Suffering from Sequel Syndrome

Ever bought an album just because the band's previous album was OK? I do, all the time. I kind of feel guilty because of it. It's worse when your expecting the album to not be too good.

Recently I bought 5 albums, 4 of them by artists I've had previous albums for ( even then the other one is Ziltoid the Omniscient by Devin Townsend who does Strapping young lad which I have all the albums for. ). I think that Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia by Dimmu Borgir is a genius albums. I then brought Death Cult Armageddon ( don't ask me about the album titles, most are 3 words that don't mean anything eg, Darkness Enthroned Triumphant, Spiritual Black Dimensions, Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia etc... ), still good but wasn't as good as Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. I heard about In Sorte Diaboli coming out so I watch the single they previewed before the release of the album. Again the song just wasn't as good again as anything from the previous 2 albums. Coupled with a luke warm review I thought I won't bother buying the album. Just in the music shop and had a handful of new albums I catch an eye shot of In Sorte Diaboli and thought Balls to it and bought it. Sequel syndrome strikes! Yep In Sorte Diaboli isn't overtly interesting. It's alright but...

Thing is ( this is going to make this blog post a touch dubious probably. ) sometimes you're pleasantly supprised by an artist's new album. Bad Religion's new album New Maps of Hell is decent! Expecting the usual songs complete with an over zealous use of Let's go! or Whatcho!. Several songs just have an unusual twist to them but you still know they are Bad Religion songs. Before you die and Submission complete spring to mind. On the whole I was pleasently supprise by New Maps of Hell... they didn't even say Let's go! once!

See you next time.

Silent but deadly!

Right oh, being able to rip CDs to MP3 or OGG has been a real god send when it comes to things like Bullsh*t tracks where you just don't rip them in the first place thus saving yourself the torture altogether. But beware artists have other ways to annoy you that circumvents ripping their CDs.

I have ripped a load of my albums to OGG files and have taken them to work so I can listen there. Although I don't have to put up with any more fookeen ballads there is still something which bugs the f*ck out of me.

SILENCE

Yep silence. Nothing. Absolute zip. I'm talking about tracks which have several minutes of silence in them. Your busy working away letting the music playu in the background and suddenly the music stops and your wondering wtf has happened to the tunes. You check your music player program (XMMS in my case ) and see it's still working. You faff with the sound settings and then check whether you can still read the directory where the tunes are. You have one more look at your music program and suddenly realise it's fine. It's just one of those stupid tracks with 10 minutes of silence in them.. The ones with a song at the start then a huge break before something that would be classified under Bullsh*t tracks if it were on a separate track are the worst.

One fine example is Smash by Offspring on the album Smash. Has the smash song as normal (good song actually) then it has a little outro in the style of the intro track Time to relax. Great the song's finished but then the next track on your music player playlist isn't starting yet!!! WTF is going on!? Silence... You wait and wait and wait ( or skip if your not in the middle of something ) but nothing comes out. For pretty much 5 minutes! there is proper silence. Not a single note or anything. After 5 minutes there's a clean guitar doing the riff to Come out and play with several variations. Does this for about 1 and a half minutes and just ends. What is the point. At least if they had it as a separate track then you just don't bother ripping it but when it's lumped onto a proper song it's just balls.

Heavy Metal isn't imune to it either. Nevermore are guilty of this as well with 2 of their albums The Politics of Ecstacy and Dreaming Neon Black. At the end of The Politics of Ecstacy you have a song called The Learning ( one of those FOOKEEN BALLADS, a 9 and a half minute one at that! ). When it finishes, guess what! SILENCE. More that 5 minutes of it!. All the wait for was just for a freaky noise track with a distorted version of the vocals from an earlier track from The Politics of Ecstacy. Not worth the wait.

When you've got a load of songs on a play list constantly looping it's a ball ache to faff around when you have 5 minutes of silence in a song. Just don't bother, make our lives easier.

An apropriate little quote from Smash by The Offspring.
Well, 'til next time. Ta ta...











... Da da da da daeya da da daaa da da da... :)

Butchered Demos

Over the past couple of weeks at work my friend and co-worker Stephen Ward (who has just created a banner for me. Keep your eyes peeled for it's appearance!) had just got sick of listening to Weird Al Yankovic 8 hours a day so he decided on a change of band. Now hes decided on Dragonforce (formerly Dragonheart ) and is now playing that all the time. Thing is he loves it more than me by a large margin.

I love their unrelenting hyperactive speed and ( in later albums especially ) complete madness (things that are missing in their ballads which I'm sure they feel obliged to do... DON'T. The're basically your normal songs with the decent bits removed, leaving in the cheeseyness and naff lyrics.) I first listened to the Dragonheart demos from mp3.com back in late 2000 and really liked them. Thing is it took me till 2006 before buying there albums (which they had done 3 of them by then), think I just forgot about Dragonheart ( then changed to Dragonforce ) in the 3 years till their first full length album came out ( think it was literally first couple of weeks in uni I got the Dragonheart demo songs but they didn't release their first album till they AFTER I finished uni. Easy to forget to do something in three years, significant chunk spent drunk/studying.)

The sound Dragonforce's demo is pretty dam clear and tight in the demo songs. Very impressive for a demo ( even more impressive when supposedly they were recorded in a week. ) The first album entitled Valley of the damned is just odd because it's just plain different. After the completely pointless first track Invocation of Apocalyptic evil ( a Bullsh*t track as mentioned in my previous blogpost GOD DAMN BULLSH*T TRACKS!!!! ) Valley of the Damned from the first Dragonheart demo starts up. First thing you notice is the keyboard doing more than was in the demo. When the vocals start up they sound like the singer ZP Theart ( how the hell do you pronounce that?! Comments welcome.) is about 3 miles away. They've gone insane with the reverb, acidently set it to 100% wet. Especially with Dragonforces music the vocals just sink down into the mix and just loose the punch they had in the demo. This continues throughout the album. As well as the mix on the re-recorded songs you notice Dragonforce has tweaked little melodies and bits here and there. This is most blatant on Black Winter Night ( Is it me going insane or shouldn't that be Black Winter's night? Have I become what I hate? Some nitpicky git moaning about the tiniest bit of iffy English? ). Just look at this list below.

• as the rivers run dry ( first time only )


• Prechorus (on the endless seas of madness ) now with overtly exuberant keyboards.


• Weird sudden stop in the music just before the main chorus then guitar does a dive bomb.


• Chorus .... COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! Different lyrics, different melody


• post chorus different lead guitar


• no more tommorow... dieing of sorrow sung by
  ZP Theart instead of shouted by band.

And that's before the main solo! It just feels like Dragonforce were obliged to change bits of the songs because the fans might not like the idea of paying for an album and getting only 3 new songs. I personnally much prefer the original demo versions of the songs. So much so that that's what I brought into work to listen to, not the first album versions.



Another example of different between demo versions and album versions now. I bought Soilwork's Figure Number Five pretty much as soon as it came out and it was a special limited edition (a decent limited edition... not like some sh*tty ones, eg... I got a "Special edition" of Beneath The Remains by Sepultura but it just took the piss! The only extra stuff on it was a couple of "drum tracks" (basically the ghost tracks that they played along to when they were doing their main recording. Basically sounds like the final recording but cack quality and no vocals! Just..... why??? Surely nobody is interested in that?)). The extra thing was a CD which contained the songs that were on Soilwork's first demo which is cool. I listened to them and the one song that instanly grabbed my attention was Wake Up Call . This song was just class, even in the nasty sound quality of the demo, It just had that nice build up and a decent chorus ( simply put it goes Wake up, wake up, wake... up... CALL!. What more do you want? ).

I read up on these songs and found that they were all re-recorded for the first album. Coolios! Wake Up Call in decent quality! I bought the first album and looked at the back cover immediately to see if it was the case. I saw My Need, In a close encounter, Skin after skin and Steel bath suicide there but where the fudge was Wake up call? Saddened I just accepted the fact it wasn't there (along with Bound to illusions and put the album on my CD player. Listening through I heard the re-recorded versions of the demo songs and was delighted in their new nice quality recording ( although where the hell did the clean vocals go? They had clean vocals on the demo but dropped them for Steel bath suicide and The Chain heart machine. When they brought them back in A predators portrait they were class!).

I got up to a track called Demon in veins and within 5 seconds I instantly recognised the intro to Wake up call. WTF is going on? To my absolute bemusement I realised that they changed the vocals especially the chorus. It now goes Demon... demon... demon... demon in VEINS! ......... bury head in hands.... That just sound ridiculous. Wake up call sounded ace ( I mean. even Rage against the machine (don't just call them Rage. I keep on thinking your talking about the heavy metal band Rage when your actually talking about Rage against the machine) got away with just saying Wake up repeated for decades... I couldn't stand it with Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
repeated.
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
SHUT UP!
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
STFU now!
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Thats it! If you won't STFU I'll just break your neck!
Fuck you I CRIK.....
Ahhh thats better.
). Just .... why? Just an unecessary and ridiculous change. They didn't do too much to the other songs but this is just daft. Maybe just me moaning but if I was asked to cover it then it would most definately be the Wake up call version and not the Demon in veins version.

I wonder how many other bands have done this? Made an awesome demo but then butcher the songs for their first album. Oh and Dragonforce... DON'T WRITE ANY MORE FOOKEEN BALLADS!. See you all next time.

Vomilicious lyrics booklets!

Well I seemed to have skipped a week in doing my post. Well I've got a few good excuses. A bunch of new toys! An MP3 player for my parents, a new guitar AND a new laptop which I am busy using right now (got Ubuntu Studio Linux on it, just got the screen resolution working, wireless with wpa aint >:[. Anyways enough faffing, while my shiny new laptop looks good the same cannot be said for some album lyric booklets I have seen. Well lets look at Whoracle by In Flames. While it's album cover looks quite good



One thing to note though, the (literally) faceless woman always cracks me up because it reminds me of Spitting Image ( remmember the bloke who had a question mark for a face instead of a nose and eyes? I've tried hunting for a picture of him on the net but I'll be buggered if I can find him. If anyone has/can get a picture please contact me and I'll update the post with it.) While the front cover looks kinda cool it's a different story for the lyrics booklet, just look at it!



EEEWWW... makes me vomit. Some freaky looking green marbled background and a horrible font for the text. It's seriously nasty, just take a closer look at some excerpt in it.



DOUBLE YEW TEE EFF DOES THAT SAY? inverting the fjord, imade the ny Lylinets? I really don't understand it what so ever. It just makes no sense, what a torturous font! Did nobody proof read it to check it was.... errr well, legible? It's just like that all the way through the booklet.

Well lets look at an example which does it right, something a little more pleasing and quirky. Darkane make some absolutely mad metal and it seems to be translated into the booklet design in Expanding Senses.



Already completely mad, JUST LOOK AT IT! Blokes in concrete! You think that's mad just look at the band pictures.



Looking mad in their white garb already, but wait there's an even more looney and amusing band picture inside with each separate member and they (somehow) manage to look even more fruity looped than on the back of the lyric booklet.



Good grief the're off their rocker. Looks like they should be in the asylum rather than keeping it. Would you let your mad friends and relatives be looked after by this lot? Just imaging the first day you leave your relatives there.

Yes... we WILL take good care of your relatives and no... we aren't patients like most people ask. People assume we are patients just because we are Darkane
OH BALLS... OK we're more mad than any of the patients so sue me!

Hope they keep making those records, the last one Layers of lies is also plain mad and Insanity is perfectly appropriately named. Oh yeah those two mad geezers on the left and right hand sides each have their own websites.

http://www.ChristoferMalmstrom.se/.

Don't be fooled by it's 1990's look it's full of good stuff including Darkane guitar tabs tabbed by Christofer Malmström himself and he's giving them away for FREE! ( my god what's this? Artists giving away tabs for free instead of shutting down websites like METALTABS.COM ? If that doesn't get him interned in the asylum then nothing will.
So Mr Malmström, what brings you here?
I errr.... created guitar tabs for songs from my band and.... gave them away for free.
WHAT! OMFG You ARE sick! QUICK, bring the straight jacket and prepare the padded cell! An artist giving away his own tabs away for free, what has the world come to?).

http://www.PeterWildoer.com/

This site has a few videos oh him performing some mad stuff. For example a bit of Darkane madness here.



And some more Avant Garde madness ( Avant Garde? what a weird term. Before being on on guard? Before standing to attention? Before watching? I dunno.. ) here with Peter Wildoer and Christofer Malmström performing some obscure mix of Jazz, Classical and subtle hints of ... errr ... Thrash/Death Metal



Hmm that's point. I've noticed that the band is actually on the front cover. Yep you've read that right, Darkane is on the front cover of Expanding Senses. The only album in Darkane's collection to feature the band themselves. Just look at this zoom up image below.





Talking of madness few are as mad as Devin Townsend and one of his many bands Strapping Young Lad. You though Whoracle's lyrics were unintelligible! Wait till you get a load of Strapping young lad's City album.



While Whoracle had a torturously nasty font that was unreadable City's font is just plain far too small! Just look at the first page!



See those white specs? Those are the words! It isn't dust! Here's a section zoomed up.



Can you read that? To me it's just blobs. This is as good as I can get it, any more and you just see the colour divering into little spots.

It certainly doesn't make a good impression when people cannot even read your lyrics book. Just make life easy and double check the average person can read the lyrics and doesn't throw up at the site of the inside.

GOD DAMN BULLSH*T TRACKS!!!!

Do you have any albums which just make you bury your head in your hands and wonder why the hell they stuck it on there? I'm not talking about songs which are just bad like Pretty fly (for a white guy) but tracks which are just noise or don't really sound like a song. Tracks that just boggle the brain as to why they were included in the album and are just an annoying distraction to the rest of the album. Alot of these bullsh*t tracks are usually about 30 seconds long and consist of incoherent noises or voice clips scatalogically arranged by some numbty who just can't be bosched. They leave me bemused as to how and why they are in the album. Theres usually several people who would have to approve songs for albums so to see these stupid tracks slip through the net just makes me wonder how they got through.

Good friends and a bottle of pills starts off with some soporific bass playing while Phil Anselmo is having a bout of Tourettes. For 30 secs he's just making "nya.... hmmp... ulah!" noises! After the spaz out he starts with the first ( barely ) inteligable lyrics I fucked your girlfriend last night CLICK! is the sound you hear when I'm listening to this because I ALWAYS press the next button. After he's done some more lyrics sounding like hes got some JD vomit gurgling at the back of his throat he starts doing some inhuman random unitelligable catewailing... probably cause after what I have heard so far of the track I ran over and grabbed him by the testicles and started squeezing them till they popped Brock Samson style (see vid below 30 seconds in :)...



"STUPID NOISES?! I'll make you make stupid noises!" squeeze NYAGGHH WHATTISSSAAADOOBBLEEYAAAAWAAAWAWW! and he wouldn't have to worry about lumps after I've finished that's for certain.

Well Machine Head usually write proper songs most of the time but they had a bit of a "brain toast" on their first album Burn my eyes with Real eyes , realize, real lies. It starts off with a guitar riff that just sounds like Jaws and then quickly starts with random massively overly distorted voice clips ( I ain't got a clue what most of them say so don't ask me!). It does this for 1:50 minutes! before Rob Flynn shouts Why? Real eyes, realize, real lies, lies! and then quickly just fades out with a couple more uninteligable voice clips. Once it's over I just can't get the thought out of my head So they all sat around listening to this and thought yeah lets put it in the album. great idea, amazing.. Not one of them just turned around and said WTF are you all thinking ???? See those flappy things on the side of your head, USE 'EM!

One track that seems to fit the mold perfectly is Lucifer in love by Edguy from the Hellfire club album. It's 30 seconds long and just POINTLESS. Basically consists of the little piano intro from Down to the devil, which was earlier in the album, slowed down so that it stretches to 30 seconds. Then a dodgy voice over which just sounds like some bloke doing orgasmic noises slowed down. Did they just nick that bit in that Guns n' Roses song Welcome to the jungle which sounds like Axl Rose having a wank while Slash is having a fret wank (you know, about 1:40 mins into Welcome to the jungle Axl Rose starts making orgasmic uh.. uhh... ughhh.... ahhh... mwaahhhh... noises. ). Maybe it's actually the devil himself busy making love to the band as they discuss the future direction of the band just like Bill Hicks mentioned with marketeers. Edguy were there in the recording studio talking about the next album Ahh nearly finished this album... say how are we gonna get more sales in the future? Well lets see... we're an epic metal band with so-so popularity... I know we'll change our musical direction. Lets get rid of the epic.... and the metal. Hmm.... get rid of the bits which are good about us... lets do it!. While this conversation was going Satan was busy getting freaky with them all. Little realising the microphone was still on and recording. After Hellfire club Edguy released the god awful Rocket Ride which, as is mentioned above, has no epic... or metal anywhere in sight. It's just some cliché turgid hard rock that I listened to about twice... then gave in to Vinyl Exchange in Manchester.

So in the end these bands might as well jack off and shout IM A GENIUS, IMMM A FOOOKEEEN GENNNNIUSSS!! and record that because it'll be less embarassing and torturous to listen to. As mentioned in the previous post Perfectly skippable songs being able to just leave these pointless tracks off a playlist is a god damn relief cause if I accidently get an ear shot of Good friends and a bottle of pills... hmmm I was gonna mention murder but... FFS WTF DID THAT F*CKWIT HAVE TO KILL DIMEDAG DARREL!!!!!!!!!!! I don't dare mention anything at all when Pantera's involved now cause i'll get some tit moaning that it's in bad taste. I remember watching "Mock the Week" with Dara o'Briain talking about Englands defeat in the cricket and saying that This is the worst defeat since 1916 but back then they had an excuse... they all died in the Somme. Then the audience sighs the "disgraceful" sigh and Dara just pipes up Oh come on!!??? Too soon?. See that's the sort of thing you get nowadays. If I put a disclaimer in plain view before warning of tasteless material I'll still get a bunch of whingy gits COMPLETELY IGNORING IT and moaning anyway.... errr I'm turning into one of them so I'll shut up now. Hmm thats a point Bill Hicks... DEAD... Barry Manilow.. STILL ALIVE! oooo Bill wouldn't have liked that :) Cya next time.