EASTER. HOW COOL THAT IS, JESUS IS ALIVE AGAIN NOW. HEAVEN YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By the way, I love Easter, it’s full of happiness, and candies, and overpriced giant brazilian chocolate eggs, it’s absolute awesome, and Easter, being a holiday that represents the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it’s also a holiday that for me represents “renewal”, so today, in this very holy holiday, i’m going to listen to 5 albuns, that i already have an opinion, with the exception of one, and say what i think of them now, enough with that introduction, let’s go.
GUIDED BY VOICES-ALIEN LANES (1995)
ORIGINAL SCORE:N/A
NEW SCORE:7.5
I own this album, like, really, I have this album on CD, it was given to me by my sister’s boyfriend almost 2 years ago, and honestly, i’m kinda obsessed with it. And for a good reason, this album is an absolute classic of Lo-Fi Rock, and it’s full to the brim of absolutely amazing tracks, “Watch Me Jumpstart”, “My Valuable Hunting Knife”, “Blimps Go 90”, “My Son Cool”, “Game of Pricks”...don’t even get me started on “Game of Pricks”, this song is an absolute masterpiece, it’s insane to me how good a song can be in only 1 minute and 33 seconds, there’s also lots of other great songs, like “Motor Away”, “As We Go Up, We Go Down”, “Little Whirl”, “Always Crush Me”, the list goes on and on, and they’re all good for the same reason, they’re super catchy, have great melodies, plus Robert Pollard’s charisma that makes much of these songs much better and more unique, i’m pretty sure this album wouldn’t be the same if mr, Pollard wasn’t there, it also has a pretty interesting production that is very detailed besides the lo-fi elements, and honestly, the lyrics, while they don’t make much sense and have some awkward parts (that we’ll talk later), aren’t bad, on the contrary, they are very well written and carries a very interesting imagery, they just don’t make sense at all, and are devoid of real meaning, being just stream of consciousness laden word salad.
The only problem with this album is that some songs are way too short, ending before you even get an opinion about it, the worst offenders being “Cigarette Tricks” (0:18) and “Hit” (0:23), the last song also has a very awkward lyric that has the f-word…And by “f-word” i do not mean fuck. Like, I understand, it’s from 1995, the lyric probably wasn’t written to offend anyone, and I’M NOT OFFENDED, but, let’s not lie, that’s kinda awkward. Leaving that behind the album also has lots of filler tracks, such as “(I Wanna Be a) Dumbcharger”, “Gold Hick”, “Chicken Blows”, and the absolute worst of them, “Ex-Supermodel”, like, for real, this song is just BAD, it would probably be an okay song, but this horrible, repugnant sound snore, just absolutely ruins it. Besides that, there are no big problems with this album.
I wanted to listen to that in full for a while, and now i finally did it, and i don’t regret it, not even the awkward lyrics or bad to average filler songs or the lo-fi, keep this album from being nothing shorter than amazing, it’s an amazing, charming, wonderful record, and i recommend to everyone to listen to this.
MARY’S BLOOD-REVENANT (2018)
ORIGINAL SCORE:4.7
NEW SCORE:5.4
I used to love Mary’s Blood, they were one of the first japanese bands i got hooked into, together with Band-Maid, Passcode and NECRONOMIDOL, Countdown to Evolution is an actual masterpiece of a record, and Blood Palace is also an amazing record, “XOXO -Kiss & Hug-, “Coronation Day'', “Crime and Punishment”, “Blood Birth day” and “Ready to Go”, these are all amazing thrashy power metal songs, and, while i don’t listen to them in a while, i still have great memories of these amazing tracks, things started downhill in 2016, when FATE was released, and it was a pretty weak record, like, it’s decent, but mostly really forgettable, plus the next year, Lovebites came with Awakening from Abyss, which captured the spirit of Mary’s Blood in a way that at the time was much better than the band itself, but at the time i still haven’t listened to it, so i didn’t knew that, so i got to listen their (at the time) new album, Revenant, i remember that it was very stressful to get it, because i couldn’t find the download link anywhere, every download link was down or was from shitty sites that have download slowers, and my internet was hellishly slow at the time and i didn’t knew soulseek was a thing. When I finally listened to it, I was absolutely bummed. It’s probably the first album I've listened to that absolutely disappointed me. i remember that i was genuinely angry, “what the fuck is that”, i said, “where’s the actual power metal??”, “it’s just a shitty glam metal album”, “why are they trying to be a non-carbonated Band-Maid??”I had many questions, but some songs stuck with me positively, “World’s End” is a banger, “Halcyon Days” is Beautiful and “Death’s Queen March” was pretty good. And, it’s been almost 3 years since I listened to anything from that for the last time, so, on this holy day of resurrection, i decided to listen to it, and my new consensus is that. YES, that shit is lame as fuck.
Let’s start with some positives, the good songs are still good, “World’s End” is still a great power metal song, and a great album intro, “Halcyon Days” is still a very beautiful ballad and “Death Queen’s March”, is just absolutely CRAZY, like, it’s a great song, it’s long but doesn’t feel like it’s just repeating itself, it’s pretty great, what more can i say, all these songs are solid power metal tracks, and they are very enjoyable (although they hardly would be among the best songs of their first two albums), but the problems get very clear, very quick.
First of all. The production is ASS, the guitars aren’t thin, they are BULIMIC, the drums are absolutely emotionless and feel like a drum machine sometimes, the bass is most of the times muffed in the background, and when it’s not, it doesn’t really add anything interesting to the song, the problems is also in the compositions as well, besides the other 2 instruments i mentioned, the guitar work is boring and uninspired and the vocals range from decent (“World’s End”, “Halcyon Days”) to nails on a fucking chalkboard (that pathetic “female Brian Johnson/Robert Plant” style vocals on “On the Rocks”, “R.I.P”), plus the direction they’ve choosen is not the best, besides 3-4 songs, they mostly abandon the thrashy, speed power metal that made them great and famous for most J-metalheads, changing it mostly to western style hard rock…Bland, uninspired, boring western style hard rock, you can see that on “On the Rocks”, an atrocious AC/DC style song, with even more atrocious vocals, no really, fuck this song. Then there’s “Rolling End”, that lowkey sounds like Bon Jovi, and while not exactly a bad song, it’s a weird and boring song, also “Say Love” is a bad 80s ballad, but with nothing that makes the best ones good or charming, it’s just a boring, boring song. there’s also songs with a punk rock flow, like “R.I.P”, which is pathetic, tryhard garbage, and “Tsukuyomi '', this song is fine, the rest is just boring and bad and have nothing interesting inside them.
We were talking about GBV a time before, let’s talk about weird lyrics again, the lyrics are nonsensical, but not in a cool, stream of consciousness way, but in a “screw it, i’ll write what sounds cool” way, the lyrics are just absolute dogshit and weird, they make no sense, they aren’t cool sounding, and you have shit like “Shashaka Shashaka Buddha” in “R.I.P”, what does this mean??, SHIT is what it means, nothing more to say about it.
Revenant is an album that has some good moments, but unfortunately all of the negatives outweigh the good in ways that cannot be described, the best songs are great, but the worst songs are absolutely terrible, and the songs in the middle are just boring and mediocre, also the terrible production, the weird nonsensical lyrics and the inopportune sound change, makes this a shallow, soulless, bland, and mediocre album, and knowing that the next two albums aren’t much better and then the band went on hiatus, this honestly just feels saddening to me, what a miserable end for a band that i used to love. At least we got Nemophila.
IDLES-ULTRA MONO (2020)
ORIGINAL SCORE:4.4
NEW SCORE:4.4
Just Like with Mary’s Blood above, i used to love IDLES, they were one of the first modern bands i got into, i was absolutely enchanted by the ferocious, angry, political post-hardcore that they played, Joy as an Act of Resistance is an album i played to death, and that i considered to be one of the best rock albums of the decade, and Brutalism wasn’t that far behind, i really liked these two albums and i really loved IDLES as a band. Then this came.
In 2020, a small backlash against IDLES was growing on websites like RYM and reddit, mostly caused due to overexposure by the british music media and changes in the political mindset of the community, in a year of pandemics, protests and elections, the messages of acceptance and tolerance seemed milquetoast and boring at best and straight up out of touch at worst, of course i did not agree with every sentiment of the backlash (that was also helped by the “everyone who’s not a revolutionary communist is a filthy neoliberal who hates poor people” chapo mindset, and also had the usual alt-right suspects in it), but i agreed with everyone when the album was released that yes, the lyrics were awful, full of lazy slogan shouting, and having baffling moments like just yelling “CONSENT!!!!!!!!!!!!” in “Ne Touche Pas Moi”, but i was still hopeful, “the lyrics may be bad, but it can still be a very fun and powerful album. IDLES was always blunt with their message and i never agreed with everything they said, but they still have great music”, i thought, then i listened the album, and i fucking hated it, the production was awful, the lyrics are even worse than i thought they would be, the vocals aren’t charming or good like they used to be, instead being annoying and preachy, and the music itself is boring, uninspired and unmemorable. it had decent tracks like “Mr. Motivator” but outside of that, it was an absolute dud, that absolutely killed my love for IDLES music (their horrid cover of Metallica’s “The God That Failed” being the last nail of the coffin), it honestly tarnished the entire band for me. After that i never listened to this album, or anything by the band, again, until now, when for that easter i decided to listen to this again, and my consensus is…and i shit you not, exactly the same as the first time i listened. Absolutely nothing changed, my opinion is the same, that this is a disposable pile of unfiltered mediocrity, disguised as an album.
There are very few positives about it, there are some nice sounding tracks, like the aforementioned “Mr. Motivator”, the only truly good song in the album is the great “Reigns”, a catchy, powerful post-punk song, that in my opinion is what this album should have sounded like. there’s also some fine/okay songs here and there, like “The Lover” and “A Hymn”, and “Grounds”. which is not great in general, but i can appreciate that they tried something different and experimental in this track, plus, there are some decent riffs here and there.
Outside of that, nothing gets saved, let’s start by the songs themselves, they are very poorly written, often being way too repetitive in structure, and being full of unmemorable, boring riffs, that try to be heavy and abrasive, but it’s hard to ignore that they sometimes sound like shit like Arctic Monkeys, the vocals here are not good at all either, he always sounded very angry and dominant, yes, but this time things got a little exaggerated, and he sounds less like an angry protestors screaming at the injustices of the world, and more like a drunk lunatic who happened to see a politician he dislikes on TV, which could be okay considering the album’s context if the lyrics were good, but nah…they aren’t. The lyrical content is some of the most basic political commentary to ever exist, most of the time just being smug ways of saying “Thing Bad!!!!XD”. “War Bad. “Racism Bad”, “Xenophobia Bad”, “Sexual Assault Bad”. We all know this, no really, everyone who would listen to that album knows damn well that everything you’re saying is bad, and the people who don’t think that these things are bad will sure as hell not listen to this album, you don’t have to say that again, multiple times, in the most infantile and immature way possible. The lyrics are full of ridiculous, pathetic onomatopoeias that are absolutely distractive and will make taking any of the songs here seriously impossible. the worst offenders being shit like “WA-CHING/that the sound of swords going in'' in “War” or “fa fi fe fi fo fi fum”, in “Grounds'', or shit about trump having a pussy, also in “Grounds”. or yelling “CONSENT” in “Ne Touche Pas Moi”, what the absolute fuck are those lyrics, why would they want to dumb down their own lyrics that way, this is some kids show level crap, plus the feats don’t really add anything here, this Colin Webster guy barely does anything in the songs, and they menaged to get David Yow, one of the best screamers in rock history and arguably the biggest legend in noise rock, and yet only have him to make some very tame screams that are muffed in the tepid. boring, loudness war-torn production, that’s something I just cannot ignore. It’s just too baffling to me how they let an album so mediocre, so devoid of anything interesting, so nothing, be released the way it was.
And that’s why i don’t like this album, it’s bland in the worst way possible, it’s boring and spreads it’s message the worst way possible, it’s full of terrible lyrics and vocals and has a boring, overly loud production, that absolutely destroy any dynamic remaining in the sound, the guitar tones are as thin as a table, all songs are way too repetitive for their own good, and even if there are some good songs and good riffs here and there, there’s just nothing that can save it from mediocrity. A shameful, shameful album from a band that has proven before that they can do better than this.
WEYES BLOOD-ROUGH TRADE SESSION (2019)
ORIGINAL SCORE:7.8
NEW SCORE:8.7
I Want to keep this one pretty short, it’s a very complementary EP, mostly consisting entirely of different versions of songs of the album Titanic Rising, and, considering that i really liked this album, i really liked everything here a lot too, the songs here are more acoustic and have a more stripped down sound than in the album, and i really liked that. There are no new songs, with the exception of the instrumental intro “A Lot Has Changed”, it’s not very essential, but still still a pretty good EP, and something that gives a new perspective on the songs, i listened to that again and i loved it even more than in the first time.
First of all, i love the stripped back way of these versions, i believe that they give the songs a much deeper sense of beauty than it already had in the original versions that is immensely powerful and even moving in a certain sense, this sense of immense beauty is carried by Natalie Mering’s absolute gorgeous vocals, her voice can only be described as angel-like, she sounds like she came from the 70s, i can hear in her singers like Karen Carpenter and Joni Mitchell and Agnetha Fältskog (from ABBA), in fact, you can hear many influences of groups like The Carpenters and ABBA in the songs, both in Titanic Rising and in RTS, and i think this makes this album/EP sound very special, and i also like the production, which gives this EP a very aquatic feeling, i love albums with aquatic feeling, they always sound so beautiful, and heaven-like, so, of course, i absolutely love this one right here, i think the instruments sound perfect, basically, i think the versions of “Something to Believe” and “Wild Times” and absolutely amazing and maybe even better than the original ones, i like the lyrics too, when i reviewed Titanic Rising, back in 2019, i thought the lyrics were too silly and unrelatable, but now, i changed my idea, i think the lyrics are absolutely gorgeous, they’re very well written, they’re mostly nostalgic sounding love songs, so they’re still rather unrelatable to this virgin POS. But now I can appreciate the beauty and see how good they are. In fact, I like this EP a lot.
It was a great thing to relisten to it, back in 2019, i thought this was just a pretty good, but mostly not really interesting EP, now i can see that NO, this is a genuinely great work, that is on par with the original album, it’s full of beautiful compositions, has amazing vocals, great production, great lyrics, it’s not perfect, the intro is kinda meh, but it’s still a very worthy EP, and i recommend everyone to listen to that, it may not be life-changing, but it’s still absolutely gorgeous.
JAPANESE BREAKFAST-SABLE (2021)
ORIGINAL SCORE:8.5
NEW SCORE:8.8
To finish this resurrection day, i want to talk about this lovely, lovely, soundtrack Japanese Breakfast made for the game Sable last year. This game has received good reviews. It looks absolutely marvelous, i haven’t played it, I don't have a console, and my PC doesn’t run it, but just listening to the soundtrack made me want to play this almost immediately. It’s a very relaxing, atmospheric soundtrack, that really seems to be calling the player for a great adventure, i really enjoyed how it made me feel, i really wanted to go to this epic spiritual adventure all around a desert world in my futuristic ship/bike, i really enjoyed it a lot, and now i listened to it again and i still think everything i thought before, this is an amazing soundtrack.
The songs that are sung are very good, “Glider” in particularly is a perfect song, i’m not being ironic, this song is just absolute perfection, it’s one of the most touchingly beautiful songs of the last times, the same thing can be said to “Intro Song” and “Better the Mask”, they’re absolutely amazing tracks, that are helped especially by Michelle Zauner’s vocals, and the very sweet lyrics, that while kinda underwritten, are absolutely cute and heartwarming, and really fit with the adventurous nature of the game, in the instrumental ingame tracks there’s also many great songs, like “The Ewer (Day)”, “Eccria (Day), “Campfires”, “Exploration (Nature)”, “Beetle’s Nest”, and “Beetle Detour”, all of these songs are very moody, very atmospheric ambient tracks, that sometimes remind of C418’s soundtracks for Minecraft, as well as the soundtracks of Journey and even The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, amazing ambient soundtracks, in moody, gigantic worlds, that are helped by the great productions, the mixing is immaculate, the sounds in this soundtrack are honestly otherworldly, the compositions are great, some tracks in the middle aren’t as good, being honestly kinda boring, but still, that doesn’t change how good this soundtrack is in overall.
Overall, amazing soundtrack, great, beautiful vocals in the songs that have vocals, which also have pretty good lyrics that are very fitting with the premise of the game, great atmospherical songs, that really set the mood for the game, very good production, overall, this is an absolute amazing soundtrack, it’s not perfect, it’s too long, some songs are unnecessary, but still. Absolutely amazing in all positive sense this word brings.
And That 's it. That was the resurrection Day of the year of 2022, if you liked it, check my twitter, where i almost always add my work here, follow me, give me a little help on ko-fi if you can, you can also follow me on RYM and AOTY, but of course, only if you want, thanks for everyone, and BYE BYE.
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