One of the worst things that can happen to a band is to put out multiple albums that get progressively better (I can listen to their last album, The Fall of Ideals, non-stop) only to drop a fourth that take ten steps back.
What All That Remains has going for them is that where this album falls short isn’t the lyrics or the music, but the production (note: they had a new producer for this album). I am a huge fan of metal with actual vocals mixed with great screaming like In Flames, Killswitch Engage, and Nothingface (who also suffered on their fourth release), but the clean vocals on the entire album are just too clean. While it’s clearly still Phil screaming, the clean portions sound generic and more suitable for modern pop-rock radio music, and while voice layering is nothing new here it’s over used and very distracting. Additionally there are many, many places where it’s obvious that instead of just letting Phil sing the entire song, he instead often recorded individual lines that were then laced together (as opposed to past albums where you can often hear him taking a breath which adds to the vocal passion).
But while the vocals are the most distracting disappointment the music suffers as well. From the beginning, even before I heard the first scream from Before the Damned I couldn’t help but notice that the drums sounded like they were synthesized, and once everything kicked in fully it felt like it was all synthesized. To make things worse the levels of all the instruments feel like they’re all being pushed to the limits all the time instead of balancing them out so it actually sounds like a band instead of a computer.
You can still tell that their music and song writing abilities are still there making this album all the more tragic. I’m sure that all of these songs will actually sound better live, but as of now the album sounds more like a band trying to sound like All That Remains. And if this indeed were a new band and this their first album I would have written them off before the end of the second track.
Added Note: I posted this review over on Amazon just for the hell of it. It's funny how almost all of the reviews are from people who claim to be metal fans but then go on to admit that the vocals are radio friendly and that's what they like about it. Well guess what people, you're not metal fans, you're hard rock fans.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Not All Commercials Suck, But These Do
People hate commercials. That’s nothing new, but I would like to call attention to some recent ones that I find particularly infuriating. See I actually don’t mind good commercials, those being ones that are very entertaining (most Captain Morgan ones) and/or informative. But just like with movies and television shows, if they’re poorly written and/or make no sense, the people responsible should be canned. NOTE: Most if not all of these can be found on YouTube.
Trojan Condoms
The scene is inside of a restaurant/bar and all men are being portrayed as pigs. That part I can deal with because most guys who go to bars to pick up a chick are pigs, but one of the pigs is hitting on a girl who’s clearly not interested, he gets up, goes to the bathroom and gets a condom, comes back and suddenly she sees him as an attractive man even though he looks like a gay Enrique Inglesias with an Emo hair cut. So we’re supposed to believe that 1) She somehow magically knows that he bought a condom. Given her expression as he left one can assume that he did not tell her that’s what he was leaving to do, and 2) Buying a condom somehow makes him less of a douche bag suddenly.
Levi Jeans
This one’s very new. Two kids staring into each other’s eyes nervously, the girl asking the guy if it’s his first time as they slowly undress only for it to be revealed that they’re jumping off a high pier into water. Now to me it’s obvious from the get go that we’re being given a red herring because for starters it’s a commercial and the kids are out doors. But while both kids could be 18 and just looking young, they both look like their 15 at most and the way the commercial is filmed is like porn for a pedophile. It’s so uncomfortable to watch that I have to change the channel whenever it’s on.
Twix
Whoever writes these commercials hates women or at the very least thinks they’re all morons. I’m all for sexist jokes, aimed at men or women, but only when they’re so over the top that it’s obviously a joke. These are just painful. The newest is a guy talking to a woman at a party. The woman is going off on some pretentious rant and at a pause the guy asks her back to his place (showing that he also is an idiot), she gets offended and he crams a Twix down his maw to give him time to think of something to get him out of trouble. He then creates some equally pretentious, and obviously made up story about wanting to be alone to continue their retarded conversation back at his place, she smiles, feeling like an idiot for jumping to what was actually an accurate conclusion and leaves with him. So to recap, in the Twix universe, all women are gullible and stupid.
Scion
Hundreds of various cars and SUV’s drive across the country for obviously days, coming to a perfectly carved out auditorium style crater and park with all their lights on as a guy in a hooded sweat shirt steps up to a microphone and gives an embarrassingly unimpressive 15 second speech (yes I timed it) about how, “It’s what makes us different that brings us together.” I already don’t like Scions. Their first two models were boxes with wheels and I’m baffled how they made any money to survive longer as a company. But this commercial, clearly designed to be inspiring, is just painfully lame from the actual words used to the weak voice of the guy giving the speech. I picture the writer sitting in a room with his friends and family, showing them a DVD with his first commercial ever, and from there on it plays out like that scene from the Poochie episode of the Simpsons.
Paintball Dave’s
Ok, this is a local radio commercial that drives me crazy. It opens with a guy talking about being the best man at eight weddings in six years, but it’s not because all those guys are his best friends, it’s because he plans “the most amazing bachelor parties,” involving going to Paintball Dave’s. I can not put into words how enraged I am by the shear stupidity of the idea of someone being picked to be a best man at a wedding based solely on their ability to plan a great bachelor party.
Trojan Condoms
The scene is inside of a restaurant/bar and all men are being portrayed as pigs. That part I can deal with because most guys who go to bars to pick up a chick are pigs, but one of the pigs is hitting on a girl who’s clearly not interested, he gets up, goes to the bathroom and gets a condom, comes back and suddenly she sees him as an attractive man even though he looks like a gay Enrique Inglesias with an Emo hair cut. So we’re supposed to believe that 1) She somehow magically knows that he bought a condom. Given her expression as he left one can assume that he did not tell her that’s what he was leaving to do, and 2) Buying a condom somehow makes him less of a douche bag suddenly.
Levi Jeans
This one’s very new. Two kids staring into each other’s eyes nervously, the girl asking the guy if it’s his first time as they slowly undress only for it to be revealed that they’re jumping off a high pier into water. Now to me it’s obvious from the get go that we’re being given a red herring because for starters it’s a commercial and the kids are out doors. But while both kids could be 18 and just looking young, they both look like their 15 at most and the way the commercial is filmed is like porn for a pedophile. It’s so uncomfortable to watch that I have to change the channel whenever it’s on.
Twix
Whoever writes these commercials hates women or at the very least thinks they’re all morons. I’m all for sexist jokes, aimed at men or women, but only when they’re so over the top that it’s obviously a joke. These are just painful. The newest is a guy talking to a woman at a party. The woman is going off on some pretentious rant and at a pause the guy asks her back to his place (showing that he also is an idiot), she gets offended and he crams a Twix down his maw to give him time to think of something to get him out of trouble. He then creates some equally pretentious, and obviously made up story about wanting to be alone to continue their retarded conversation back at his place, she smiles, feeling like an idiot for jumping to what was actually an accurate conclusion and leaves with him. So to recap, in the Twix universe, all women are gullible and stupid.
Scion
Hundreds of various cars and SUV’s drive across the country for obviously days, coming to a perfectly carved out auditorium style crater and park with all their lights on as a guy in a hooded sweat shirt steps up to a microphone and gives an embarrassingly unimpressive 15 second speech (yes I timed it) about how, “It’s what makes us different that brings us together.” I already don’t like Scions. Their first two models were boxes with wheels and I’m baffled how they made any money to survive longer as a company. But this commercial, clearly designed to be inspiring, is just painfully lame from the actual words used to the weak voice of the guy giving the speech. I picture the writer sitting in a room with his friends and family, showing them a DVD with his first commercial ever, and from there on it plays out like that scene from the Poochie episode of the Simpsons.
Paintball Dave’s
Ok, this is a local radio commercial that drives me crazy. It opens with a guy talking about being the best man at eight weddings in six years, but it’s not because all those guys are his best friends, it’s because he plans “the most amazing bachelor parties,” involving going to Paintball Dave’s. I can not put into words how enraged I am by the shear stupidity of the idea of someone being picked to be a best man at a wedding based solely on their ability to plan a great bachelor party.
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