Memphis May Fire: Challenger Review

Album: Challenger
Artist: Memphis May Fire
Genre: Metalcore


6.0/10





     It’s hard to be a Metalcore band.  You have the average listener who walks into a Hot Topic and is turned off by the screaming.  Then you have the metalhead, who’s into drone, black, and death metal, griping about the “emo” vocals.  It’s a polarizing genre to say the least, but Metalcore’s influences are varied and strong.  The name of the genre is a combination of “Metal” and “Hardcore”, two movements that revolutionized rock with bands from Black Flag to The Blood Brothers to Metallica and back.  The Metalcore movement continues to grow, with more and more bands emerging, but it seems to have not changed that much sonically.  Metalcore songs still employ the same key aspects, screamed vocals for verses, pop vocals for choruses, and breakdowns to show off instrumental chops.  So when Memphis May Fire released Challenger I hoped for something fresh, something still distinctly Metalcore, but something invigorating.

      Challenger did not prove to be that album.  I found an album that showcased some great guitar and drum work, but still relied on the same tricks of the trade used by many Metalcore bands.  Many of these songs employ choppy, syncopated, breakdowns, harsh screaming vocals, very melodic but poppy choruses, and noodly guitar lines floating over the mix.  Almost each song follows this pattern, relying on the guitar and the lyrics to establish differences and keep the album fresh from song to song.  “Alive in the Lights” features a less technical, more rock n’ roll type guitar solo, not doing the whole “climb up the fretboard” thing.  “Jezebel” features more intricate lines, utilizing all parts of the neck.  Throughout Challenger the guitar continues to be the defining and differentiating factor.  Then there are the string arrangements.  In at least 4 songs I’m listening and out of nowhere I here an “epic” string line playing behind the chorus.  Clearly taken from a synthesizer, the idea is to add some fullness, some dynamics, but it just ends up taking away and completely clashing with the guitars and drums.  It was an idea that was questionable in its conception, and unsettling in its execution.

      The lyrics itself are incredibly straightforward, which is not a bad thing in itself, but the themes and emotions expressed are just short of just being stated.  I never found myself questioning what they were saying.  In “Red in Tooth and Claw” Matty Mullins talks about “his heart…thrown away” (that’s never been said before).  It’s a confident song at certain parts, depicting a man who is better off that an awful woman is gone from his life, but then weak at others, depicting someone who was broken by that same woman.  “Vices” also rehashes some of the old ideas about depression; it’s a song about drinking your problems away.  A bunch of songs have Matty calling out to the Judeo-Christian God for help, asking him to “help him accomplish what You sent me to do”.  “Jezebel” is the weirdest one though, an entire song hating on a loose woman.  His lyrics go completely overboard, bathing in self-indulgence (“you’ll never have me”) to completely hateful (“everyone wants you to leave”).  Overall these lyrics aren’t awful, but they do come across as a little patronizing and are perhaps too straightforward for someone seeking a little more poetry in a song’s lyrics.

     Overall we have a Metalcore album.  Straight up.  The guitar work is impressive, and everything else seems to just kind of fade into the Metalcore background.  Fans will like it, I’m sure, but it’s not going down on any lists this year, not for best and not for worst.  It gets 6.0 Challenges met out of 10.

FAVE TRACKS: Alive In the Lights, Prove me Right

Muse: Survival Track Review

Goddamn it Muse, why do you continue to do this kind of shit?  The new Muse song, Survival, has just been designated the Official Fucking Song of the 2012 Olympics.  Here's the deal, this song is absolute garbage.  From the uninspired orchestral intro clearly chosen to make the song "more musical" to the awful lyrics specifically geared towards the Olympics ("Life's a race and I'm gonna win"is seriously in this song) to the generic piano tappings to the lazily sung (and lazily written) melody.  The whole thing sounds like a Queen ripoff, from the choir brought up way too high in the mix, to the anthemic feel of FIGHT! FIGHT! WIN! WIN!  Matt Bellamy is now a professional panderer.  One of the worst songs of 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt__jKWoYH8

The Tallest Man on Earth: There's No Leaving Now Review

Fucking birds ruined the shot.

Album: There's No Leaving Now

Artist: The Tallest Man on Earth

Genre: (mostly) Acoustic Singer-Songwriter

7.6/10

I brought up “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan last week to see/laugh at the dumbass youtube comments, and one of the related videos was “The Gardener” by The Tallest Man on Earth, and I thought, “Kristian Mattison must absolutely hate Bob Dylan”, not because Bob Dylan is a poor songwriter (which would be one of the most inaccurate statements ever) but because critics and fans alike draw comparisons, his voice, his material, his guitar work.  Maybe that’s why he took a darker sounding turn from earlier works like The Wild Hunt or Shallow Grave with his latest release There’s No Leaving Now.

     On this his third studio LP Kristian attempts to alter his own sound, and the perception of the “indie” singer-songwriter.  His acoustic guitar muffles it’s way through a deadened microphone while the lightest of percussion and guitar noodly-bits haunt the song, buried within the mix.  This album still puts Kristian’s unique and biting drawl at the forefront, even with the new added instrumentation.  Kristian is restrained on this record, however, choosing the path of subtly, with accents of soaring melodies at high points of the album and its respective songs.  There is a gentle sadness, but also maturity in his voice, as well as in the songs.  The new sounds present are mostly nice, and add certain interesting tones and contrasts, but for a good portion of the first half of the album I found myself distracted, especially by the lap steel.  The lap steel lines add too much “twang”, and to be brutally honest, add kind of a cheese factor to an otherwise sophisticated song.  The exact same snare drum pattern is used two songs in a row (a simple train-beat utilizing continuous triplets played by brushes, with the latter just keeping it quieter.  The new instrumentation is an element that could have been welcomed wholeheartedly, but seems to be hit-or-miss on this record.

      The best parts of the album are still where Kristian is alone with his guitar or piano.  “Little Brother” takes advantage of fingerpicking and vocal inflections.  The melody in the chorus showcases Kristian’s knowledge of chords and scales, with a vocal line that clashes but soars with the chord changes.  The lyrics are also something to be applauded.  It’s a song about an older brother worrying about how he has modeled for his little brother.  “Well theres a legion of wolves in the forest/And what might of been lost is there I know/Where the crazy young flames loved an older/I feel useless and I have to face alone/All the trials and my unknown.”  “There’s No Leaving Now” is exquisite.  Kristian gracefully floats on a piano, a somewhat new musical path, and his voice is a roller coaster of emotion, it trembles with sadness, glitters with hope, and establishes itself with purpose.  The lyrics evoke both a feeling of hopelessness, and a feeling of courage, perhaps to overcome that hopelessness.  “And when you’re painted like a warrior/Though you know it’s a raining war/When the first who spoke, but wasn’t really sure/Was your heart”.  It’s a culmination and a wise decision of Kristian’s part to name the album after this track.  The theme here is that there’s no turning back, that you can lament and cry all you want but the best thing you can do is head towards the light.

     So here it is, another lyrically strong Tallest Man album, and he sought to make it musically strong as well, but the extra instrumentation falls short of impressive, and muddies some of the tones of the earlier songs in the album.  So it gets a 7.6 Tall Men out of 10.

FAVE TRACKS: There's No Leaving Now, Little Brother, 1904, Criminals

 Linkin Park: Living Things Review

Cool album cover, though?

Album: Living Things

Artist: Linkin Park

Genre: Nu-Metal

4.3/10

  

      Oh boy my first critical review.  It will be entitled “Linkin Park’s Fight to Stay Relevant”.  Linkin Park is an extremely popular group who were able to draw a huge following by combining pop hooking with hard rock distortion and short bursts of screaming, but it’s been almost 12 years since Hybrid Theory dropped, how can they attract new fans while keeping their old ones if they still want to sell out stadiums?  Well rapper Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin think that recording the same kind of songs they’ve always recorded but adding synths and electronics will do it, and they very well may be right.

     Living Things attempts to take Linkin Park in a new sonic direction, adding distorted synth lines on top of the already distorted power chords to hopefully bring an electronic aspect, but it’s (for the most part) a flop.  What could have been the best song on the album, “Victimized” is a key example.  The first half minute showcases a great drum sound and cool noise elements, but then out of nowhere electronic bass drum triggers surface alongside the drum track, while a synth plays a noodly line that completely clashes with the rap style of Shinoda.  It’s a complete clusterfuck of sound.  Most tracks sound like previous Linkin Park songs with a cheesy electronic bit thrown in.  In “Lost in the Echo” Shinoda actually uses the same tone and rhythm as his verses in Bleed It Out.  I see a band that wanted to change their sound but didn’t know how to do it.

      Then there are the lyrics.  Linkin Park lyrics express anger, frustration, fear, regret, but they never say at WHAT!  I have not seen the word “it” or “you” used so much in an album.  “You did it to yourself” Chester Bennington screams on Lies Greed Misery (which is actually the best song on the record).  But WHO did WHAT to themselves?  There’s no context.  He sings that something is “like an army falling one by one”.  What is?  His fear?  His happiness?  Shinoda’s lyrics are not as bad, but they’re still unimpressive.  Shinoda employs a very simple style with little subtly or use of poetic devices other than an AABB rhyme scheme.  There were a couple of cool ideas, however.  In the song “Castle of Glass” Shinoda compares himself to a crack in a castle of glass.  He cannot take down something that seems so easy to destroy.  On “Victimized” he says “I ain’t scared of your teeth/I admire what’s in ‘em”.  These are really the only impressive points however.

      Also choosing “Burn It Down” as the lead single was an awful idea.  That is easily the worst song on the album.  It sounds like a bad dance track with an incredibly shaky melody.  The lyrics are God-awful as well.  “We’re building it up/To break it back down/We’re building it up/To burn it down/We can’t wait/To burn it to the ground”.  These counter-intuitive lyrics are a perfect example of the lack of direction present in the entire album.

     So here’s the deal.  This is not a good album, it’s filler-tastic, but it contains all the elements most Linkin Park fans love, Chester’s screaming, Shinoda’s easy-to-understand rap, chugging power chords, and enough electronic sounds to impress someone who hasn’t heard any actual electronic music.  I think die-hard Linkin Park fans will find some redeeming qualities, but other people will not.  It’s getting 4.3 Things Alive out of 10.

FAVE TRACKS: Lies Greed Misery, Castle of Glass

El- P: Cancer 4 Cure Review

I think it's a horse.

Album: Cancer 4 Cure

Artist: El-P

Genre: Underground Rap/Hip-Hop

8.8/10

  


   
     Ah, underground rap… What comes to mind when one hears the phrase “underground rap”?  Maybe you think of a small club filled with at-risk youth swaying to a floor-on-the-floor beat while an MC freestyles about ‘the popo’ or ‘popping caps in asses’.  What if I told you one of the smartest albums I’ve heard recently was recorded by an underground rapper?  Cancer 4 Cure by El-P is a fantastic album that blends sickly dark beats with incredibly clever and impactful lyrics, with a dash of sick flow from El-P and guests (Killer Mike, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, and the chubbier guy from Das Racist to name a few).

      El-P lyrics are poetry in motion.  He combines paradoxically smoothly aggressive delivery with the use of poetic devices like interior rhyme, cacophony, alliteration and knowledge of meter:  “Fuck your droid noise, void boys 'noid ploy'/ Oi Oi I'll fucking kick the shit out yo groin boy” from “The Full Retard” or “I am the son disgust trusted with the undefined/And I can no longer contain what's under my disguise/I've always had the cancer for the cure/That's what the fuck am I” from the powerful closer “$ Vic/FTL (Me and You)” are some prime examples.  His word choice is deliberate and strong.  There’s humor and pop culture refrences from comparing Obama and Reagan to quote-dropping “the full retard” from Tropic Thunder or “the fucking Catalina Wine Mixer” from Step Brothers.  This adds a strong element of humor which as a strong juxtaposition to the serious themes of corruption and effects of violence, creating a wide spectrum of emotions for the listener.  “Sign Here” tells the story of someone forcing another to sign a contract.  “The Jig is Up” follows an interrogation, ”Works Every Time” examines the delusions of a drug abuser, and “Tougher Colder Killer” claims that “there will always be a tougher colder killer than you”, challenging human nature.  El-P’s aggressive lyrics contain both subtly and direction.  I think all the points and themes presented in this album can be summed up in the allusion to Brer Woods in the closing hook: “You cannot throw me in the briar patch/ Bitch that is where I live”.

       El-P’s guests also contribute their own ideas in awesome ways.  Killer Mike uses both spoken word and rap flow.  Despot calls out Jay-Z and Kanye and demands more love for underground rap.  Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire adds a very smooth texture to the song “Oh Hail No”.

      Finally, I want to assess the production of Cancer 4 Cure.  Most of these songs contain awesome production values, with different noodly bits and samples thrown in at cool places to keep the listener wrapped within the song.  Request Denied has a friggin’ organ solo.  El-P’s first few words come out of a telephone receiver transitioning into clear tones in “Drones Over Bklyn”.  Sickly synthesizers and drumbeats are the most prevalent however, and for the most part contribute to the album’s dark aggressive experience.

     Cancer 4 Cure is an album for the ages.  The flows are hot, the beats are sick, and the lyrics really stand out.  This is a must-have for rap fans, or for music fans in general.  I’m giving it 8.8 Cancers Cured out of 10.

FAVE TRACKS: Request Denied, The Full Retard, Drones Over Bklyn, Stay Down, $ Vic/FTL (Me and You)