Only By the Night

"Oh wow. Now I have a choice between following in Cook's steps and reviewing an album I hate, or just following my rainbow-filled path in reviewing good albums. OR: I could do both! HA! That would certainly out-indie Cook!" Well, now you know my thought process of how I come to review Only By the Night by the famous Kings of Leon. This album I have a love-hate relationship with: all the songs are actually brilliant and I like listening to them but they ALL SOUND THE SAME >:( This obviously doesn't make me very happy.

So to begin: the instrumentals can be extremely awesome at times. But at other times? Not so much. A prime example is in "Crawl". The song seems just like a mash of random sounds from a guitar, drum set, bass and voice. None of it works in conjunction so you end up having the feeling that each player is trying to out-play each other on a subtle level. Then there's things like in "I Want You". There's an insistent cowbell playing through pretty much the whole song. It makes no sense to put it in! They could have just inserted a ride cymbal or something but nooooo they had to be hipster and all and put in a fucking cowbell! Oh well.

Okay so there are some good songs on the album. Such as the famous "Sex on Fire" (which I'm NOT going to talk about) and "Closer". Closer is incredibly weird but is still awesome. Not much else to say really... mainly because it is one of the few songs on the album that WORKS.

Another thing that pisses me off is the singer's voice. I mean jeez! How bad can it get? As bad as J_____ B_____ (common decency doesn't allow me to mention this name)? Gosh.

Thats really all I have to say on this album. Not much ey. Oh well. The next one will be LOOOOOOOOOONG. I promise.

-Alex

Metallica-...And Justice For All

Hey, Cook here, so yesterday I was rummaging through my CD collection trying to find something I felt like listening to and I cam across this. I never gave it a good listen through so I put it on. And the result? Let's just say I'm tired of all the positive reviews here and I want something to rip into for a change.

This CD, being their 4th LP was met with great critical claim and became the standout Metallica album before The Black Album overrided that status 3 years later. The album contains fantastic guitar/drum work but they're a thrash band, so no points for that. It contains 9 songs and the album runs for around 70 min. Notice a problem? Now I have nothing against long songs, I mean I've listen to Brain Salad Surgery, I know what I'm talking about. But as for this album, they're consistenly long with very little change within each other;intro, riff for 3-4 min, guitar solo, riffage, mini outro. You could apply this outline to 8 of the 9 songs on the album. It is criminal for an album to contain 8-12 songs that run extremely long with little change between each track (Dragonforce/Tool, heed this warning). The album does have one saving grace, One. But it doesnt even pull this off uniquely. After a slow intro and a few beautiful verses/choruses, it goes into another thrash riff/solo/outro, albeit it manages to keep the slow feeling of the first few minutes. Doesn't stop it from being the best song on the album.

Metallica have a bad habit of creating an extremely similar album allthroughout it and getting universal claim for it. Personally, I prefer this band's rival, Megadeth. Their songs are repetitive but alot shorter and Dave Mustaine's voice doesn't want to make make me stick pins in my cochlea. To like this album you really need to worship Metallica as a band, otherwise its boring and bland. Maybe not though. Maybe I'm just biased because Megadeth have gotten so much shit because of the fact they're not Metallica. Maybe this album is the magnum opus of thrash metal everywhere. Of course that means Nickelback have artistic potential, Good Charlotte have totally released some good songs, and Karen O isn't the sexiest thing to happen to music since Marylin Munroe got her tits out at the President's birthday.

Pros
- Great guitaring/drumming
-1st half of One is great

Cons
-Repetive/Dull throughout the album
-Songs all follow the same pattern
-Too long

The Flaming Lips

Well well well. It is nice to see cook take some initiative and do my job for me! Anyway. This is one very special review as it is of one of my personal favourite bands: The Flaming Lips. So straight to their not-so-recent album "At War with the Mystics".

This is, again, not an album for the faint hearted. If you buy the deluxe edition like I did, you end up with a bursting 16 songs (totalling about 1.2 hours). If you decide to be a cheap-ass and buy just the normal edition you end up with 3 less songs, which are namely "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Time Travel... Yes!" and the longer edition of "The Yeah Yeah Yeah song." Okay, so "Time Travel... Yes!" is not really a song at all, just a guy talking about how time travel exists in our own minds with some awesome trippy effects in the background. "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the other hand is a cover of Queen's original version and thus it is immediately awesome. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah song"... well its a longer and better version of the original one.

So the best song is most definitely "The Yeah Yeah Yeah song". It's really catchy and still retains the band's unique and sometimes weird sound. But of course, me being me, I'm not going to talk much about that song as although however catchy it is, it's still boring compared to the other songs. The most INTERESTING song is of course "Haven't got a clue". And as the name suggests, I've got no fucken idea what's going on with the key. It seems to be in one key but then SUDDENLY! It changes leaving you saying "W.T.F" over and over. On top of this, there are weird insertions of the band members coughing, burping etc. In one instance you can hear one of the members saying "I'll kill you" but the voice is sped up so it sounds incredibly cute.

And then there's "The Wizard Turns On..." Now this... I really have no idea what this is all about. There aren't any lyrics but this isn't what is weird. Lots of songs do this. It's just the fact that there isn't any real main melody/riff or anything. It's just, well, texture. Kinda like elevator music on lots and lots of crack and drunk at the same time. But it is still a brilliant piece of... texture.

Finally, there's "Pompeii AM Gotterdammerung". This song comes pretty darn close to beating "The Yeah Yeah Yeah song" to the best song of the album. It has this orgasmic harmonic progression that repeats almost over and over again but still it never gets old. The lyrics are un-deciferable as the band sings in falsetto (squeeee!). There really isn't much else to say about this brilliant song other than the interesting choice of instruments. There's an electronic organ, many synthesisers, a flute sound and also an extremely prominent bass line.

Buy this album! Even if it did come out in 1999, it would make a brilliant edition to your CD/iTunes library. Trust me. You will be listening to this whole album for years to come. Not one song on it is mediocre and all are overly awesome. :D

-Alex

Amazing and Unqiue Guitarists pt1

Cause I hate to see a good thing die and cause walker is a lazy shit I've decided to secretly update this blog. Anyway...

I've always been a fan of rock and always will be. The core element of a rock band is their guitarist. Actually, this topic stems from a conversation with a friend; I asked him some of his favourite guitarists were and he responded without the slihtest bit of irony Benji and Joel Madden from Good Charlotte. Instant facepalm followerd by instant rant. So these are some of guitarists who are the best in the area they specialise in and you should definitely check them all out

Buckethead-My favourite guitarist of all time, Buckethead can do everything: Slow, beautiful ballads (Padmasana/Whitewash);pure noise craziness (The Android of Notre Dame/We Are One);riff based jams(Jumpman/Spokes On The Wheel Of Torment) and pure shred awesome(Soothsayer/Nottingham Lace). Whoever you are, check those last two songs out, I've managed to convert some rap/techno friends into liking these songs. You can't go wrong

Tony Iommi/Angus Young-If you recognise these two (Black Sabbath /ACDC respectively), youll know they are the best riff creators of all time. Iommi can boast Iron Man/Sweet Leaf/Fairies Wear Boots while Young has Hells Bells/Back In Black/Thunderstruck up his sleeve. Knowledge of these two essential for any fan of rock is required.

Dave Gilmour-The champion of slow but emotional solos. His best works come from PinkFloyd's big 4 (Dark Side/The Wall/Animals/Wish You), but pay attention especially to Shine On You Crazy Diamond/Comfortably Numb. Not even all the butchered covers on youtube can diminish the quality of Gilmour's playing

Paul Gilbert- The champion shredder, you want insane fast music you come to this guy. He's been in several bands such as Racer X and has had a very good solo career and was a core inspiration to Buckethead. Go to youtube and listen to Get Out Of My Yard/Technical Difficulties, he can make any amateur guitar player shrivell in fear.

I was thinking about adding more but then I realised this post was getting too long, sorry :). Btw, a person at my work has started up a band called Constant Congress and they're rooly rooly good, great instrument playing all around and excellent vocals. I'd be very happy if you checked them out. Now, Go Go Gadget end post
Cook