Short thoughts on recent listenings

Andreas Kisser - Hubris I & II: Boring. Pointless. Not bad per se, but just unnecessary. If it wasn't Andreas Kisser, I'd have dismissed it outright. II is lacking the bad singing of I and that's good. But it's not really great. If I wanted to listen to flamenco sounding guitar work, I'd listen to....

Rodrigo y Gabriela - 11:11: Okay, I'm a metal guy thru and thru. So why do I love RyG so much? No drums, no singing, very little electric guitar. Just 2 acoustics guitars and lots of energy. Perhaps what I like best is I can put it on with just about any company around and nobody says "How can you listen to this?"

GWAR - Lust in Space: Meh. Never been much of a fan of GWAR. Why start now? They do put on an interesting live show though.

Killswitch Engage - Killswitch Engage: I wasn't really into Daylight Dies, but this is better. Maybe I just needed to separate myself from KsE for a while. I guess it just didn't come off as sappy. It's a grower for sure.

Otep - Smash The Control Machine: WAY better than I expected. The last one was horrible. Well, maybe the last 2 or 3. Not to say this is great by any stretch. Still very much in the rap-metal vein on some tunes. At least one horribly so. And there is the obligatory almost spoken word "rant" we've come to expect from Ms. Shimaya. That chick can still shred some vocals though. When she screams "Make me come!" in "Numb & Dumb"...yeah.

Astra - The Weirding: The definition of retro. Transport me back 35 years and give me an endless supply of weed and Astra would be the soundtrack for that trip. It's pretty good but I'm stone cold straight right now so it's not doing much for me.

Resistant Culture - Welcome to Reality: Fuck yeah! Remember when Max was in Sepultura? This kicks ass!

Snail, Syrach and Weekend Nachos were alright but nothing special. Snail deserves another listen though.

All That Remains - Overcome (album review)

Every once in awhile you come across a band that really stands out. That brings something new to the table. They don't have to invent a new genre, or even re-invent a genre, but they punch some uniqueness into it. It could be a interesting mix of styles, a unique vocalist, and totally out of this world drummer, ya know, something to really distinguish them from the rest of the pack. Unfortunately, not of that applies to All That Remains. Overcome isn't a bad album per se, it's just nothing special. Nothing that hasn't been done a thousand times before. They seem to have graduated from the Killswitch Engage taught school of Overdone Wave of American Heavy Metal. In fact, I should check the liner notes on this because it sounds like this has Adam D.'s fingerprints all over it. Good cop/bad cop vocals, but the good cop doesn't go to church as often as he used to and the bad cop has a family now and is getting a little soft. I can't really comment on the lyrics because I don't have the luxury yet of only listening to the album. I am almost always doing something at the same time. Besides, I don't like to analyze lyrics anyway. I was never very good in English class.

I have to give Overcome credit for at least keeping me interested up to about track 6, but by track 8 I had skipped to the next album on my player. There was just nothing I hadn't heard before (and heard done better). That, and I was looking forward to listening to the next band on my list, Annihilation Time. So when I turned my player back on, I just skipped the last 3 songs.

So if you live and breath KsE and their ilk, go buy All That Remains - Overcome. But if you want to listen to a band that blazes their own trail, go buy anything by Clutch. I should actually make that my blog signature, Go buy anything by Clutch.