Who's Next (The Who)

Alright, time to tackle another classic rock album, and the votes from the poll I put on my facebook page from my awesome; but small fan base, say that they wanted a review of this album rather than the other options (Selling England by the Pound/Genesis and The Wall/Pink Floyd), so let's get started with the brief little history lesson! When people think of the Who, they typically think of one of the following things: My Generation; what's probably their most well known single, or one of their huge blockbuster albums that they released between the years of '69-'73, those albums being Tommy, Live at Leeds, Who's Next, or Quadrophenia. Recognize any of those names? I bet you do, and if it was one of the albums that you recognized, I bet the one you recognized first was either Tommy or Quadrophenia, or maybe Live at Leeds. Out of the four albums released in this period of time, Who's Next seems to be the one that everyone looks over when examining this time period, but I'm confused as to why. This is the album that was supposed to be Lifehouse, a concept which Pete Townshend wanted to turn into a science fiction rock opera, and The Who's studio follow up to Tommy. Clearly that didn't work out, but Townshend wrote more than enough material for a new Who album and decided to abandon the project altogether and just make this release into a typical rock album. But enough on history, because it's time to find out if this album was rightly overshadowed, or deserves a lot more praise than what it seems to get.

To me, the musical quality here seems like a bit of a mixed bag. What do I mean by this? Well let's take a look at the songs in order so we can really see what I'm talking about. Baba o' Riley; in my opinion, is one of the best opening tracks to an album ever produced; right up there with In The Flesh off The Wall (Pink Floyd) and Hells Bells off Back in Black (AC/DC), with it's giddy synthesizer line, a powerful vocal melody, a simple but effective guitar and bass line, and Keith Moon pounding away on the drums, and it's closing violin led 'jam', it is definitely to me one of the best ways to get you excited for what the rest of the album has to offer. Bargain is a good way to follow up, with kickass guitar lines, Keith still pounding away on the drums, and Entwistle giving a good backing bassline, but is also a bit of  a weird follow up track, with Daltrey screaming away with what to me is quite an odd sounding and mediocre vocal line, but that 'BEST I EVER HAAAAD!' at the end of every chorus makes listening to that mediocre vocal line for me all the worthwhile. Love Ain't For Keepin' to me is just a song that was thrown into the album just so they could say they have an all acoustic song, and it in all honesty isn't really that good. It sounds like it was just slapped together in a wood shop at one in the morning in under a minute and then they recorded it. My Wife has more mediocre sounding vocal melodies, Moon still smashing on the drums (which is still quite enjoyable), a very quiet bass line, Townshend abandoning his guitar in favor of a piano, and just random brass blares in some parts of the song. The Song is Over; while actually being quite good during my first few listens of this album, has now dried out it's quality and is just boring now, and kinda shitty. With Townshend manning the lead vocal duties for the verses while he plays some depressing sounding piano chords, and Daltrey coming in with the rest of the band with more Moon smashing the drums, more Entwistle quietly playing bass, and more Daltrey still screaming his head off while Pete switches the depressing chords for some more uplifting ones. After that shitty borefest we get to Gettin' In Tune, a charming little song that doesn't really mean anything with some actually pretty vocal melodies, Keith finally calming down on the drum work, and just overall nice instrumentation. Going Mobile is a track that doesn't exactly to seem to be a favorite of many, and I can't see why. It's a really likeable song, with it's energetic acoustic part, enjoyable vocal melodies, a drum part on overdrive again, and just a really fun and charming nature. Then we finally get to Behind Blue Eyes, which can be accurately described as The Who's Yesterday, which is musically speaking, an actually really good and sad sounding acoustic song (not entirely acoustic in this case with the energetic part at the climax of the song, but it's a good section, so whatever), and the closing track, Won't Get Fooled Again, which is the longest and second best song on the album, with it's kickass hooks, it's nice guitar parts, more Keith Moon smashing away on the drums, Entwistle still kicking ass on the bass; albeit quietly, and just a really good coercion of all these musical elements. So what exactly do I think of the musical quality of this album? Eh...it's good, but a little bit mediocre with the 3rd to to the 5th tracks being sounding a lot like filler and just being kinda crappy. So in other words, yes I like this album, but as soon as I get to the 3rd track, I typically just stop my venture into that album and look for something else to listen to, which is a shame, because the tracks after that are so good, but because of that musical 'pothole'...well... you get the idea. 12/20

 Moving on from that, we go on to the lyrical content. Does it fare better? Eh...not really, but let's look at this in more detail again. Baba o' Riley is not only powerful in terms of the music, but it's also quite powerful in the lyric department as well, with roaring anger at how things have seemingly changed for the worse, which a teenager can easily relate to. Most of the other lyrics don't really do anything and are just typically mediocre and boring, good examples of this mediocrity being Love Ain't for Keepin' and My Wife. While there are other songs with actually good and sometimes charming lyrics like Gettin' In Tune, Behind Blue Eyes and Won't Get Fooled Again, the rest of the songs on the album don't really have any lyrics that you can really respect and understand. While the lyrics are clearly not the most important factor when creating an album, when you have music that isn't that great, you should try to make up for it with some wonderful poetry, which this album really does lack. So overall, while the lyrics aren't terrible, they're also not that great, albeit a few exceptions as mentioned above. 3/5

Well, this album really isn't doing that well as evidenced by the above categories, but will it possibly be able to finally redeem itself a little bit with the coercion of the album in general? Yes! This album finally redeems itself a little bit with how actually well done the quality of the coercion of this album works!...but it may not be for the reason you expect. The reason that this album does so well in coercing the music and the lyrics together is that the lyrics barely catch your attention at all so it's easy for the lyrics to coerce with the music, and this seems to work in pretty much every song on the album except when one of the lyrics is actually screamed. Baba o' Riley? The lyrics only sort of catch your attention. Bargain? Didn't catch my attention at all except for BEST I EVER HAAAAAAD. Love Ain't for Keeping? Didn't catch my attention. My Wife? Didn't catch my attention. Song Is Over? Didn't catch my attention. Getting In Tune? Didn't catch my attention. Going Mobile? Didn't catch my attention except for the shouts of GOING MOBILE. Behind Blue Eyes? Didn't catch my attention. Won't Get Fooled Again? Didn't catch my attention except for the obvious YEEEEEEAAAAAAAH. So overall, this album does a terrific job of coercing the music and the lyrics, and even when the reason above isn't true and you actually notice and pay attention to the lyrics existance, they still fit in well with whatever song they happen to be in. 4/5

So how well does this album fare overall? Well, I think it's clear to see why this album was left under the huge shadow cast over it by Tommy and Quadrophenia. With a huge and bland musical pothole along with lyrics that barely catch your attention, no wonder people left this album behind in favor of the seemingly great Tommy and Quadrophenia (which I actually haven't listened to yet, but will in due time). With that being said though, the shadow cast over it may be a little bit too big, as this album still has it's great moments with songs like Baba o' Riley, Getting In Tune, Behind Blue Eyes, and Won't Get Fooled Again, but alas, even those songs aren't enough to get this album a total mark that is only a little bit over mediocre. So in conclusion, while this album is mediocre, during my first few listens of it, that was not the case, as mentioned above, and was actually quite good during those first few listens. However, as also mentioned above, that quality dried out pretty quickly and ended in my opinion of the album as of the time of this reviews release. I would only recommend it to anyone that really wants to complete their Who album collection in all honesty. So with that out of the way, it's time for me to bow out for this week and give you my final points review. 19/30

Favorite Song:


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Use Your Illusion II (Guns N' Roses)

I'm finally back, after what's been at least six months without a single review! So, you might be asking the following question:

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?

Well after I made that review on Use Your Illusion I (Guns N' Roses); which you can take a look at here, that wonderful thing every human being goes through once in their life called procrastination set in, and well...you get the idea. I eventually caught on to this procrastination by the end of August, but then I put off the issue again by saying, "I'll just do one every Saturday during the school year!" Clearly that didn't happen. I then said to myself, "I'll do reviews during the winter break!" That didn't happen either. My original plan after that was to do a review during the March Break, but I eventually got really bored today and am now trying to do the "review every Saturday during the school year" thing. So here I am, with a new review AND a new system of reviewing! Now anyone who actually looked at my reviews before this one is probably thinking, "What!?" Well after talking to people; namely a very close friend of mine who's quite intelligent who I'll just call Jack, I realized my system of reviewing was indeed a little silly. I mean, "four points for music, three points for lyrics, and three points for coercion? That's silly!" So I've decided to redesign my ratings system, and test drive it on this review. What's the new review system you might be asking? Well, I'll just explain that right now.

My newest ratings system is still a points system, so it's not completely different to the system I used before, but instead of ten total points, it's now thirty total points, and instead of a near balance between the categories in terms of points distribution as mentioned above, well...let's just say there's been an exchange of powers. Instead of the 4 points for music, 4 points for lyrics, and 3 points for coercion system I used before that was; again, mentioned above, I'll be using a system where I give 20 points for music, 5 points for lyrics, and 5 points for coercion. Why change the system? Well, when I was talking to my smart friend that I mentioned above, and telling him about the review system I used before I fell under a procrastination spell, he helped me realize that people typically just listen to the albums they listen to for the music; which includes the melodies, the chords, the rhythms, all that good stuff. Fewer people listen to the album for the lyrics(and if you just listen to an album for the lyrics, go read some poetry or a book instead), and fewer then that listen for a blend of both, if that makes any sense. So I decided to rate the categories accordingly, with the most important thing(the music), being judged for more points than the lesser important things(the lyrics and the coercion). That being said, let's start the review with another brief lesson on GNR history; only this lesson will be A LOT shorter because most of the history that you need to know is in my review of UYI I, which you can find up there somewhere.

So, where do I begin with this band without talking about stuff I already talked about in my review that I did at least six months ago? Well, I can start by saying while Use Your Illusion I was supposed to be hard rock songs for the most part; with the obvious exception of some longer epics; like November Rain and Coma, Use Your Illusion II was supposed to be more epic and big than I. Does it succeed at doing that? Well, why don't we start this review and find out ourselves.

Use Your Illusion II album cover

I was actually expecting to find this album mediocre, but for a reason you'll probably find very silly. The reason I was expecting to find this album to be mediocre was because Axl Rose had more influence on it than his fellow band members at the time, and that works as a reason I was expecting this to be mediocre because I hate Axl Rose, but I'm just going to stop there with Axl Rose and get back to the actual review before my hatred of him gets out of hand and I go into a huge rant. Anyways; on with the review, the music on this album is fantastic. Not even kidding, I love the music on this album (you win this time Axl...). Where do I even begin with describing it? You have the ominous acoustic guitar work and later soaring electric guitar leads in the opening track of the album which is called Civil War, with a powerful vocal melody and rhythm section as well with that wonderful guitar work; provided of course by Slash; who might actually be my all time favorite guitar player. You also have one of the most famous Bob Dylan covers of all time on this album; Knocking on Heavens Door, although I do have to deduct a little bit of points for getting a little bit too overwhelming(a choir? really?), along with one of the most fun "fuck you" songs I have ever listened to; Get In The Ring. The track right after Get In The Ring I really don't like that much, despite being one of the only hard rock songs on the album that isn't an epic; Shotgun Blues, although immediately after that are five mediocre at worst songs which I'll get into right now. Breakdown is a seven minute long epic, with an intro that seems to me has a very subtle influence of country or bluegrass, with the the whistling, the twangy guitar, and the honky tonk style piano that comes in the second short portion of the intro. The song then seems to go nowhere; being one of the more unpredictable tracks on the album, being propelled into what I can only describe as a train-like motion by the guitar and the drum beat provided by Matt Sorum, before going into later sections. Pretty Tied Up (The Perils of Rock & Roll Decadence) has to be one of my favorite songs on the album, with it's mysterious sounding, sitar driven(for lack of a better word) intro that later goes into a song with another train-like rhythm by the guitar driving the song along, that later goes into one of the catchiest choruses I've ever had the pleasure of hearing, and a guitar solo that sounds like you're going on a train to insanity. Locomotive (Complicity) is a bit of a random song, that sounds suspiciously like filler, with it's lack of a chorus, odd sounding 'hook', and it's overall random sounding nature. So Fine is a nice ballad, with some nice guitar work, that has a hard rock sounding section in it where Duff sounds a little bit drunk(ok scratch that, he just sounds drunk), and then goes back into the ballad section with a nice guitar solo. Then you finally get to the biggest epic on the album; Estranged. This is definitely one of the best songs on the album, with amazing guitar work, really well done vocal melodies, a strong rhythm section, a really cool piano solo, well done form, and a really damn good set of melodies and chords. This might even be my favorite song from the band's entire catalogue that I've heard so far. Now what do we have after that wonderful piece of epic? We have "You Could Be Mine", an actually badass sounding 'cock-rocker' that sounds a bit like Nightrain off of their deput album; Appetite for Destruction, with a very nice guitar solo that just carries you flying to nowhere in particular while the song fades...and then there's the last two tracks. The second last track is just a rehash of Don't Cry off Use Your Illusion I, that effects the vocal melodies a little bit for the worse, and the last track is just a piece of shit with hideous vocals, random instrumentation, and a really stupid sounding fade out. Overall, despite some really shitty work at the end, and some fuck ups here and there, Use Your Illusion II for the most part is absolutely wonderful musically, Guns N' Roses really picked up the slack here, and it shines through with the music, with soaring guitars, strong rhythms, and surprisingly well done vocal melodies, making for some really awesome music. 17/20

While Guns N' Roses have done very well when it comes to the actual music, can the same be said for the lyrics that go with that music? Well, we might as well start from the beginning of the album like we did for the previous section. The lyrics in Civil War are very fitting to the title, all of them relating to war; specifically being against it, especially the blatantly obvious chorus, and those lyrics are very well constructed, to the point where I wouldn't look at you funny if you called those lyrics beautiful. The lyrics in Knocking on Heavens Door are also pretty good, but they were written by Bob Dylan, so what else did you expect. The lyrics in Get In The Ring are typical of 'fuck you' songs, lyrics designed to insult people and make the artist look good, only a little bit better written in this case. The lyrics in Estranged are really good, portraying very accurately what the average man might be thinking through the process of a divorce; which is appropriate of the mindset Axl had at the time he was writing the song, and the lyrics in the last track of the album are shitty like the actual music of that song. The rest of the lyrics...are kinda mediocre, with some exceptions now and then like 'You Could Be Mine', but other than that, the lyrics for the rest of the songs on the album aren't really something I admire or look up to. Overall, in terms of lyrics, this album does ok with some exceptions; both positive and negative as mentioned above, but it's not something I'm completely disappointed by, as I wasn't expecting superb lyrical poetry. If I want that, I'll ask Jack about a Bob Dylan album that has the best lyrics. Guns N' Roses are much more known for the actual music they make, rather than the words that go along with it, I'm completely fine with having satisfactory lyrics for most of the album considering how well done the music is. So in the end, this album has overall mediocre lyrics on the positive end, if that makes any sense. 3/5

So we've covered the music, and we've covered the lyrics. Now it's time to see how well they mesh and blend together. Civil War is really well done as a combination of music and lyrics, with the imagery that it provides really making you feel like you're in a war zone at times. 14 Years; although I didn't mention it throughout the whole review until just now, is another well done combination, making me feel like I'm with the narrator of the song, angry at the world and about to do something about it after...well 14 years. Knocking on Heavens Door and Get In The Ring are also pretty damn good combinations too, as...you get the idea. Hell, most of the songs on the album are well put together combinations of music and lyrics, with maybe one or two exceptions(yes, I'm referring to My World). So clearly, we can already reach the end of reviewing this section. Overall, the album does amazing work in coercing the music and the lyrics together in wonderful ways(although you could easily just not listen to the lyrics at all and you'd still get a pretty damn good album), with beautiful imagery to support it. 4/5

So in conclusion, Use Your Illusion II is a wonderful album with great epics and some really nice guitar work to listen to that I especially recommend to anyone into long epic songs to listen, along with any budding hard rock guitar players to check out. If you're more into the hard rock stuff that Guns N' Roses have done however, you should go buy I instead. You'll find some hard rock elements in here, with the heavy guitar work and the strong drums, but they're a lot more prominent in I than II. Would I recommend this to just any casual listener though? ...not really.  Most of the songs are longer than a song a casual listener would listen to, and the short songs on the album are really not that great compared to the long epics on the album. With that being said though, this is still a really great album, and I'd recommend it to anybody that's really into Guns N' Roses, and just about anyone into some longer than usual rock epics. 24/30

FAVORITE SONG:


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P.P.S. Yes I have abolished the 'one point off for a cover rule'.
P.P.P.S. Yes I'll probably review the albums I've done in prior reviews again with the new system.

Use Your Illusion I (Guns N' Roses)

The original line-up of Guns N' Roses

I think most of us know who Guns N' Roses are, and if you don't, get your head out of that rock, and let's go through a brief history lesson of GNR. What Guns N' Roses are probably most known for to people are three particular singles. Welcome To The Jungle, Sweet Child O' Mine, and Paradise City. Those song names ring any bells? Well they should, and these songs came from what's probably their most known album, and possibly the greatest deput album in rock n' roll history, Appetite for Destruction. The formation that was responsible for the creation of this album was made up of Steven Adler(drummer), Duff McKagan(bassist and backing vocalist), Izzy Stradlin (rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist, occasional co-lead guitarist and percussionist), Saul 'Slash' Hudson (lead guitar, occasional co-rhythm guitarist, and talkbox), and W. Axl Rose (lead vocalist, percussionist, synthesizer, and whistle). I am proud to say that I do own the actual album on CD. After Appetite for Destruction, it took at least four years for the band to make a proper follow-up to the album, with only Lies being released in that four year time frame(Lies was an EP released with four more new songs from the group). The official follow-up album to Appetite For Destruction became not one, but two albums. Use Your Illusion I, which I will be reviewing today, and Use Your Illusion II, which I will probably review some time in the future. Before I decided to buy the album last night and listen to it today, I noticed the people on iTunes say that it is definitely noticeable that there are tensions between Slash, Izzy, and Axl. On one side, you have the guitarists, trying to keep the band closer to their hard rock roots, while you have Axl on the other trying to do something different with influences like Queen and Elton John. I was a little worried at first that these tensions might ruin the album, but then I decided to just buy it and give it a listen and give you my thoughts in a review today. So is it a truly great album like their deput, or is it an illusion of what could have been? Well, why don't we start this review now and find out.

As usual, I'm going to start off with the musical quality of this album, and believe it or not, I like these songs better than the songs on Appetite For Destruction(be warned, I may make a lot of comparisons between this album and the one before it). Don't get me wrong, Appetite definitely has quite a few great songs of its own, but this album definitely has better quality songs, and in a greater quantity as well, but I digress. This album has some of the best hard rock songs I have ever heard, like Right Next Door To Hell, Perfect Crime, and Garden Of Eden, not to mention they also have two outstanding epics, November Rain, and Coma. However, and I really wish I didn't have to take a point off for this, not all of the music on this album is original, because of the fact that they decided to record a cover of Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die for this album, which forces me to take some points off, however, because it was actually a pretty good cover, I'll only take half a point off for it. I really don't think there's anything else to comment on in terms of this album other then the fact they also try some new styles of music out, for example, in Dust N' Bones, it's style and sound gives off a feel that makes me feel like I should go to some bar in a cowboy movie, and in You Ain't The First, they try to do another acoustic song, like the song Patience on their release Lies, and it really works out well, and these songs turn out to be pretty great songs. So all in all, this aspect of the album get's a 3.5/4.

Now we're going to look at the lyrical quality of this album, and there are surpsingly some pretty damn great lyrics on this album, both on the hard rock songs, the Queen styled songs and the experimental songs. Why surprisingly? Well when I noticed one of the songs was called Back Off Bitch, I was expecting the lyrics to be more "immature" than the lyrics on Appetite For Destruction, but I was most definitely wrong. On the song I just mentioned, there's actually some pretty good lyrics. For example, take a look at this lyric from the song.

You better back off, back off bitch, face of an angel with the love of a witch,

Read that lyric and don't tell me it's not just awesome, but relatable. I mean, if you're a guy, who doesn't know what it's like to talk to girl because she seemed and looked nice at first, but then when you got to know her she turned out to be a total bitch. I think the majority of you guys reading this review know what that's like. As for the girls, well, both guys and girls can relate to the lyrics of November Rain that describe going through rough times of a relationship. So I really don't know what else to say other than that these lyrics are pretty damn awesome, but again, Guns N' Roses didn't write the lyrics to Live and Let Die, but again, the cover was done pretty well, so I'll only take a half point off, therefore getting this album a 2.5/3 on lyrics.

Lastly we come to how well these songs and believe it or not, despite some criticisms that I heard were given on this aspect, they actually fit pretty well together, however I will admit that there are some times where they don't. For example, it just really catches me off guard whenever I hear Live and Let Die right after Dust N' Bones. You could call that a good thing about this album, because you can tell even more that a new song has begun, but if you want to fit two songs that are almost completely different from each other together, either create a segue, or just put more seconds of silence between the songs. For this case, I would just put more seconds of silence between them. Another prominent example I can think of where this occurs is the space between Double Talkin' Jive and November Rain. On one hand you have a very loud and edgy hard rock song, and on the other, you have a nine minute soft rock epic (at least until the outro). You would think that because of how enormously different from each other they are, it would be worse, but believe it or not, it's actually better. Why you may ask? Well I think this is all because of the acoustic/classical guitar outro that can be found at the end of Double Talkin' Jive that you hear before the song begins to fade out, but I digress. My point is that these songs actually do fit pretty well together, with some exceptions, so this aspect of the album get's a 2/3.

So we now come to the end of the review where I add up the points and say any more comments I have relating to the album. In terms of musical quality, this album get's a 3.5/4 with that half point being taken off because although Guns N' Roses covered Live and Let Die wonderfully, it is still a cover, which means I had to take some kind of points off the album for not being entirely original. Lyrically, this get's a 2.5/3, with a half point being taken off again only because of Live and Let Die being a cover, and in terms of how well the album functions as a whole, it get's a 2/3 because the songs do fit pretty well besides what some critics may say, with some exceptions. Which get's this album an 8 out of 10. Again, this album is a wonderful album besides the very few flaws I found with it, so go get it if you're a hard rock fan, or a Queen or Elton John fan, or, if you like an album with a variety of styles, go get it. Well that's all I have to say on this album, I'll see you guys whenever I do another one of these reviews. Bye!

One-X (Three Days Grace)

Three Days Graces current line-up

Hey, welcome to another one of my blog posts, where as usual, I'm doing another album review now, and today, if you couldn't tell by the title, we're going to review the album One-X, made by the band Three Days Grace, a Canadian alternative rock band that was formed in 1997. However, originally, the band was named Groundswell when it was really first formed in 1992 with this title, but the band broke up in late 1995 for unknown reasons. Then the band regrouped in 1997 with their current name, Three Days Grace, and with a line up of Adam Gontier on guitar and vocals, drummer and backing vocalist Neil Sanderson, and a bassist with the name of Brad Walst. This line-up through their entire 15 year career, has only gone through one major change, which was recruiting a lead guitarist with the name of Barry Stock in 2003, but let's go back a little before then shall we? The original trio that made up the band once met up with local producer Gavin Brown in Toronto. The band gave Brown several years of material ever since regrouping, and he picked out what he called 'the golden nuggets', according to Gontier. The band and Brown cleaned up the songs and polished them into a demo album which they then sent to EMI Music Publishing Canada. The label wanted to hear more material, so with Brown producing, created what would become the bands first single, "I Hate Everything About You". It attracted the interest of several record labels, and eventually, the band was signed to Jive Records after being sought out by the companies president. Once on Jive Records, the band made their eponymous deput album, and to support it, released their deput single which I mentioned earlier in this review, "I Hate Everything About You", which was being labelled as their breakout hit. After recruiting lead guitarist Barry Scott, the band went on tour continuously and extensively for nearly two years in support of this deput. The band also released two more singles from the album, which were "Home" and "Just Like You", but around this time, lead singer Adam Gontier developed an addiction to the prescription painkiller, OxyContin. After the bands tour ended, they knew they couldn't go on with Gontier's condition, so in 2005, with the support of friends, family, and his fellow band members, Gontier checked himself into the CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Help). Gontier being in depression during his time in rehabilitation, decided to begin writing lyrics for songs about how he felt, and what he went through in the CAMH. Once he had successfully completed treatment, the band unanimously agreed that peace and tranquillity would be necessary to complete work on their sophomore album, which would come to be known as the album I'm going to review today, One-X. The album was released during June of 2006 and met mostly positive reviews from critics, one of them being community website Ultimate Guitar. What do I think of the album though? Well, let's get started on finding that out shall we?

Ok, I'm going to make something clear at the beginning of this review of musical quality. I actually REALLY ENJOY THIS ALBUM, however, there are some faults that I can find with it, most of them relating to the major flaw of this album. It can get really bland and boring at times. There isn't really anything about the album that makes it stand out for years and years to come, unless you're maybe a fan of the group. Most of the songs just follow a typical verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus format. It isn't really anything new and never been done before. Another thing that's just boring and bland about the album is how mediocre the guitar solos are, at least when there are any. For example, in the first track of the album It's All Over, the song is just starting to build up to the guitar solo at what I think is the end of the second chorus, and you're hoping for something awesome, and you just get this mediocre slowish solo, which to me, is a total disappointment seeing as that's one of my favourite tracks on the album. Looking past these flaws though, the musical quality of these songs is still pretty high in my opinion, so I'm going to give it a 3/4 in musical quality.

Next up, we have the lyrical quality, and it was pretty much just what I was expecting, and what was I expecting? Lot's of repetition. I get that this albums lyrics was written by someone who had just come out of rehab, but he could have tried some more topics other then just the typical, "I hate what I've become stuff", and because of this repetition, this albums lyrical quality again suffers from being bland and boring after a while. Again though, the lyrical quality is still pretty good, so I'm just going to give it a 2/3.

Lastly, we get to how well all of the songs fit together, and I don't think anyone will be surpised by this, but they fit very well together. This is probably caused by the fact that most of these songs are about the same thing, but if its broken, don't fix it right? So this category definetely gets a 3/3.

So let's get to the final verdict shall we? So we have a 3/4 in musical quality, a 2/3 in lyrical quality, and a 3/3 in how well the songs fit together. In total, this adds up to an 8/10, which means this album is a pretty good album. The only reason this album suffers is that its really repeditive and can get boring some times, however, this doesn't make the album bad. It is a really awesome collection of tracks, repeditiveness and all, and maybe that repeditiveness made the tracks fit better together, I don't know. My point is tht if you're a Three Days Grace fan, or just a modern rock or metal fan in general, go grab this album, it is a pretty good buy despite the repetition, and that's it! I'll see you guys later!

P.S. Sorry this review took a while, procrastination issues that I have to deal with. Anyways, now it's really the end, bye!

American Idiot: The Original Broadway Cast Recording (American Idiot Cast)

Welcome back to another one of my album reviews. I think at least maybe half of you right now that are reading this blog post know who Green Day are and know at least one of the songs that they have made in their more then 20 year long career. Whether you like them or not, Green Day have made their mark on history and have influenced quite a few of today's artists and bands, including Zebrahead, Fall Out Boy, and even Ashlee Simpson. Out of the people reading this that know who Green Day are, there are at least a few of you who know that Green Day and Michael Mayer worked together on adapting Green Days seventh studio album into a one-act, through-sung stage musical on Broadway. They included the main 13 songs, and decided to bring in a few songs from Green Days eighth album 21st Century Breakdown, some of the B-sides off of American Idiot, and the love song that Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead vocalist and guitarist of Green Day, sang to his present day wife. The musical was a huge success and has been getting very enthusiastic remarks from critics including the Boston Herald, the Associated Press, and even Rolling Stone magazine. I've seen some of the live videos of this musical, and believe it or not, it seems like a pretty great show, and I can see why it's been getting such great reviews. Eventually that led me to get the Original Broadway Cast Recording of the musical, and what did I think about it? Well, let's get into that right now shall we?

The original cast of the Broadway adaptation of
American Idiot.

The first thing we're going to look at as we do with all my other reviews of albums is the musical quality and it's OK. It really hurts to me to say that when one of my favourite bands composed all of the music in this musical, but, this particular recording of it just sounds bland. You have Billie, Mike and Tré doing the majority of the instrument recordings, but it still feels very bland to me, also, I don't know why, but this studio recording just sounds too inexpressive. The cast definitely hit all of their notes spot on, as they're trained to perfection for this kind of stuff, but as a great film once said,

Rock and Roll ain't about doing things perfect.

again, the cast are perfect in hitting their marks, but all of the emotion that you can feel in the original Green Day recordings just isn't there, which really just makes the musical quality of this recording feel mediocre. The thing that I like about Green Day is that what Green Day sing about, they truly mean it and want it. With the cast, it just sounds like they're only doing what they're told and aren't going for the extra soul that they can put in it, when I actually know they can pull that feeling off. When I watched those live recordings, I could tell that they were putting every last bit of effort they had into maintaining perfect notes, while making sure the soul of the songs was still there and intact, all the while doing dances and movements on stage that I'd get exhausted doing pretty quickly. If they could pull all that off on stage, why shouldn't they be able to nail the emotion even better just standing inside a studio room? My point is that the vocals and even the instruments in this song are very bland and inexpressive and there's no excuse for it. However, the music when you dig deep down to the heart of it, is still American Idiot, and is still the great album that it truly is, and now with some new and undiscovered songs! Alas, there is another flaw that cancels out this fact. Call this more nit picky then it needs to be, but none of these songs were any of the casts creations. I get that this is an adaptation of something that already exists, but there are some other musicals out there that I've heard are great and have wonderful original songs, like Spring Awakening. You can call this a nitpick if you want and I won't hold it against you, but to me, not being able to be original in any recordings is a flaw to me.

The next thing I'm going to review in this recording is the lyrical quality(if this turns out to be very short, well, sorry in advance if that's bad). Well, again, I have to take a point off because of the face that these lyrics weren't made by the actual cast, which again, is a bad thing in my eye. However, the actual content of the lyrics is pretty damn great, because well, it's Green Day. Short segment even shorter, the lyrics aren't original, but they're very well written.

Lastly, we get to how well the album sounds together. In the actual album, the album sounds great as a whole, and only takes breaks when it needs to, sometimes even seguing the ending of one song to the beginning of the next, which is pretty cool, and sounds cool as well. In this album however, most of those segues are just butchered up, and just made separate songs even more distant from each other and made it obvious that a new song was going to happen, not that the original didn't but the original did it so that it didn't interrupt your musical experience. However, in a way, it makes sense that most of the songs are separate from each other, as they were different musical numbers in the musical, so I'm going to give some sympathy to this recording and give this section a mediocre mark.

Now we get to the final verdict. Musically, this get's a 1/4, there's almost no emotion in the songs, and they weren't even made by the cast. Lyrically, this get's a 2/3, great lyrics, but again, not original. Lastly, as a whole, I give this a 2/3, they got rid of a lot of the segues in the songs, but I give sympathy to it because they were different musical numbers. Which leaves this recording with a 5/10, meaning mediocre, they took what were such wonderful renditions of Green Days work, and just butchered them up into emotionless, unoriginal, crap. Don't get this recording, even though you may be a Green Day fan, or a Broadway fan, or a fan of the musical even, this recording loses a lot of the soul found in Green Day's music, Broadway's show tunes, and the musicals, well, musical numbers. However, again, if you want to hear American Idiot in a whole new light, and you're fine with the criticisms I've described here, even though there are a lot of them,  you might want to go check it out. Well, this is the end of the review, which means, bye, see you later, and hope to see you reading my next review.

Turn On The Bright Lights (Interpol)

All right, if you couldn't tell already, I'm going to be reviewing the album Turn On The Bright Lights, which was made by the band Interpol. To be honest, when I got this album and got told I should do it for my first review, I was like meh, OK, but since I was going to review it, I decided I needed to find out a bit more about this band to give you a proper introduction to what we're dealing with. So let's get started. Interpol are an indie rock and post-punk revival band from New York City, and the line up for the band when the album was being made was made up of Paul Banks on vocals and guitar, Daniel Kessler on guitar and vocals, and Sam Fogarino on drums and percussion. The band was started in 1997, and is still making music as we speak. Turn On The Bright Lights was their debut album that the band released during August 2002, and got high amounts of praise from critics, including Allmusic, PopMatters, and Pitchfork Media. And now we're going to see how well this album sounds to me, so let's just get started now shall we?

Interpol's current line up, or a past line up, or
just one of Interpol's line ups as far as I know.

So as you know if you've actually read my first blog post, I'm going to review the actual musical elements of the album first, and well, it's ok. To me, Turn On The Bright Lights really just sounds boring, but there are some good songs on the album, like Untitled, which to me is a pretty great song. However, the rest of the album just sounds like it's going to put me to sleep, and I just want to turn it off and listen to something else the first time I did listen to it(by the way, this review is basically my thoughts of the album after I've listened to it from the front to the back once, which is probably how most of my reviews are going to be). However, I really do like the bass lines in this album, they remind me of Flea's kind of style for some reason. The guitar lines however just make me want to turn the album off and just go to sleep, and one of my biggest complaints about this album is that, I don't know why, maybe it's just me, but I can just barely hear the vocals in these songs. Maybe it's what they were going for, but to me, it's just stupid sounding when I can barely hear the vocals. In short, in terms of the music quality of TOTBL, it's mid goodish at best, and just bad at the worst.

Now we're gonna talk about the words I can barely hear. So after I listened to this album, I decided to go search up the lyrics to see if they were any good and they're actually pretty good sometimes. But other times, they just don't make fucking sense. For example, take this line from the song PDA on the album, and tell me it makes perfect sense.

Sleep tight, grim rite, we have two hundred couches where you can...
Sleep tight, grim rite, we have two hundred couches where you can...
Sleep tight, grim rite, we have two hundred couches where you can
Sleep tonight, sleep tonight, sleep tonight, sleep tonight

You can't? My point exactly, how we are we supposed to know what two hundred couches mean or symbolize? I get that there's some people out there who  might have listened to this album and understood perfectly what it means, but I am definitely not one of those people. I really want to know what two hundred couches mean, cause it really does seem like a very deep and interesting lyric, but there isn't any other clues in the song's lyrics that let me know what this set of lyrics means, and believe me, I have actually looked at this song's lyrics, I just don't get it, but than again, maybe it's just me, if you get it, good for you, but I simply just don't. However, like I've said before, there are some pretty good lyrics in this album, for example, take a look at this lyric from the third track on the album, NYC.

I had seven faces, thought I knew which one to wear, but I'm sick of spending these lonely nights, training myself not to care

 See, this is a pretty good lyric, it's obvious, it actually sounds good on the album since you can hear the lyrics on this song, and it's very poetic. You can see that he's spending nights all alone and feeling depressed, and that the seven faces represent the main seven emotions(at least, I think that's what it means). Which goes to show that you can be poetic and straightforward at the same time, and even though you may not get what the seven faces mean, the later lyrics express that he's obviously depressed, I mean, you don't just spend nights alone and not caring when you're happy. So there are some pretty good lyrics on the album, but there are some pretty bad ones too.

Lastly we get to how well the album sounds as a whole. Surprisingly, despite the boring ok music, and the sometimes bad lyrics, it still fits really well together as a whole album. It's not one of those albums where the songs are all completely different and have nothing in common with each other, and sound completely off next to one another, but all the music and lyrics fit really well each other and the songs resonate with one another, which is definitely something I can give this album credit for, unlike some other albums that I might review. So now, we go to my final verdict.

So each category on the album gets the album a respective number of points, with a maximum number for each category and added together to make a total score(if this doesn't make sense right now, it might when I give an example). So musically the album gets a 2/4, I get that I pretty much ranted on how boring the album was for me despite maybe one or two good songs, but to me, the album isn't absolutely terrible musically, so I decided to be fair and give it a 2/4. Lyrically, this gets a 2/3, although there are some very good lyrics on this album, there are still the very odd and nonsensical lyrics that the everyman just might not get. Lastly, in terms of how well it functions as a whole, we got a 3/3. The songs and lyrics and everything on this album sound like they were made to be together and wouldn't function as well with out it, which quite simply, definitely gets this album a perfect 3 on that category. In total, that means this album gets a 7/10, which to me, just means good, better then mediocre, but definitely not great. If you can look past the complaints that I have with this album, go give it a listen, you might be able to like it better then I did, until then, I'll see you whenever I do my next review, seeya.

Hi!

Hey, what's up? Welcome to my blog! If you couldn't tell already by the title, I'm just going to be doing album reviews on this little thing, and since this is the beginning of my blogs lifespan, I might as well tell you now how I'm going to review albums, so let's get started!

The first thing I'm going to start off with before I even start the review is just give a little introduction to the band, for example, I may start by telling you who's in the band and what do they do, and also giving a little background info to the album I'm about to review, and then maybe post a picture of the band at the end. I feel this will be a good way to start off with because I know that some of you may not know the album I'm reviewing or the band that made it, so this should be a pretty good way to start things off, and since this is my blog, well, you can't really do anything about it now can you. So this concludes this explanation.

The next thing I'm going to do after I give the introduction is give my review on the actual musical content. This means that I'm not going to review any of the words coming out of the vocalist's mouth, but just review the actual musical stuff, like the bass line, or the beat, or the guitar riff. However, that doesn't mean I'm not doing to review the vocal melody, I am going to cover that in my reviews, but again, I'm not going to review the words coming out of the singers mouth. Just how the vocal melody sounds. To me, it's pretty obvious why I'm covering the musical content, but if it isn't, it's because the majority of the content of an album is musical content. I really shouldn't have to explain myself any better then that, so let's move on to the next aspect I'll review when it comes to albums.

The next thing I'm going to review after the musical content is, you might have guessed it by now, the lyrical content. Yes I did say I wasn't going to review the words coming out of peoples mouths, but that was the musical section. Now we're in the lyrical section, where I'm more then obligated to review all the potentially stupid lyrics being said by potentially stupid people. However, some of you might be wondering why I might be reviewing the lyrics of albums if sometimes, you just don't care what they're saying? Well, that's because I think the words are pretty important in anything. Again, I really hope I don't have to explain myself any further then that, so let's go on to the last thing I'm going to evaluate.

The last thing I'm going to evaluate in terms of albums may not be the most obvious thing to review. What I'm going to review is how well the album fits together. I think it might not be completely obvious why I'm bothering to talk about and review this certain aspect, but I feel it's important. I think it's important because you could have the best guitarist, bassist, drummer, and vocalist in the world, but if they don't function well together, it's going to sound like a piece of crap. So that pretty much explains all the three major aspects I will review separately.

Lastly, I'll just sum up all my opinions, give it a score, and tell you readers my final thoughts on the album, and that will simply just end the review. Thanks for reading through all of this if you've actually stumbled upon this first blog post, and I hope to see you again when I make my first album review! Really I've been bouncing this idea around for a while, of me making album reviews, or reviews in general really. I've seen other people do reviews on video, like The Nostalgia Critic, and The AVGN, and Todd In The Shadows, but I don't have a video camera so I couldn't do it, but then when I discovered I could just simply make a blog and post my reviews on here, it just opened up this whole new world for me. So yeah, I hope you enjoy my future reviews, and if people really do like them, well, maybe I will keep doing this. Bye!