Review an album here

[Ether's Bane]

You know how it works. This post will also be the sample template for your reviews.

Album name: The Essential Heart
Artist: Heart (duh)
Year released: 2002
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Essential_Heart
Genre(s): Hard rock, pop-rock, pop. One track is acoustic rock, and another could be considered metal by some.
Review:
When I first picked up this album, my initial thoughts were along the lines of "This is gonna be good, but probably not mind-blowing." Was I ever wrong! This was an absolute work of brilliance and a culmination of twenty years of great hits by the Wilson sisters. Ann's soaring vocals and Nancy's pounding guitar riffs combined to make their mark in rock history, thus leading to the magnificence of this compilation album. My only regret was that the song Bebe le Strange was not featured, and it maybe was a bit too long at 37 tracks. Otherwise, an incredible album.
Standout song(s):
Barracuda - A driving guitar riff, and great vocals as always. Always a pleasure to listen to.
Never - A bouncy pop-rock track which is surprisingly fun to sing along to. I can imagine what fun this one would be to dance to at a nightclub. However, I can only imagine because I have no life.
Even It Up - Great riff and a very catchy song. On a sidenote, if Judas Priest covered this, it would be the most incredible thing ever, because I feel that Rob Halford's voice would fit this song like a glove.
Ring Them Bells - Done with Layne Staley (RIP), the late frontman of Alice in Chains. I posted this in 'Songs that would make a grown man cry', because it's so damned beautiful, and a trillion times better than the Bob Dylan original version.
Crazy on You - The first, and best, track on the album by far, Crazy on You, in my opinion, easily outshines all the other songs on this album. A great acoustic intro, awesome guitar riff, piercing vocals, and a perfectly-placed scream at the end of the third verse. This song is sheer brilliance, thorugh and through.
Overall rating:
9.8/10. -0.1 for no Bebe le Strange and another -0.1 for the excessive length. Otherwise, as evidenced by my rating, perfection.

Now you know what to do. Go ahead, give it a shot!

 

[Tarvos]

If you want to see some of my works (I have about 150 of them published) just go to www.sputnikmusic.com and check any of them out.

 

[Retsu]

[placeholder for in-depth review of some sort when I'm unbanned from the computer]

 

[Sir Lucario]

Album name: Formulas Fatal to the Flesh
Artist: Morbid Angel
Year released: 1998
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formulas_Fatal_to_the_Flesh
Genre(s): Death metal
Review: Being the first Morbid Angel album released after the departure of bassist/frontman David Vincent, one can infer that expectations weren't too high. However, I'd say that "Formulas Fatal to the Flesh" is one of the strongest efforts in this band's catalog. Most all of the tracks are memorable, and Trey Azagthoth's blazing leads are in top form. The material present here is a lot more agressive than on their previous release, "Domination", and it sounds more akin to their earlier works rather than the aforementioned. The album also seems to focus a little more on ambience than previous releases, as there are a total of five instrumental tracks.
Standout song(s):
Heaving Earth - Memorable, churning riffs and a blazing solo make for a great opening track.
Bil Ur-Sag - Another fast track with another great solo by Azagthoth; the lyrics are partly in Sumerian, as seems to be the case with the majority of the album.
Chambers of Dis - Probably the "wildest" song on here, it's extremely fast and unrelenting.
Invocation Of The Continual One - Has sort of an "epic" feel, as it's almost 10 minutes in length. This track features dual vocals, a low death growl and an almost-black metal shriek.
Overall rating:
9.5/10 -0.5 for having most of the ambient tracks clumped together at the end. Overall, it's a great record.

 

[#1 bro]

oh, pick me! pick me!

seriously, people need to start posting in this thread because it looks like a lot of fun, so I took the initiative and made an album review for all to read.

State Songs - John Linnell

Okay, so before I start reviewing, look at that cover and imagine what the album inside will be like. I dunno about you, but I imagine a sort of hokey, family-friendly, folk album with songs about how great the USA is, perfect for a long car ride with your kids. Either that, or some sort of annoying, overly patriotic country album that hurts to listen to. :(

Anyway, both of those guesses couldn't be farther from the truth. Well, I guess they could be, if this album was black metal or something, but the point is that your guess is probably pretty far off. So, what is this album like? Well, it's a side project of one of the dudes in They Might Be Giants, and as you might be able to guess from that fact, this album is rather bizarre. In fact, it's undoubtedly the most bizarre album in my collection, and I own things by Sigur Ros, Sufjan Stevens, the Flaming Lips, and the Mars Volta.

The opening track (well, there's an instrumental before it, but it's still the opening track in spirit) is titled "The Songs of the 50 States", and it's a happy sort of introductory tune where John Linnell sings "State songs, state songs, I can't wait for my favorite one" and "I'm not gonna say they're great, I ain't gonna say they ain't," but then he sings "The time has has come / for us to sing / about a certain place / where everything is in the control / of people who are down in a hole." Okay, wtf? He later sings the same lyrics, only with "people who are down in a hole" replaced with "people who are under the ground" and then "men who are controlling my mind".

It only gets weirder from there. Every song that follows it bears the name of a different US state, and while ordinarily you'd probably hear some lyrics about mountains or valleys or running streams, nothing of that sort shows up in this album. For example, the song West Virginia explains to the listener that inside of West Virginia, there is another West Virginia, and inside that one is another one, and etc. The song Idaho is about a man driving his house (?) to Idaho, and the lyrics to the track Iowa are as follows:

Silhouette on the moon
Flying around on a broom
Iowa
Is a witch
She's a witch

She likes the conical hat
Matching black dress and a cat
Iowa
Is a witch
She's a witch

Okay, that's kind of absurd I guess, but the stranger stuff is yet to come. From the chorus of "Montana":

Then it hit me that Montana was really just a leg
With the round part just the way you would expect
And it started with a feeling that ended in a wreck
And it seemed to me Montana was a leg

???

Then there's Arkansas.

The designers of the Arkansas
Were inspired to choose a form that was
The exact dimensions and the shape of the state whose name she bore

Yes the ship was shaped like Arkansas
And the hull was formed without a flaw
Every detail had been reproduced on a scale of one to one

(as if that's not peculiar enough, later in the song, the ship starts singing, and then it turns out that they have to build this boat because the real Arkansas has sunk underwater)

Or Michigan. The song itself is a polka, but the lyrics are also rather odd:

Oh, Michigan, exemplar of unchecked replication
Oh, Michigan, Oh, Michigan
The tank the fishes are in
Expansionist in spirit
In latter borders obtained
Don't hold us back, don't hold us back
We must eat Michigan's brain
Now grow back, Michigan
We miss you again

And what about "Oregon", which makes some... bold statements.

Oregon is bad
Stop it if you can
Here it comes
Now it's after you
Run away

Then the songs that aren't utterly bizarre simply have nothing to do with the state.

Anyway, I enjoyed this album, but do I recommend it? I... I don't know. It's kind of similar to what most solo albums/side projects of popular bands are like: less polished and chances are you're only going to like it if you're a fan of the original band. I mean, the instrumentation in this album isn't fantastic, but it's certainly an interesting album, and quirky enough to be kind of endearing. Myself, I don't regret buying it, but I wouldn't say that you should too.


(okay now other people start writing reviews! c'mon!)

EDIT:

This post will also be the sample template for your reviews.

um.

whoops.