Video Of The Week #4

If you ever want good live footage from the bands you love, look no further, http://www.youtube.com/user/ak99superstar. This video is from their acoustics series and is a great one. Tyler Carter is great singer and he really shows that.

Video Of The Week # 3

I love these guys. My favorite band and has been for a long long time.

Amorphis – The Beginning of Times

Amorphis is a band many metalheads have heard about before. Amporhis is an “old timer” band, they have been around for quite awhile now. They started in 1990, over that time their sound have evolved and they have realased their newest album “The Beginning of Times”. Many people have been looking forward to this album, including me.

They have changed a lot from from their first cd, not something you can say about every band. These guys like to experiment and be progressive, something I really like. But this cd, I don’t know. It just feels as a remake of “Skyforger” but with no tracks that really stands out. It’s really soft, the hints from their old “death metal” days are slowly fading away. There is some parts with double kick and occasionally there is some “death” vocals. I might seem too negative, but this record is just a bit to soft for me.

No matter how I look at it, this album is not of the same quality as for example “Skyforger”. They have always been progressive and I think that is why people keep coming back to this band. Being active and selling records for 20 years is a great achievement. But this time they fell just before the finish line. Their progressiveness seems to have stopped or at least have taken a detour. Because this just feels that they are standing still in the same square as before. Compared to other bands it’s a good album, I guess it’s a good album for Amorphis too but I expected more. They have spoiled us for awhile now with great records. This is “just” a good album. “Skyforger” was, at least for me, an amazing album that will be very hard to top. “The Beginning of Times” deserves some spins, but the “wow” factor just isn’t there this time.

 

Rating: 3.0

For The Fallen Dreams – Back Burner

So For The Fallen Dreams finally dropped their third and newest album. I’ve been looking forward to this for a longtime. So what do I think about it?

My first reaction was to check that I had put in the right cd. Back Burner sounds very different from what FTFD previously have done. For The Fallen Dreams are known for their brutal songs. It is often an assault on your ears, of the good kind. This is one of the main reasons why I love FTFD. But on this new album there is a major difference from before.  Andrew Tkaczyk, the bands drummer and co founder left the band in 2011. Not only is their only one orginal member left in the band, but Andrew was the main songwriter and it shows. Back Burner isn’t awful, if I said that I would be lying.

But for example the singing. Before Dylan Richter had most of the spot light. When it comes to Back Burner, that has changed. On most verses there is clean singing, nothing wrong with that in general. However in For The Fallen Dreams case, it is not good. It feels forced. Tom Denney, the producer could have done a better job with the clean vocals. Said to say, but that was a pretty big fail on FTFD part. Although there is good news to. Many people love Dylan’s low growls and he has become even better than on their second album “Relentless”. The new style with much more cleans than before Dylan’s brutal voice was/is a good idea, sadly it was poorly executed. Shifting between clean and harsh vocals is a nice idea. It gives the music so much more depth and can really make for great complex songs. This time it didn’t work out though, at least in my mind they could have done a far better job.

When it comes the melodic part of FTFD songs this album really shows their talent. As people have come to expect, Back Burner does not disappoint in this aspect. And the emotion behind these lyrics clearly shows. If I look away from the bad clean vocals there isn’t really much to complain about. Maybe a bit too much breakdowns for my taste. But this is still a “metalcore” band we are talking about and as everyone should know by now, they sure love their breakdowns.

I can accept that bands evolve. That goes for FTFD too. But they should have done a better job on “Back Burner”, simple as that. Yes, Back Burner is NOT what it should have been. It is pretty generic, even boring at times. I never thought I would say that about FTFD. It doesn’t stand out because everything that is on Back Burner has already been done by some other band. That is ok, because it is very hard to create something that is brand new that no one has done before you. But the sad thing is that although other bands have done all of this before (clean/harsh, melodic etc) FTFD have the talent to do something special but doesn’t seem to make a valid effort. They have talent, but can’t seem to find that sweet spot. Good idea with the clean vocals, but it could have been executed way better. Is “Back Burner” a bad cd? No, definitely not, but I expected more. Their ideas for the album were great on paper, but not on the cd. I hope that the next cd, if there will be one, takes these ideas and evolve them into something great. This cd will get a few spins, no doubt about that. But say 2 months from now, I will go to “Changes” or “Relentless” instead of this cd. This isn’t bad, it’s average, which their two other albums aren’t. They standout from all the other stuff in the metalcore scene.

Rating: 2.5/5

Video Of The Week # 2

This week is from Hundredth with their song “Desolate”. I have come to love this band. Hope you guys like it too.

I’m back

Yes, that’s right, I’m back. This time to stay. I haven’t been the best at updating with new reviews etc because of various reasons, no need to go in to details. But that is about to change. My goal is to do at least 1 review per week and of course “video of the week”. My new review will be up tomorrow and will be a review of the newest For The Fallen Dreams album “Back burner”.