Cannibal Corpse - A Skeletal Domain Review

Cannibal Corpse - A Skeletal Domain [Death Metal]



As usual, song by song:

1. High Velocity Impact Splatter - first of five songs written by guitarist Pat O'Brien, it's actually surprisingly easy to tell who wrote which song here. A very powerful introduction, and some fantastic vocals by George Fisher (who would have thought, huh?). O'Brien's riff in the verses is fantastic.
2. Sadistic Embodiment - again, written by O'Brien. This however, is a very average song, which only picks up when the tempo drops.
3. Kill Or Become - first of two songs written by the other guitarist Rob Barrett, and he seriously brings the grooves on this album. Why he has not written more is a topic of discussion for another blog, I guess. Fantastic solo, great galloping riffs, and a surprisingly exhilarating moment when Fisher screams "FIRE UP THE CHAINSAW!". One of the best songs on the album.
4. A Skeletal Domain - third number by O'Brien. So far not stopping the momentum of the album, groovy sections interlaced by blastbeats. The emphasis of this album is groove, as opposed to technical mastery on 'Torture, the band's previous album. Whatever was done to Fisher's vocals in the mix is really working so far. This song is also considerably sinister.
5. Headlong Into Carnage - first song on the album written by bassist and founding member Alex Webster, and it really shows, since Webster was the main writer on previous albums. An average mid-paced song though. I would not count it as filler straight away, it does well enough to be above that, but isn't is memorable as the first four songs.
6. The Murderer's Pact - again by Webster. Very black metal-ish vibes around the chorus. The riffs here are so tight. This song caught me off guard, quite a variation from Cannibal Corpse's standard fare. A very strong song.
7. Funeral Cremation - More Webster. It's clearly filler. You start to wonder why Webster hasn't sprung out on any bass solo yet.
8. Icepick Lobotomy - second song by Rob Barrett, and my personal favourite of the album. Great riffs, catchy chrous, and a great change of pace in the middle. Cannibal Corpse can't get better than this.
9. Vector Of Cruelty - Webster's fourth song. Very uninspiring.
10. Bloodstained Cement - The last Webster song. Tapped my foot a bit here and there, but there is really nothing much to add. Again. Webster's refusal to break into bass wankery confuses me, that would have been a lot more interesting that this song.
11. Asphyxiate To Resuscitate - Co-written by Barrett and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz. This song is a little more vicious, and as with Barett's other songs, there is a hell lot of groove. Not a bad song, though it does leave something to be desired.
12. Hallowed Bodies - O'Brien's last song ends the album on a rather high note with an absolutely ferocious riff. Guitar driven and brutal, this wipes any bitter aftertaste left by the previous few songs.

Some things to note when viewing the album as a whole; nothing to expect from George Fisher, he is serviceable here. Guitar directions are surprisingly welcome on this album, bass springs through every note played here. Great mixing, terrible mastering at DR4 (highly compressed). However the production itself isn't bad when discounting the numbers. Paul Mazurkiewicz's drumming pulls the whole band down because he plays the same repetitive thing again and again. Bummed because he was getting better on the last few albums.

Still not as good an album as 'Torture', still not as good as 'The Bleeding' (the best Cannibal Corpse album ever made). Not a bad album per say, but not close to being a good one, seeing as half the songs were filler.

★★★☆☆

Opeth - Pale Communion Review

Opeth - Pale Communion [Progressive Rock]

It's kinda interesting to review this album. I have been a huge fan of Opeth, though that slowly diminished over the years (subtle hint). As with the last few albums, I will go through this one song by song first:

1. Eternal Rains Will Come - Not everyone's a fan of the abrupt introduction? I'm neutral to it, it doesn't really hamper the album in the long run. This song is actually a really good first impression on the album. For one, it's dynamic, a quality that was seemingly lost on Heritage (at least to me).
2. Cusp Of Eternity - The lead single of the album. This song is kinda meh for me. Mikael's crooning at the chorus is quite a nice touch, although he's been overusing this style ever since he discovered it in Watershed. It's in this song that you start to realize that Steven Wilson's production on the album is terrific, one of the best for this year. Song ends with a gorgeous guitar solo.
3. Moon Above, Sun Below - Things get quite tricky here. This song is terribly disjointed. The irony is that this song is structurally the most similar to the death metal style we've all loved in older Opeth. Mikael's vocal patterns here are weird, it's hard to put a finger on it. His technique is admirable, but his singing voice isn't convincing for the hard-rock approach they've tried to incorporate here. About the meandering, some nice bits here and there, otherwise a very skippable song.
4. Elysisan Woes - A ballad that's almost a wholesale copy of King Crimson. Wailing to keyboards. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's not the best execution here.
5. Goblin - My personal favourite on this album. It's a tribute to the 70s band of the same name. It's one the few times that everyone in the band plays with synergy, not just playing their parts but interlocking them. Very intricate songwriting, the kind of thing I expect from a PROGRESSIVE band. Martin Axenrot is on fine form for this whole album. I hardly find it surprising that my favourite song turns out to be an instrumental.
6. River - A surprisingly beautiful song on the album. Again, another hallmark of Opeth songs was the level of emotions invested in their songs. This song has a lot of that. It's heartfelt and earnest, and thankfully kept to a coherent 7 minutes.
7. Voice Of Treason - Another song that seems underwhelming to me. Mikael's singing is off (again because he doesn't seem to be able to input some personality in his 'rock' voice). Song meanders on and on, one or two riffs that stand out. Nothing else.
8. Faith In Others - Very reminiscent of their 'Damnations' era. A decent closer, but doesn't provide anything more interesting than the album's first half. I enjoyed the crooning at the end this time though.
9. I will not talk about the two bonus live songs, but they are pretty decent to listen to even if they do not contribute to the actual album.

As a whole package, the album feels much more fully realised than Heritage, but doesn't do anything to dissuade audiences who prefer their death metal era. Not that it's a matter of taste, but I find that Opeth's progressive rock era doesn't offer anything new. It's great 70s prog worship, but as with Heritage, I would rather hear actual 70s prog than this. The band has followed the textbook closely, and offered some intricate songs, but most of the songs are self-indulgent re-imaginations of the yesteryears. Mikael Åkerfeldt's vision is clear, but his execution is not there because he does not have a commanding voice. Quite the contrary, he has a beautiful, angelic voice well suited for acoustic passages and mournful songs, not the ballsy-attitudes he tries to bring to the table here. It's also deeply ironic that he gave up death metal for this kind of singing (although recent live shows reveal a more important reason- he has lost his growl). Martin Axenrot has to be praised for completely changing his game, his methodical death metal drum work has matured a lot, and his drumming is almost unrecognizable here. He inserts many fills throughout the songs, and he accounts for a large part of the tight playing here. Martín Méndez's hasn't done a great job here, he's probably still adjusting to the band's change of genres. Bass has been a hallmark of 70s prog and it's a letdown that he hasn't bothered to step up, even if he's been in the background for the most part in his Opeth career.

I am still trying to figure out how Fredrik Åkesson (guitars) and Joakim Svalberg (keyboards) contribute to this album. The latter especially, the keyboards are almost background fillers, automatic cues for a sappy ballad or a 'sad' moment in the song.

As mentioned earlier, the production is ace, at a whopping DR11. You wouldn't need to read this statistic; the magic is in the attention to detail when you hear it. Steven Wilson has been on a roll with his production duties lately, even if his singing is not up to standard in his own projects (huehuehue-).

So with all these said, it's with a heavy heart that I bestow this album a:

★★★☆☆

It's actually more of a 3.5, but we don't know enough coding to write that in. It's a decent album, but far from this band's best work.

Scar Symmetry - The Singularity (Phase I - Neohumanity) Review

Scar Symmetry - The Singularity (Phase I - Neohumanity) [Melodic Death Metal]

 

Listening to this album has rendered me temporarily unable to express my thoughts in coherent, structured paragraphs, so here goes:

1. The vocals on this album are a huge letdown. Hopefully this doesn't become part of a larger post-Christian Alvestam trend; if the work on "Dark Matter Dimensions" was forgivable at least, the material here certainly isn't.

2. The band has taken their trademark 'corny' shtick a tad too far this time round. It worked in the past - see, for example, the music video for "The Illusionist" - because it contrasted so starkly with how everything else about their material was more than worthy of being taken seriously. Now, the cheesy synth effects, when taken alongside the often-clownish vocals, produce the exact opposite effect.

3. The drum work is solid, but nothing new.

4. The guitar work is, as expected, top-tier. The solos, in particular, are immaculate, allowing the listener to conclude nothing other than that a lot of time, skill and thought must have been put into their creation and execution. Per Nilsson is one of the best things to have happened to music in the past decade or so.

5. However, this only goes a small way towards salvaging an album that starts off oddly (via the strange 53-second piece "The Shape of Things to Come") and never stabilises. There is no "best" or "signature" track to this album (the track closest to this honour being "Spiral Timeshift"), which might be a good thing if the album was a masterpiece, but unfortunately is not the case here given that it falls far short of such a standard.

6. Scar Symmetry has long banked on these things to keep itself relevant: (1) creative guitar work, (2) strong vocals and (3) that unteachable ability to create songs that linger in the listener's memory. As regards The Singularity (Part I), element (2) is rather in question, and element (3) is unquestionably missing. This is not the band's finest moment.

★★★☆☆

Maroon 5 - V Review

Maroon 5 - V [Pop]

Having declined to record for Maroon 5's previous album, keyboardist Jesse Carmichael rejoined Adam Levine and company to put out the band's fifth studio record, V.

He might as well have stayed home.

The keyboard and synth work on this album sounds like it could have been put together by any casual GarageBand user - and this is not close to the biggest problem with this album.

Adam Levine hasn't been a credible album artist for a few years now, as his inability to reproduce his songs at original key live suggests. This album does nothing to dispel such an assertion. By and large, Levine sleepwalks through this album, putting out vocal line after bland vocal line - and when he does try to reach high, it sounds whiny and painful (as heard in songs like 'Animal', 'New Love' and 'Sugar'). Also: Auto-Tune.

The band cannot even rely on the idea that they roped in guitarist James Valentine way back in 2001 to steer them towards a new musical direction; there is nothing to suggest that when joining the band, Valentine, a legitimate jazz and rock musician, had in mind playing the same few chords every song only to be shunted to the back end of the mix to accommodate annoying electronic beats and Levine's awful nasal screeches. 

Dare I say this, then: the band has made so much money over its time in the spotlight that its members have long stopped putting effort and thought into making their music. The one song on V with any musical value, 'Feelings', is duly ruined by Levine's misguided forays into vocal ranges far too high for him in the previous decade, let alone now. The collaboration piece with Gwen Stefani does the album no favours either.

This is the latest episode in a steep and sudden decline that began in 2010 with the disappointing "Hands All Over" album. The days of "Songs About Jane" are well and truly gone, only to be taken over by the same soulless drivel this band appeared to set itself apart from all those years back.

★☆☆☆☆

Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails Review

Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails [Post Death / Atmospheric Death]

Such tasteful album art

If you haven't already heard the shitstorm that has been generated over the unbelievable amounts of compression on this album's production, I'd suggest you go over to sites like AMG or Metal-Fi. I will try to talk about the music at hand.

Moving past the terrible production, I quite enjoyed the ambivalent mix of technical showmanship and quite space (which then reroutes to the production, but oh well). This is my first entry to the band that started out with deathcore-ish elements and moved on to the more atmospheric 'The Harvest Womb' EP last year.

One thing that stands out is the outstanding songwriting by the band. With little maneuvering within the songs, the band has managed to spice up the stale tech-death structures which many bands tend to overuse. One technique is the use motifs, sprinkling the melody throughout the song in short bursts and different time signatures rather than using the melody as a main theme, a small but highly effective move that elevates the hooks on a song, hell, on every song here. Atmospheric sections are still grounded with heavy drum-n-bass, as opposed to full out atmospheres, and this gives the songs fluidity- without making it monotonous (yes, all you tech-death bands sound the same).

Another thing that comes out right off the bat is the heavy emphasis on melody - in technical death metal! Many of the songs are highly distinguishable, the most important being 'Sapphire', a song with a thick melody that never seems to tire out for all five and a half minutes because of how well the band has paced it. The ending track, 'Chemical Cave' simply overwhelms with you with melodies (not -solos-) that are instant and accessible despite the intricate musicianship, something I've found highly commendable on this album.

I'm still going to give this many spins, and my opinion may change as December draws nearer. As for now, I am highly impressed with the band's use of atmosphere and melody, something that may have been tried by many bands in the past, but never executed as well as the tracks on this album. The songs are peppered with numerous jam sessions that seem to have been written on the fly, but work well within the song itself without sounding too self-indulgent. Many times, bands of this genre forget that music is not about technical mastery of the instrument, but to express emotions with it. With most bands, I feel like I am listening to a bunch of robots, but not here.

I cannot give an official rating since the production still bothers me. It would be about 4.5/5 without taking sound into account. It's a 3/5 for me because of this production. What a bummer.

Ed Sheeran - x Review [The Buona Vista Musician]

Ed Sheeran - x [Pop]

Most of my reviews are of metal albums - not a surprising thing, mind, since I would more readily listen to a metal record (and then be able to review it) than one from almost any other genre. However, there are times when, compelled by hearsay, hype or other strange self-created reasons, I bite my tongue, step out of my comfort zone and put myself through an entire album of music that I don't usually listen to. Sometimes the results are pleasant, and other times they aren't. This is one of those "other times".

I gave this album a shot mainly because people close to me have been riding the Ed Sheeran hype train really hard. This guy isn't like those other pop artists, they say, attempting to convince me that, assuming there are multiple types of pop artists, Ed Sheeran isn't of the type that I readily profess to dislike.

Sad to say, though, that this album has not given me any reason to afford Sheeran any more respect than I would most other pop artists (that is to say, not a lot of respect). In fact, I could quite easily break this down:

Vocals: My immense disdain for auto-tuned vocals and the reasons behind such disdain are all old hat by now; I won't go any further down that road than mentioning that this album contains fairly liberal use of pitch correction. That matter aside, the vocals are delivered alright (not fantastically, as many people would have you believe). The usual crooning and bluesy runs are there, best observed on tracks like "Don't". Sheeran tries to spice things up with rap-like vocals on "Runaway" and "The Man", which appears "creative" and "original", except it isn't, even in the context of pop music, given that other artists like Jason Mraz and Train  have used vocal stylings like these fairly frequently (and arguably more adeptly than Sheeran). Overall, the vocals aren't terrible, but neither are they amazing. "Bland" would be an appropriate word here - so much for Sheeran being some other kind of pop artist.

Lyrics: There isn't a whole lot going on here aside from the usual done-to-death drivel about puppy love and teenage rebellion. I fully understand that the primary target audience of pop artists like Sheeran is not seeking the musical equivalent of William Wordsworth (nor indeed should it); however, this gives Sheeran no reason to slap together all the cliches he found while listening to 2000s records and repackage them, as he appears to have done here.

Music: Musically speaking, the album plays largely to expectation; Sheeran made his name in the mainstream arena as an acoustic artist and, aside from a couple of tracks, does not deviate much from his tested formula. This creative decision was Sheeran's to make and is mine to critique: much like his 2011 album "+", there is again nothing noteworthy happening here, unless one considers strummed and occasionally-fingerpicked major and minor chords noteworthy. If Sheeran was trying to sound new and improved, it didn't come through; if he was content to make bank off his die-hard fans by simply regurgitating old ideas, then balls to him.

Overall: This album isn't quite the shit show that "+" was. "+" was so bad largely because its radio hits - "Lego House" and "Give Me Love" - were complete garbage. The song with arguably the most airtime on "x" is "Sing", which is a fairly annoying  song (especially because of the unnecessary howling in the choruses) but not quite "Lego House"-level bad. However, that by no means suggests that "x" is anything to write home about - on the contrary, it is bland, uninspiring and unoriginal (and, again, THERE IS SO MUCH AUTOTUNE) which, if you may, classifies it as just another run-of-the-mill pop record.

★☆☆☆☆

Ed Sheeran - x Review

Ed Sheeran - x ["Pop"]

I do not understand the hype for this album. Nothing that has been done here is new, nothing especially emotional. The usual garbage is here though; completely unmemorable vocal hooks, terrible, cheesy lyrics, repetitive rhythms (you get sick of the acoustic guitar barely three songs in) and plastic vocals that the masses seem to have no problem lapping up. How many of you actually listen to actual singers?

Dynamic range stands at 6, which is already quite bad before you factor in that most of the album is acoustic, which somehow means that it is brickwalled to death, a classic example of Rick Rubin's disgusting production. Not surprisingly, it's easy to see that most of the compression is in the vocals, his voice pierces through whatever 'instrumentation' exists on the album. Anybody who has managed to differentiate his songs should be applauded for having such a parochial view of music. Though he uses multiple guitar techniques, all of them seem to be taken straight from the textbook without any of his own personal input instrumentally, so I find it amusing that the album has been marketted as one with lush guitar playing. John Mayer looks like a shredder next to this album.

Speaking of Mayer, the themes on the album are so severely immature and plastic, it seems like an obvious attempt to cash in on Taylor Swift's redundant love songs. This man is the male version of Taylor Swift. Whether he refers to hormones as 'chemicals burning in my bloodstream' in 'Bloodstream' or when he literally talks about his first kiss under the lamp post of sixth street (I am assuming it's his first kiss, for his sake) in 'Nina', there is no way a person of normal IQ can listen without cringing at such lame lyrics.

For vocals, I do have a distinct taste for how I like vocals to be delivered, as most people should, so I will try to stay clear of basing this for critique. However, I observe that Ed Sheeran has a rather monotonous approach to vocals, without anything in his arsenal besides crooning and his usual nasal singing. He tends to stay in the higher register, but never seems to go beyond this range. There is some obvious use of autotune here, but I will give it to him to be able to belt a decent tune from time to time. Ironically, a lot of this becomes obvious on the collaboration with Pharell Williams on 'Runaway'. I am not a fan of either artiste, but Williams does elevate the song here. The only other respite from the croons is the rap vocals on 'The Man'. His rap sounds pretty awkward. I will stop here.

All in all, nothing else stands out in this album. I can imagine a lot of people, who do not listen to much music in the first place, will probably make this album a lot more than it actually as, a male version of Taylor Swift's Red. Then again, even that album had hooks here and there. Pure bullshit.

☆☆☆☆☆ Steaming pile of shit