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!