Monthly Archives: April 2012

Oldies: Audio Ain’t No Secret to Me

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I’ve been listening to Audio Secrecy (Deluxe Edition) by Stone Sour non-stop for a while now, and I’m just going to say, in case you don’t want to read through this whole review:
This album absolutely propels Stone Sour to new heights.
That may sound a little bold, but it’s true. This is a band with diversity, which has shone through on their last two releases; their self-titled debut in 2003 and Come What(ever) May in 2006. However, I feel that Audio Secrecy is their most ambitious work yet, and it certainly is rewarding. The sound is tight and the variety is awesome. The lyrical content is much more real and mature than Corey’s work in Slipknot. All that fake rage and angst gets old fast, but you won’t find any of it here. Audio Secrecy’s themes and issues are sincere, like Corey wrote them from his own experiences, rather than just writing for the sake of writing because he needed to fill out an album. Mind you, that might not be true at all, but that’s how it feels.

The instrumentation is top-notch. The band knows how to pull off everything from chugging, head-pounding riffs to some beautiful, smooth ballads. James Root does an outstanding job as guitarist, and is allowed to be creative in a way that just isn’t seen in Slipknot, where he constantly gets shat on by Mick Thompson. His riffs are original and catchy, and some of his solos are outstanding.
Corey Taylor delivers some amazing vocals as always, showing that he can pull off some brutal sounding grunts and gutturals, but also incredibly clean, soaring choruses. He proves again and again that he has one of the most refined and flexible voices in the business.

The first single from the album, “Say You’ll Haunt Me”, is a little simple and straightforward compared to the other songs on the album. However, I guess every band needs one or two songs that are a little more mainstream-sounding in order to gain popularity. But, in saying this, it has grown on me a lot since I first heard the song. I heard it before the album had been released, and I got worried that the rest of the album would be much the same, and that they were trying to break into the mainstream by dumbing down their music. Trust me when I say that they haven’t, and I think they simply needed a single, which was probably a smart thing to do, really.

The bottom line is, this band is all about diversity and variety, and Audio Secrecy is their finest example of that so far. It shows off how flexible each member of the band can be, and is a great album to just listen to over and over again. It demands to be heard.
And if you can, do yourself a favour and get the Deluxe Edition. The couple of extra tracks are worth it.

Unfortunately I don’t have a fancy little star system, but if I did, I’d give Audio Secrecy an 8/10.

Track recommendations:

  • Digital (Did You Tell)
  • Dying
  • Hesitate
  • Nylon 6/6
  • Threadbare
  • Home Again

(Every song on the album is great, but those are some personal favourites)

Oldies: They Should’ve Kept This One a Secret

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Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, Bring Me the Horizon’s new album; There is a Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen it, There is a Heaven, Let’s Keep it a Secret, is in a word, shit. This is the most poorly put-together arrangement of songs I’ve heard in a while, and the end result is garbage. Possibly the only thing worse than this album is the army of BMTH fanboys and fangirls who blindly devote themselves to this shit-storm, insisting that it’s “THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY THING THEY’VE EVER DONE OMG HOLY TITS!!!11”

To which I respond: “So they added strings”. Not even real strings actually, just synths.

Which isn’t really all they’ve done. They’ve also come up with a lot more stupid ideas. Here’s pretty much all of them:

  • Extra synths
  • Shit dance beats
  • Random acoustic interludes
  • Choirs
  • Even more synths
  • An atmospheric, echo-y sound effect that pretty much drags out through the entire album
  • Oli Sykes still can’t sing

I used to not be able to make up my mind about whether I liked BMTH or not. I’ve never been a huge fan, but I couldn’t decide if I truly disliked them. Now I know that I do. One of my largest gripes with this almost hour-long earache is the completely random and terribly organised song structure. An example I have come up with to quickly describe the album in general, is this:

Heavily distorted, boring guitar riff – Sudden acoustic guitar interlude, accompanied by a string section and/or a choir (auto-tuning optional) – Extremely irritating dance beat – More distorted guitars – Atmospheric sound effects with Oli whinging and ranting – More choirs – End.

What shits me even more is that some of this “new and groundbreaking” material, isn’t even new.

Example – Listen to the song Visions, starting at about 1:05. Does that synth progression sound familiar to you? If it does, it’s probably because it’s almost the exact same progression they used throughout almost the entire second half of the song Chelsea Smile from the album Suicide Season.
In general, the whole album just lacks any kind of creativity. The song Fuck springs to mind. I mean, obviously this has to be the absolute pinnacle of song-making, right?

Long story short, this is an album that has done the opposite of what everyone claims it does. It hasn’t progressed or improved anything in any way. If anything, it has taken a step backwards. A friend of mine (the drummer for my (now defunct) band, in fact) sums it up pretty well I think, with these words:

“The expectations of a band is to ‘evolve’ their sound, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen the word ‘devolve’ used in a sentence. They have given reason to use this legendary word and more. They have, at the least I can say, done more than Dragonforce has effort-wise, but the result was the same nevertheless.”

And this is a guy who knows his shit when it comes to music.

So there you have it. Don’t bother with Bring Me the Horizon’s new waste of time. Just keep listening to the Zombie EP or something, it’s much better.

I give it a 1/10. Now I’m going to do something more pleasant than listening to this album, like slamming my dick in a door.

My First Review! You Are My Sunshine by Copeland

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Hopefully the first of many to come, for my first review I’d like to critique one of my favourite albums. Copeland isn’t one of my favourite bands (although they are very good), but there’s something about their last studio LP; You Are My Sunshine, that I just absolutely adore. Released in 2008, it is an incredibly mellow and uplifting collection of songs that is easy to listen to, and also works as pretty good stress relief. At any given time, I can just play it right through from start to finish and never get tired of it.

The record begins with the track “Should You Return”, with the soft, crooning vocals of Aaron Marsh, immediately lulling you into a sense of serenity. The vocal harmonies used in this song (and throughout the album, but most prominently on “Should You Return”) are stunning, and for me, they are one of the most defining factors that attribute to the overall vibe and sound of the album. Combined with the ambient piano, trance-like guitars, and the array of other unconventional instruments such as bassoon, flugelhorn and violins, the resulting mix is something I’m yet to hear any other band achieve.

As you listen, Copeland make several shifts back and forth between darker, moody tones on tracks like “To Be Happy Now” and “Strange and Unprepared”, to more cheerful and optimistic vibes, which govern most of the tracks. But the best part about this release is that while every song has obviously been very carefully thought out in terms of mood, tone and texture etc, it always remains beautifully simplistic in it’s execution. It never gets too cluttered or over-done. Copeland have managed to strike the perfect balance of instrumentation and musicality, succeeding in creating a depth of sound that generates the right atmosphere and pulls it off without ever being too ambitious.

The best part about this record is that we’re lucky to have received it at all. After Eat, Sleep, Repeat in 2006,  Copeland parted ways with their bassist James Likeness, dumped their record label, and showed all signs of splitting up entirely. So it is a privilege to be able to listen to You Are My Sunshine, and I’m so glad they decided to put it out before disbanding in 2009.

With all this in mind, I can easily give You Are My Sunshine a well-deserved 8/10. 

Thanks for reading my first-ever review on this site! Let me know what you thought by leaving me a comment.