leads and there's a general feeling that the songs flow really well. The production is overly clean and compressed, but it does sound fairly good. There's even some detail in the drums and the bass if you care to listen for it.

Alissa screams and shouts and does - as a first with this band - a scant few moments of cleanly sung vocals. She's not my favorite vocalist in the world by any means, but she does a good job of keeping up with the energy level of the music and providing a bit of expressive variety.

You already know what you think of this band. For what it's worth, I think this album is one of their most consistently catchy and entertaining albums yet. Perhaps the best, side by side with Khaos Legions.