Iwrestledabearonce - It's All Happening

Let me start by saying that I absolutely despise hardcore.  I hate all of the "core" genres (deathcore, metalcore, vegetarian grindcore).  

I do not hate screaming vocals.  I very much enjoy screaming vocals, but the way these hardcore/emo/scene kids do it is just awful.    That combined with the fact that a vast majority of them lack any skill on their instruments.

With that said, this band isn't very different from the rest.  The band does try to be very progressive, and when they do, the music is great.  When their singer actually sings instead of screams it's amazing.  She has such a great voice, and the guitar players actually do have skill.  I think this band would work out much better as a prog metal band instead of progressive hardcore.

I think that the songs with the techno keyboard stuff mixed with the hardcore elements are good, but they hardly use it. 

In conclusion I think that with a lot more work this album could have been amazing, but as it is right now it's just hardcore with a pinch of prog and it really should be the other way around.

Ensiferum - From Afar

I know I said I would be posting more often, but it seems I lied.  I really will try harder to post more I swear.  In fact I think I will do several today.

But on to the review.  I had never listened to this band before this album, but ever since I saw their terrible music video for the song "From Afar" I had to listen to the rest of the album. 

I wish that I didn't.  It's horribly boring.  The band claims that they recorded this album with a full orchestra, but they hardly utilized it.  They never give a chance for the orchestra to shine or make the songs more powerful, which is the whole point of recording with a real orchestra in the first place! (i.e. Dimmu Borgir)

The riffs are quite stale and the vocalist's death metal growls are pretty bland.  And when he actually sings his voice sounds really weird and lacks real power.  Which is also the whole point of the viking metal genre.  Power!  Glory!  Volume! Thor! All are absent on this album.

The titular track is actually pretty good.  The chorus uses a very interesting melody, but unfortunately this is the only track that is any good on the entire album, and as such, I can't recommend it.

Holy. Crap. A new post.

Hello there.  For a long time I let this blog die off and fall into the barren wasteland of the internet.  The reasons are pretty varied, but mostly I think it's because I am extremely lazy. 

But this has changed!!  I am now out of high school and have lots of free time since I'm not attending college.  I will still probably only post once or twice a day.

Since a million albums have come out since I last posted, I'm not going to even try to review them all.  Instead, I'll do new(er) releases and periodically I'll do a classic album, band or genre overviews, and other juicy stuff.

I've also decided to do away with the review scale.  To me an album is either good or it isn't.  Some are amazing and some are just ok, and I'll be sure to tell you that in the review, but I find it very hard to assign a value to it so I won't.

Well that's enough for today.  I won't do anyother posts since I'm busy today, but at least now you know that I have returned!