Block Party: Four Review

Album: Four

Artist: Bloc Party

Genre: Post-punk Revival

4.7/10

    

     Let me begin this review by saying that Silent Alarm is one of my favorite albums.  I seriously believe that as far as post-punk revival goes, that album is essential listening.  But the problem is Bloc Party doesn’t want to be a post-punk revival band, they don’t want any specific labels at all, that’s why their discography has been varied and their worked shunned by the bare-bones rock loving fans that loved the debut.  Now I can respect Bloc Party for wanting to evolve, to not make mundane albums to reengage old fans (I’m looking at you Blink-182), but Four represents this No Man’s Land for Bloc Party.  The record is a sort of return to roots for Bloc Party, but the riffs, the grooves, and the overall production takes a steep downturn, with tunes either boring or even offensive to the ears. 

     What makes this album even more of a disappointment is the fact that it begins with a great song.  ‘So He Begins to Lie” has a different, almost awkward (in a good way) heavy riff that couples with a nice laid back groove. Kele Okereke’s vocal work is stellar, soaring over a chorus.  The outro has fast-strumming noisy guitar work that creates an atmosphere of calm chaos, while the drums blister between cymbals and snare drum.  “3x3” dips in quality, incorporating a weirder groove.  It’s much heavier and more dissonant, with the vocals coming across as both scared and scary at times.  “Octopus” is a great song, boasting some cool tremolo effects, some crazy tapping solos, and some biting vocals.  The album pretty much stops being impressive there.  “Real Talk” is a softer ballad that features falsetto and what sounds like a banjo.  The banjo was quite unpleasant.  “Kettling” borrows from the grunge scene with some deep power chord riffage.  The sounds change abruptly from verse to chorus.  There’s a sweet guitar solo on this track however.  “Day Four”, “Truth” and “The Healing” all share disconcerting similarities.  They’re all ballads that seek to add some atmospheric qualities (despite the riffs galore).  However, they all kind of blend together and form this uniform, boring soft alternative rock sound.  “Coliseum” is just an awful song from start to finish.  It comes in with this sort of pseudo-blues riff on an acoustic guitar, I would even compare it to the time Avenged Sevenfold tried to write an acoustic song, but then out of nowhere a fast punk/thrash kind of thing.  It’s up there for the worst track I’ve heard this year.

     Production-wise there’s some apparent problems.  The levels jump around from track to track.  Some songs bring the drums up and distort them a bit, while others bring up the guitar to uncomfortable levels.  On many of these songs, Kele’s vocals are placed through a filter to produce a very generic “megaphone” sound.  Many songs begin and/or end with cheesy “botched takes” and audio from recording (‘Real Talk’ ends with Kele talking about many different kinds of breasts).  Lyrically there’s not much going on, but the lyrics aren’t even supposed to take center stage on this record.  The most memorable line wasn’t even original.  On “Team A” Kele sings “snitches get stitches”.  It was kind of funny

     This was a very disappointing record for me, and I’m sure it will be disappointing to fans as well.  I would avoid listening to this LP, but I would encourage you to check out the songs “So He Begins to Lie” and “Octopus” because those are very strong tracks.

FAVE TRACKS: So He Begins to Lie, Octopus

SPACEGHOSTPURRP: Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles of SPACEGHOSTPURRP Review

Album: Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles of SPACEGHOSTPURRP
Artist: SPACEGHOSTPURRP
Genre: Trap/Swag Rap

5.3/10

       With a rap name as sick as SpaceGhostPurrp, a rap group name as sick as RVIDER KLVN (pronounced “raider clan”), and an album name as sick as “Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp” SpaceGhostPurrp set the creative bar pretty damn high.  His darker, more brooding approach to trap rap leads to some interesting beats and tones, but lyrically it produces some repetitive, unoriginal, and uninspired verses and hooks for the most part.

     The album begins with the sounds of wind blowing on “Mystikal Maze”, and SpaceGhostPurrp jumps right in with his criticism of the rap game: “If it don’t make dollars then it don’t make sense” (yuck, puns are rarely good).  But it’s a good intro into the SpaceGhostPurrp sound, and he’s earnest in his attempts: “I don’t have money, I don’t have cars/All I got is the truth, and a couple of bars”.  The song ends with an oddly repetitive outro: “It’s all about powa, powa”.  Repetition will prove to be one of the main tools SpaceGhostPurrp will employ, albeit poorly.  “Bringing the Phonk” has a hook that is repeated a staggering 10 times at the beginning and end of the song: “Ima keep bringin’ tha phonk, nigga, bringin the phonk”.  The energy picks up, but the lyrics get more self-indulgent and straightforward.  The head scratching begins when he tells the listener “scientifically I’m cocky” (what?)  The next track “Osiris of the East” has nothing to do with the East, but showcases some different beats and slicker flow, but he repeats lines from previous songs (“give her the phonk”, “catch a nut”).  The next tune is the hilarious “Suck a Dick 2012”, a ridiculous romp solely about a great dick-sucker and her love for Alizé (a stereotypical drink he will reference many times throughout the album).  “Get Yah Head Bust” features a well-delivered hook, but it is repeated over and over again, becoming tiresome.  “The Black God” is by far the best song on the album featuring the best hook and flow: “I got to have the world in my hands/I’m a God/I’m no longer a black man/ The Black God”.  But it runs a good 7 minutes with little variation to be found.  “Grind On Me” features a sung hook, establishing SpaceGhostPurrp’s weak singing skills.

     The entire album follows this similar pattern: rehashed lyrics, repetitive hooks, dark beats, and laid back flow (save for the last two songs, which go pretty hard).  This pattern becomes much more of a problem because of the album’s length.  It runs a full hour of some not-so-good lyrics, salvaged only by interesting beats and the unique, dark sound SpaceGhostPurrp brings to the trap rap game.  I didn’t care for it too much myself, but there was some unique production quality that may appeal to some listeners.  I would recommend listening to “The Black God” and “No Evidence” before delving into this album.  I give it 5.3 Ghosts Purrped out of 10.

Fave Tracks: The Black God, No Evidence, Elevate

The Gaslight Anthem: Handwritten Review

Album: Handwritten
Artist: The Gaslight Anthem
Genre: Rock

7.1/10





The Gaslight Anthem likes Bruce Sprinsteen.  I mean they “like like” Bruce Springsteen.  The Boss’ influence on Rock and Roll has been this: simple, straight up rock that gets a theme or point of view off clearly.  The Gaslight Anthem have placed this simple, yet powerful, influence at the forefront of their music, blending punk attitudes and styles with straight up rock instrumentation.  On Handwritten they tone down the punk aspect even more than on their last LP and deliver a group of songs more rooted in simplicity than ever before.

     The album starts off with a simple guitar line and melody that sounds like stripped down Gaslight.  On “45” a theme of listening and experiencing music is stated clearly.  “What’s your favorite song?” Brian Fallon sings, comparing life to an LP spinning on a turntable.  The title track begins with some cliché “WHOA OH!!”s and a more vocal, triumphant chorus.  The Springsteen influence comes out most clearly on this track, but it turns out to be a weaker track sadly, suffering from some major rock clichés.  “Here Comes My Man” takes an interesting lyrical turn, with Fallon singing a song about rejection, from the point of view of the rejecting woman.  The tones are punchy, yet soft, and marks a musical swell in the album, but some “ sha la la”s come out and it feels like its been done before, which it has.  The musical swell continues with Mulholland Drive: one of the coolest guitar riffs and solos Gaslight has ever done highlights the track.  There’s more passion in Fallon’s voice, and it continues to be strong over the next few tracks.  “Howl” picks up the tempo a bit, and I heard a bit of the punk influece that I kinda missed.  Fallon ‘howls’ through a megaphone for some vocal texture.  “Desire” has some more “whoa oh oh”s sadly.  “Mae” turns out to be one of the only ballads on the record.  The drums focus on a more tomtom-oriented beat and features one of my favorite lines of the record “We wait for kingdom come/With the radio on”.  The album ends on the acoustic figerpickin’ ballad “National Anthem” which isn’t a national anthem, but rather a song devoted to an “American love”.  It incorporates some strings for a very different, almost odd tone that is much different from the rest of the album.  Musically this album takes a larger page from rock history than punk, and features much more pronounced guitar work.  Lyrically I have to say this is definitely the weakest of Fallon’s poetic endeavors.  The themes are similar to past albums, but with weaker delivery.  Songs about family, music, lost loves, past loves, and found loves are all present and accounted for but with far less captivating power.  That said, the lyrics are still fine, and nothing is cringe worthy, I just expected a little more from Fallon.  Handwritten has some great moments, especially in the middle with tracks like “Mulholland Drive”, “Keepsake”, “Too Much Blood”, and “Biloxi Parish”.  Overall it’s a little hit or miss and definitely the worst Gaslight album, but the great thing about The Gaslight Anthem is that their worst record is still a good record.  7.1 gaslights anthemed out of 10.

Deathspell Omega- Drought EP Review

EP: Drought

Artist: Deathspell Omega

Genre: Black Metal

8.1/10

       In one of the saddest days for metal in recent years, the infamous Pitchfork awarded the disappointing Yellow and Green an 8.5 Best New Music accolade, while snubbing Deathspell Omega’s strong new EP Drought, giving it a measly 6.7… on the same day.

    Deathspell Omega have planted themselves as powerhouses of black metal.  Innovators in the genre, their albums have experimented with different recording techniques and lyrical themes.  On Drought the lyrics take a biblical direction similar to Si momvmentvm reqvires, circvmpsice.  The stage is set on the desert of the Holy Land, and the images constructed throughout this album illustrates the darkest and most mythological aspects of the Old Testament.  On “Firey Serpents” a narrator describes his situation “Standing, shivering in cold dim light/Waiting for the sentence of the Holy Dead/Like Adam and Eve at the end of time”.  On “Scorpions and Drought” the narrator ventures into a different place, and a different state of mind: “There I stand, in a wood of trees pale as if bones/Eroded by nefarious winds, haunted by their barking echoes/Were doubts to arise that God retreats slowly from this world.”  The somewhat disappointly short “Sand“ returns to the desert and with one single stanza erases what little hope remained after such images presented in the first two songs.  “A desert with no life but scorpions/Coming as a swarm, as a flood/With a abundance of deadly sings/One from every remembrance/One for every comforting echo of the past/For blithe days of hope turned sour.”  The narrator can’t even think of happier times without receiving physical pain.

    But as with other black metal releases, much more emphasis remains on the instrumentation and vocal delivery.  The EP opens with the more ambient “Salowe Vision” that slowly builds into “Fiery Serpents”.  The sound remains similar for the most part, with Deathspell Omega employing loud and high-energy black metal heavy on blast beats and slick guitar lines coupled agains the guttural bellows of the lead vocalist.  The last track ‘The Crackled Book of Life” incorporates a much slower, almost groovy, beat and climbing guitar line reminiscent of “Orion” by Metallica.

    The material on this EP is high quality and will be sure to please fans yearning for more after Paracletus.  It’s nothing revolutionary but it’s a strong EP with enjoyable and well-written material.

Fave Tracks: Fiery Serpents, The Crackled Book of Life, Salowe Vision