It's far too easy to fall into the trap of "this is
their best album since..." or "I haven't heard a song like this from the band
since...". Dream Theater seems to get this with practically every release, and
while I don't play those kind of games, given the enormous joy I have for their
back catalogue, I always look forward to each new album from this band to see if
they can match what they have provided us before.
The opening salvo of
"False Awakening Suite" is pure Dream Theater theatrics, setting the tone for
the album to come in fine style. It feels like the opening to a show, with
curtain closed ready to reveal the start of the movie or concert at any moment.
Great stuff. Both songs that follow, "The Enemy Inside" and "The Looking Glass"
focus very much on the progressive side of Dream Theater's music, both having
their moments guitar riff wise but for the most part settling in their
mainstream of James LaBrie's soaring vocals holding sway over a keyboard driven
melody throughout.
The instrumental "Enigma Machine" is a triumph, not only
the heaviest song on the album but the most technically proficient for all
players. John Petrucci's shredding here is fantastic, tripping the light
fantastic in a virtual riff-o-rma, and also featuring great work from John Myung
and Mike Mangini in the rhythm section.
"The Bigger Picture" delves back into
the slower tempo song that tend to send me off to sleep. It has its moments,
both with a couple of great riffs fro Petrucci and some of LaBrie's better
vocals, but when the band fall into this almost power ballad type of song, it
loses me instantly. No matter how good the musicianship is and the vocals are, I
can't say that I'm a fan.
"Beyond the Veil" and "Surrender to Reason" are
both good rather than great songs. 'Beyond the Veil" again probably concentrates
too much on the keyboard power/progressive material with LaBrie sighing over the
top for the most part, while "Surrender to Reason" has a nice Petrucci riff
underlying the song, along with great work especially from Myung and Mangini
again.
Worse is to follow in the category from which "The Bigger Picture"
lies though, with the wistful and remorseful "Along For the Ride", which
involves even more of the kind of things that make me reach immediately for the
skip button. Perhaps I just expect more from Dream Theater because of the band
they are, but I find this to be really average on all levels.
The album
(eventually) comes to its conclusion with the 22 minute monster "Illumination
Theory", another of the band's songs that might come under one title, but with
various acts that signify the change in tempo of the song at various points
along the way. "I. Paradoxe de la Lumière Noire" acts as the introduction to the
song, before "II. Live, Die, Kill" kicks in, starting this lengthy mind bender
in the right mode. From here it morphs into "III. The Embracing Circle" which is
more like a movie or musical score, so much so that it completely breaks up the
mojo of the entire song, if only because it is so completely different and mood
changing. It's like an ad break on television, it's a time to get up and make
yourself a cup of tea. After four minutes of this it crashes back into "IV. The
Pursuit of Truth", the best act of the song, with Petrucci and Rudess really
hammering through their solo pieces with gusto. The concluding act, "V.
Surrender, Trust & Passion" is much like it's title, a chance for LaBrie to
croon as he does best over the top of a dramatic power ballad keyboard
arrangement, before Petrucci's guitar solo closes out the major finishing piece,
followed by two minutes of Rudess piano at the end. The song has it all, drawing
from all corners of the Dream Theater entity, and though many will love it in
its entirety, other like me will probably believe the best parts of the song
could have been salvaged for a shorter, tighter delivery. But then, it wouldn't
be Dream Theater if that happened.
Mike Mangini's drummingon Dream Theater is really just superb. Having come into the
previous album with everything pretty much done, this is his real first chance
to put his stamp on the band, and in reality he steals the show. His timekeeping
is spectacular, his rolls and synchronisation are stupendous. Mike Portnoy may
have entertained visions of returning to his band in the future, but one can't
see that occurring while Mangini is playing like this.
Having gone
through here song by song to review the album, it feels a little like I don't
find a lot to like. But as with many Dream Theater albums, I find that you need
to take on the album as a whole and not try and break it down in order to like
it. Sure, some of the songs on their own would be painful to take over a period
of time, but in just listening to the album from start to finish without any
predetermination involved, I really do enjoy the album. It can never come close
to matching my favourite Dream Theater albums, but it is more than pleasurable
just the same.
The return of the mighty Death Angel for the next
album in their second coming has been a wait in itself, but it is not a
disappointment.
Death Angel is steeped in the finest traditions of thrash
metal, and they once again prove that thrash is not dead, nor has it been
compromised by those bands that holds its values closest to their hearts in the
modern age. The magnificent rhythm section held together by bassist Damien
Sisson and the sensational brilliance of Will Carroll just careers along here,
keeping the tempo tight whether it be at a normal pace, or suddenly speeding up
to gigantic proportions. As the 'new section' of the band, they probably had a
bit of living up to in the eyes and ears of the fans who have followed this band
from the beginning, but they have cast aside any doubts as to their ability to
help continue the Death Angel legacy.
Mark Osegueda's vocals are again front
and centre of this release, and he continues to walk that fine line between pure
vocalist and note perfect semi-screamer, still somewhere between early Hetfield
and early Araya. How he can continue to sing for the entire song, like he does
in "Caster of Shame" for instance, is just amazing. His vocals here are still as
stunning as they have ever been, passionately coming at you with that brilliant
thrash power he is renown for. It makes it almost impossible to sing along to -
just because who has that kind of vocal range? - but it is just brilliant all
the same.
The vocals would probably be the highlight of the album, if it
wasn't for the awesome display put on once again by the duelling magnificence of
guitarists Rob Cavestany and Ted Aguilar. Their guitaring is pinpoint perfect,
whether it be acoustically or rhythmically underscore riffs, or simply shredding
in duet through the middle of a song, or their amazing solo technique. This is
the essence of thrash metal, and these two are the stars of this album, their
guitaring stealing the show on all counts. Amazing stuff.
"Detonate" is an
excellent example of the strengths of this band as a whole. The harmonic guitar
intro moves into the thumping drum beat, and the building of the vocals
decibels, while the meandering speed of the song also builds to its crescendo as
the guitar solos crush until the dramatic conclusion. Brilliant stuff.
My
favourites on the album include "Left For Dead", "The Dream Calls For Blood",
"Execution / Don't Save Me", "Caster of Shame" and "Empty", as well as the great
version of Black Sabbath's "Heaven and Hell", which not only teaches us where a
piece of this band's inspiration is, but also that there was only one Ronnie
James Dio.
Metallica and Megadeth, and even Slayer, stopped being thrash
metal bands a long time ago, and morphed into the heavyweights of heavy metal
that they are. But thrash hasn't died, and along with the new bands coming
through, it is still the giants such as Death Angel and Testament and Exodus who
lead the charge for this sometimes forgotten legacy of metal. The Dream Calls For Blood is another installment of that
legacy, and keeps that thrash candle burning brightly.
Following on from the success of their 2010 tour to
celebrate the 20th anniversary of their finest album Rust in
Peace by playing the entire album live, and releasing it as a DVD/CD
package, Megadeth decided that the idea was so popular that they would do it all
again. Thus, towards the end of 2012 the band hit the road, this time mixing in
some of their greatest songs with a complete rendition of 1992's Countdown to Extinction as the main course.
We've reached
an age where, in the last decade, the live album has become the norm rather than
the unexpected. It used to be that a live album came out only once in a
generation, in order to showcase the live setting of a greatest hits
compilation. Now, however, bands like Iron maiden are releasing them every
couple of years, which is fine if they keep finding people to buy them (like
me). On top of this, it has become a fad to play a complete album, from first
track to last, in a live setting, also something that has been taken on in
excitement by the fans. Now your favourite albums can be heard completely, even
the songs that have never had a live airing before this came to pass.
Is this
a good thing? Well, in essence it's for the real fans, and not the
part-timers.
For me it was fun to hear this whole album done live. Sure,
I don't think the production of this release was as pure as with Rust in Peace Live, but I really enjoyed hearing it. There's
no doubt that if you want to hear the songs in their pristine condition you
would grab the original album from the shelf and put it on, but this was still
excellent. The best songs here in the live setting for me were "Symphony of
Destruction", "Foreclosure of a Dream", "Countdown to Extinction" and
"Psychotron".
The album is bookended by other great Megadeth songs, the
favourite for me here being "Peace Sells", with the audience participation
taking the cake. Still a great song, and Dave letting the audience sing the
chorus sounds awesome.
In the long run you can probably take or leave this
release depending on how much you enjoy live albums. It is not the most pristine
of releases, but it brought back a lot of memories for me, and showcases another
album from Megadeth's halcyon era.
I can only say that I went into this album with
some serious reservations as to what I was going to encounter once the disc hit
my CD player. I mean, the 'unplugged' album craze that started in the early
1990's with the help of MTV was something that, for many bands, worked really
well to showcase their music in a different arena, and certainly Seattle bands
such as Nirvana and Alice in Chains efforts were truly brilliant. But then it
began to seep into the heavy metal genre, and you just knew that things could
only get very very bad when that started to happen. Why? Well, did you really
need to have Queensrÿche doing songs unplugged, just because "Silent Lucidity"
had become such a huge single hit? No, you did not. And then, as the decade wore
on, we even had the mega-huge metal bands such as Metallic and Megadeth
performing parts of their concerts in an unplugged setting. Seriously - I did
not have to hear "Motorbreath" or "Symphony of Destruction" unplugged, I just
need to hear it at a thousand decibels and at a hundred miles an hour. Just
because "Nothing Else Matters" somehow becomes your biggest single hit doesn't
mean you need to trash your other brilliant songs.
So we come to this album,
a live set by Black Label Society, stripped back to a certain degree and
bringing forth not only a form of heavy metal music that I generally abhor (the
afore-mentioned 'unplugged' set), but with it the mix of already recorded slow
instrumental-type songs that are my least favourite part of the BLS armoury, and
brilliant faster paced BLS songs, but in a slowed down acoustic driven
atmosphere. So did this album really ever have a chance with me?
Without
dragging this review out into the dark depths of time, I am as disappointed with
this release as I have been with almost ever Black Label Society album since 1919 Eternal. The musicianship is just superb, with the whole
band sounding just fantastic. Zakk once again showcases all of his skills, from
his piano playing to his fine guitar work, and especially in some of the solo
sections where he improvises and extends to guitar junkies delight. The sound
engineering and mixing is terrific, and the album sounds wonderful as a result.
But it is slow and melancholy and with every acoustically driven song in the BLS
catalogue, and it just downright bores me to tears to listen to it. At just on
two hours for the double disc set, you can't help but find yourself yawning
profusely by the time the end finally arrives.
Perhaps the greatest damning
effect of this is what has been done to arguably one of the band's finest songs,
"Stillborn". It has been drawn out to a molasses-stretching almost nine minutes,
ridding itself of all of the speed and heaviness of the original, with Zakk
moaning his way through the vocals before substituting a four minute solo break
in the middle to perhaps try and make up for what they have done to the song.
Zakk's guitaring is great, but it has monstered what I consider a classic
song.
I'm sure there are many fans out there up for this, who enjoy
Zakk's slower material, and will as such find this to be a masterpiece. For me,
I think this may well be the final nail in the coffin when it comes to Black
label Society releases. It has been over a decade now that I have been hoping
for more, and on most occasions I come away feeling massive disappointment. That
is no reflection on the material as such, just that it is just not what I enjoy
listening to. With that being the case, it is probably time to close the cover
and move on.
I was looking forward to this album for a couple of
reasons. Firstly, I think possibly for the first time since I have been
listening to Trivium, I was ready for a new release from the band. I enjoyed In Waves but never really got fully connected to it. This time
around however, I also have the knowledge that I will be seeing the band live
for the first time at the upcoming Soundwave Festival, which also raised my
excitement at hearing the new album.
I had the album at work, and played it
on constant rotation, but after three or four listening cycles I was still
slightly ambivalent about it. Sometimes you need a trigger to get you into an
album, something that finally hits home for you that the band or the album
works, and from that point you can see (or hear) it everywhere. At that point
you find that certain element that you couldn't necessarily find on previous
listens. In most circumstances it is one song on the album that really draws you
in, and then the rest will follow. For me that song turned out to be one of the
bonus tracks, a cover of two of my favourite Misfits songs, "Skulls" and "We Are
138". "Skulls... We Are 138" is an awesome tribute to an awesome band, and is a
wonderful homage to the original versions. Hearing the passion that went into
this was my trigger, and the rest of the album fell into place as a
result.
It feels as though this album has been drawn into a more
commercial aspect, if only because my wife has heard this now and doesn't hate
it, unlike Ascendancy for instance. It is a more mature
sound from those early albums, no doubt directed by producer David Draiman. And
while some long time and fanatical supporters of the band may start to feel
there is a degree of selling out involved, I can only say that I really enjoy
this album. The production is slick, and each instrument is clearly defined in
the mix. Nick Augusto's drumming is simply superb, his precision is a joy to
air-drum along to. The guitars too and terrific, with some fantastic riffs and
lineage. Matt Heafy's vocals, for me, are just getting better and better. There
is little doubt that there is a toning down and lessening of the growling vocals
from the band's early days, but I really think they are being compensated by the
quality of the music as well. While I always felt that the songs on other albums
lacked power when they were dominated by clear vocals, here on Vengeance Falls that is certainly not the case. This is a
complete package musically, and Heafy does a superb job.
My favourite songs
from the album include "Villainy Thrives", "At the End of This War" "Vengeance
Falls" and "Strife".
This is the fourth successive day at work where Vengeance Falls has been the only album on rotation, and it is
still getting better with each listen. If that isn't a ringing endorsement to
the album then I don't know what is.
