643. Crimson Glory / Crimson Glory. 1986. 3.5/5

I can honestly say that I had never heard of Crimson Glory up until about four months ago, when a fellow 80's metal head on a music forum somewhere asked me "have you heard Crimson Glory?" My negative response to this brought the inevitable urgent pushing that I should drop everything I was doing and get out there and get it. While I agreed that I would do so, it took me another couple of months to get around to finding said album.
When I first put it on, my immediate response to myself was "Why have I not heard about this album before now?!" It really is a mystery, because all of the elements that originally drew me to heavy metal are all here.

Had it been that I had discovered this album when it was released, all those years ago, it is quite possible, even probable, that I would be absolutely raving about the amazing positives of Crimson Glory and slapping a big five stars all across it. As it is, for the most part I have only positive things to say about it now.
The vocals and the guitars are the first things that hit you about this album. It is very easy to hear the influence that bands like Judas Priest and Queensrÿche had with Crimson Glory. the early songs such as "Valhalla" and "Dragon Lady" not only have that Queensrÿche melodic guitar sound in them, they are pumped full of not only the Judas Priest twin guitar assault, they have the vocals. Crimson Glory lead singer, Midnight (yes, that's correct, his name is Midnight) goes all out to be almost a Rob Halford clone. He hits notes as high, and as long, as almost no one but Halford could do in that age, and the similarities between them are quite obvious. This is not to suggest they are a clone band, but that influence really comes through in their songs.

I can't help but enjoy this album, and this is where the crux of the argument comes to play. Given the improvement in production, this would sound so much better if it was recorded today. And the problem of discovering an album now that I really should have back in the days of 1986 means it is now being marked against all of the albums I've had since then, but have listened to half a million times, compared to the dozen I have now listened to Crimson Glory. As I stated within here, I really believe if I had had this album for that length of time, it would be getting a extremely positive ratings result. As it is, I like this a lot, but on a comparable scale across all my albums, it falls short of the great ones.

642. Shadows Fall / Fire From the Sky. 2012. 1.5/5

Given that my only other experience with Shadows Fall is their 2002 release The War Within, which tickled my fancy enough at the time, I came into this with an open mind, but hope in my heart. I had initially walked into The War Within by mistake, and had found it to be a better than average release at a time when I had been looking for new material. Despite that, I had never gotten around to listening to anything since then before now.
I laughed when I read a fellow “Rate Your Music” user ask the question “Wait… is this Metallica?”, because on the opening two songs, there are a number of things that are reminiscent of the latter days of the veteran metal giants. To an extent it is uncanny, but there is no surprise that bands out there are using some of their influences in their own music.

At this point, though, I am able to say that this album is, rather harshly, a failure. I'm not sure I am able to pin point exactly where and how this fails to find the mark. The vocals just don't seem to bring across any sense of intensity or emotion. Fast drums and heavy guitar riffs mean nothing if they aren't arranged into exacting tones. Does this band, and this album, want to be thrash or metalcore or turn towards a mainstream metal sound? It seems a little confusing here as to their intent. More than anything else, despite their interesting arrangement of their heavier riffs, they combine it with their clear, song-halting explorations at awkward moments.
Given the length of time since my last visitation with the band, perhaps I was expecting too much. What I received instead was something of a disappointment. It starts off okay with "The Unknown", "Divide and Conquer" and "Weight of the World", which are reasonable songs if a little off-putting. The afore-mentioned similarities to Metallica are only enhanced by the missing power element in the songs. What follows unfortunately does not dismiss these feelings of abandonment, with a couple of critical elements missing from this entire recording.

Not having had an intimate relationship with the band's material in the past I am probably not qualified to give an absolute trashing of their latest release. Suffice to say that the result will stop me from actively pursuing any of their other material for the time being, because if it is all similar to this I feel I would be wasting my time.

641. Soulfly / Enslaved. 2012. 3/5

It's been a long time since Max and his first band took the world by storm with their new take on heavy metal, and made people stand up and take notice. When he eventually left that band and formed Soulfly, he put out a debut album that hinted of good thiings to come.
Since that time... well... it hasn't been bad, but it has been like a conveyor belt, each album dishing out much the same product with little change or inspiration. And as I have said on countless occasions, that is not always a bad thing, and for big fans of the band they will no doubt love every moment of this.

For me - well, Soulfly is a band I can listen to and respect their work, but I am not a fanatic. Like so many bands for whom Sepultura and then Soulfly have blazed a path - bands like Lamb of God, Trivium and Arch Enemy - unless the material is outstandingly good, it can get either very similar and pointless or just plain boring.
And this isn't bad, not by a long shot. It jumps off at a cracking pace with the intro "Resistance" leading straight into "World Scum", which is then followed by my two favourote tracks "Intervention" and "Gladiator" which are led by blinding drums and super solo guitar work. "Legions" brings forth more of the same. I seriously am awestruck by some of the rolls by David Kinkade on this song. Just blinding. The rhythm riff through the song is also a pearler.
My main discourse with the back end of the album is that I think the songs get a bit long, and as result lose a bit of the impact the the start of the album delivers.

All in all, this is another solid release from the Soulfly icon, and while it may not break any new barriers it certainly keeps the band and its leader at the forefront of this style of heavy metal.

640. Lacuna Coil / Dark Adrenaline. 2012. 2/5

Well, it's been a long time coming, but I have finally gotten around to checking out a Lacuna Coil album. I could (and maybe should) have checked out an earlier release of theirs to ease my way in, but when the opportunity came along to grab their new album I decided to take it. I had heard fair reports on their music, and was absolutely taken by Cristina Scabbia's guest vocal on Megadeth's "A Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)". Thus the time had arrived.

The album is catchy from the start, in a hard rock alternative kind, certainly not a metal kind of way. there are obvious similarities to draw between Lacuna Coil and Evanescence in their sound. "Trip the Darkness" and "Against You" kickstart the album at the right pace, while "Kill the Light" is another rocking song. I think the main thing these songs are missing is a bit of grunt, a real kick in the guitars, drums and vocals to really bring the maximum out of them. They're good rock songs, but they need a metal injection to increase their work load.
"Give Me Something More" is lacking something more, while "Upsidedown" has too much of Andrea on vocal in his monotonal chords. "End of Time" is the power ballad every band feels obliged to include on every album, while "I Don't Believe in Tomorrow" has the band trying to do a weak impression of a Therapy? inspired song - or so it sounds to my ears. It doesn't come off at all.
"Intoxicated" returns the album to a better standard, and this is supported by "The Army Inside", both a little faster paced with better riff work, and more of Cristina on vocals. The reworked R.E.M. cover "Losing My Religion" doesn't really work for me, but in reality it was a brave song to try and cover. "Fire" follows the improvement of the last few songs on the album, while "My Spirit" tries to be a bit too moody and soulful, and really just drags out the conclusion of the piece.

The one thing I can absolutely discern is that this band is a 70 to 80% better sounding band when Cristina is on vocals rather than when Andrea takes over. The duelling vocals style of the band is not one that I adverse to, but the exacting differences in their vocal approach and pitch is what really irritates me. It's not as if it is really terrible, but it is simply that the songs sound better and more in the correct pitch when Cristina is singing.

This isn't all bad, and does show potential in places. But in the end, it will probably not progress any further in my collection than something that can act as background music while I'm working.

639. Devin Townsend Project / Ghost. 2011. 0.5/5

About ten years ago my wife went out and bought a double CD called Open Space: The Classic Chillout Album, which was exactly as the title suggested. It contains about 40 songs that all sound exactly the same, in supposedly calming nature which is meant to be enjoyed in a relaxed, quiet atmosphere to help the listener to 'chill out'. Quite honestly, it is up there with some of the worst albums it has ever been my misfortune to have to listen to. It is possibly even more vile than those champions of crap, Echobrain and Lulu.

The reason I bring this up is because when I first put on Ghost I thought I had inadvertently put on Open Space: The Classic Chillout Album by mistake.

Ghost is an exercise by Devin Townsend to complete a four album stint which apparently showcases the four parts of his personality or some such crap. So do you describe this album as his soft and sensitive side, or his boring as shit, crap, lobotomised side? How harsh in judgement can you be? Quite clearly, this album is not to my taste in music, and despite the fact that it is a part of a quadrilogy of set styles, should I be bagging it? Well... yes, I can. Because if Iron Maiden came out and did this album, I would be roasting them. If Metallica came out and did this album, well, I guess we'd all shrug our shoulders and just expect it.

There is no question that the quality of the playing and production is top notch. That has never been in question in Devin's work. But I can't swallow this bile. Obviously there are any number of people who will enjoy this album, many of them who would have nothing to do with Devin's other work. If you are into new age or ambient music, this may in fact be your Abbey Road. But as a conclusion to his Project, it is even more disconcerting than what has come before it.

638. Devin Townsend Project / Deconstruction. 2011. 1.5/5

It was only at a friend's insistence that I “must listen to his new albums” that I decided to revisit Devin Townsend and his work. It has been some time since I had listened to Strapping Young Lad's Alien album, which had both intrigued and bored me at the same time. In short, his style of manic mayhem does not sit in my sphere of music listening enjoyment. However, having had the albums forced into my hands and told to report back with “how much you loved them”, I decided to delve into its mystique.

As with most of his stuff, this is really out there. It is the kind of music that I can imagine some parents listening to for about thirty seconds and then calling up for the priest to perform an exorcism. It truly is a wall of sound, punctuated by periods of morose acoustic musings. Some of these songs (“Juular” in particular, and half of “The Mighty Masturbator”) almost sound like he’s trying to write a carnival song - albeit an extreme type of carnival song. There’s a bit of everything here, and while that will no doubt please his followers, it really just confuses me.

I appreciate Devin’s undoubted talents, all the way back to his version of Judas Priest’s “Sinner” on A Tribute to Judas Priest: Legends of Metal tribute album. But his own music and style just doesn’t sit with me at all. Deconstruction to me is a little like sitting in the dentist’s chair – the soft mood music is the edginess before it all starts, and the frantic wave of noise is the dentist’s drill as it hacks into your molars. I can absolutely see why fans of Devin Townsend would love this, because it is much like his other material. To be honest, I will at some stage have to check out the first two albums in this four piece set just to satisfy my curiosity, but I no longer need to dwell on this album, nor its successor Ghost.

637. Queensrÿche / Halfway Jam 28-7-2012 [Bootleg]. 2012. 4/5

After all of the bickering, after all of the bad blood, after all of the court injunctions over who owned the rights to names and music and so forth... finally, it came back to the music. This bootleg album records the first official performance of Queensrÿche with new singer Todd La Torre, and for that alone it is an historical and significant recording.

The setlist is pretty much confined to all of their album up to 1991's Empire, songs that the band portion of Queensrÿche had claimed that Geoff Tate had no interest in ever revisiting. Whether that is accurate or not, the performance of these classic tracks gives La Torre a perfect opportunity to show off his wares to his new band's fan base. What it proves is that he has a pretty fair set of pipes, and his vocals are not unlike his predecessor, which while it may be limiting in some ways probably doesn't hurt him in this instance.

This is a particularly good audience bootleg of a B+ standard. While the vocals may be a little down in the mix, it still is good enough to appreciate both La Torre's vocals along with the performance of the band itself, and both are excellent. La Torre in particular makes very few key errors, and as a live performance it is excellent.
In the long run, it is great to hear Queensryche as a band can still play. Their most important duty from ll of the turbulence of the last few months will be to prove that they can indeed live up to their end of the bargain, and go back to writing material like what they have played on this bootleg. It has been the fans' biggest bugbear in the last 15 years. Now that the band itself believes they have identified what the problem was, they have to prove they are as good as their word.

The playlist here is as follows:

01 Intro (1:23)
02 Queen Of The Reich (4:18)
03 Speak (4:23)
04 Neue Regel (4:48)
05 Walk In The Shadows (3:39)
06 En Force (5:19)
07 I Don't Believe In Love (4:42)
08 Child Of Fire (5:56)
09 The Whisper (3:54)
10 Warning (4:52)
11 Spreading The Disease (4:28)
12 The Needle Lies (3:29)
13 Prophecy (4:06)
14 Take Hold Of The Flame (4:56)
15 My Empty Room (1:48)
16 Eyes Of A Stranger (6:44)
17 Empire (5:34)
18 Encore Break (2:58)
19 Wrathchild [Iron Maiden cover] (3:09)
20 Jet City Woman (5:51)
21 Roads To Madness (10:35)

Download link can be found here : http://turbobit.net/j72id6nsxsb4.html

636. Sixx:A.M. / This Is Gonna Hurt. 2011. 2/5.

Another Nikki Sixx side project that shows potential without really ever getting into gear. I was intrigued with his previous effort, Brides of Destruction, and got well and truly burned by it. I wasn't sure what to expect on this occasion.

I honestly cannot put my finger on what it is that stops me from completely liking this release. Is it the fact that it is almost in the vein of commercial hard rock such as the abhorred Nickelback? Is it that James Michael's vocals are just a little too much like they are honey coated, and perhaps closing in to be similar to the vocals in the abhorred Nickelback and also to Myles Kennedy? Is it just that the style of music is not to my preferred heavy metal taste? Is it that this is yet another release that has prgrammed drum tracks rather than the real thing being played? You can take all of those answers and you still wouldn't be quite correct, but you'd be closer to the outcome.

The opener "This Is Gonna Hurt" is catchy, and it is the song that encouraged me to give the album a chance. The follow up songs "Lies of the Beautiful People" and "Are You With Me" also have their moments. "Live Forever" is where things start to head in the wrong direction. It has a very commercialised rock feel to the song both vocally and musically, and it does not sit right with me. Worse is to follow on "Sure Feels Right", the rock ballad that is directed at people who have musical taste a full 180 degrees apart from me. Cliched rubbish. "Deadlihood" is in much the same fashion as "Live Forever" as a very average type of hard rock song. "Smile" is the next ballad on the album (not even a power ballad or a rock ballad. It's just a ballad). Woeful.

Well, I guess you are starting to get the idea. It's not as if I thought i was going to get a superstar album, something that was going to blow me away with raw power and aggression. What we have is actually a fairly slickly written, recorded and produced hard rock album that is competently played and sung. And no doubt there is an audience out there that will lap it up. But the combination of standardised rock and ballad compositions really does little for me in the long run. It is missing a couple of vital ingredients that could make it someting worth talking about. In the end, apart from a couple of entries, it is rather run of the mill.

635. Fear Factory / The Industrialist. 2012. 3/5

The return of Fear Factory with their eighth release was always going to be an interesting time. With Burton and Dino still reunited, but without any other semblance of band members, how was the writing and recording process going to go, and could it continue the revival of the Fear Factory brand?
I couldn't help but like this from the very start. Dino and Burton haven't strayed far from the tried and true Fear factory handbook, with heavy screaming vocals surrounded by the standard guitar riffs and double kick, double time drums. "The Industrial", "Recharger" and "New Messiah" are all solid tracks.

After two or three songs though, you just feel that the drums are almost mechanical, with a similarity of all of the rolls and fills througout most of the songs. It came as no surprise then to finally discover that the band (Dino and Burton) had actually programmed the drums on the album. Sure it might sound good for the most part, but it is a little disappointing. Perhaps they felt they had to bow to using a machine to get the most out of what they wanted for the album, but does that mean you resort to the same machine when you tour? Do they become basically a karaoke band, with just vocals and guitar standing in front of machinery on stage providing the rhythm section? Some love of the album is therefore lost because not only does it sound mechanised (no pun intended on the name of previous album), it actually is. Maybe they felt it was to much effort to find a drummer to produce what they wanted, but the result is that it now just feels too produced.
Even given this, I think it is a step up from Mechanize again. It most certainly has nothing new involved. Burton and Dino have gone back to grabbing the essence of what made Fear Factory the band they are, and drip fed it into the writing process to produce another solid effort.

"God Eater" is a different tempo from the opening tracks that grows on you after a few listens. "Depraved Mind Murder" and "Virus of Faith" restores the pace and vibrancy of the album, kicking along at a rate of knots. It is only when Burton's clear vocals come in that the songs seem to lose some of their gloss, it just feels as though it softens the output of these songs when that occurs.
"Difference Engine" starts off as true Fear Factory metal gold, hard guitars and vocals growling with intent. Great stuff. "Dissemble" is just as good, punching out the heavy guitar and vocals almost to the completion of the song.

But what is with the eleven minutes of rubbish that closes the album? OK, it's a concept album, and the last two songs, "Religion Is Flawed Because Man Is Flawed" and "Human Augmentation" is telling the closure of the tale. But nothing actually HAPPENS! What on earth is the point of doing that if the songs aren't't actually songs, it is eleven minutes of metallic industrial silence? They have effectively written a song that has been placed on an album that no one will EVER listen to again after their first playing. Good enough idea, but just far too long and unnecessary in the full scheme of an album to deal with again.

So there it is. Nothing new, different, ground breaking or sensational from the band. Fans will find enough here to keep them satisfied, while there is also enough here for the novice Fear factory listener to think it might be worthwhile checking out their back catalogue.