"Best Yes album since Relayer?
Sure, "Don't Go" is an out of place pop song where its deep texture can't save it. Other than that, I've never heard the band so inspired since the Machine Messiah composition in Drama. The composition is the best point of the album: the way all instruments and orchestra harmonize is sublime. The only other rock+orchestra effort that is as successful as this one is Rick Wakeman's "Journey". Those two epics might be the best songs they wrote since Machine Messiah (you can tell I love that song)."
"One of the biggest surprises of 2008, because I never liked Coldplay. The band showed songwriting talents I did not think they would have. The sound production is wonderful thanks to eno and the music is generally deep in texture. The end result is a good balance of pop and art rock with mild influences from various other genres. The first two songs are especially solid (the intro sounds like Sigur Ros), the single is of course a classic pop song, and "Death to All His Friends" has a 7/8 climax that is nothing but pure symphonic rock.
Not an excellent album by any means, but I'm surprised that I like a Coldplay Album and that I love both title tracks in it."
"Back to the Roots, Metallica play fast and heavy like in the old days. Most songs are long and songwriting based around riffs. James (singer/rhythm guitar) is at his top form, bass and lead guitars are quite good too, and the drummer sounds like crap. Luckily, all songs are at least decent with the instrumental being probably the weakest one."
"A subpar concept album about an immortal and technological advanced alien race hooked on machines deciding to plant their DNA in a comet creating humans. To their disappointment, the humans got hooked on machines and myspace.
The music is carefully crafted, but for some reason, I find the music dull, unoriginal, monotonous, and overlong. There are tons of talented musicians and vocalist trying to save this album, to no avail."
"The follow up to the debut is a bit disappointing. Rather than progress, they release a very similar album. The music doesn't sound as fresh anymore and the ideas are not as great as before. There are a few tracks that sound different from Hybrid Theory material but overall, this is not the definition of creativity."
"Not your typical remix album.
An ambitious album for sure, but with mixed results. Most of the songs are vastly edited. When it works, the songs make the original versions sound pedestrian and inferior (e.g. crawling). The main problem with this album is too much fooling around in the DJ department at times and some unnecessary hip-hop."
"A massive commercial success and a decent debut for a band that appeared to have potential, but it really didn't show much of it yet (despite the excellent closer of "Two Minutes to Midnight"). The music is structurally predictable with verse/choruses. Verses usually have melodic singing or catchy rapping while the chorus is more like sing-along hard rock. Both singers are very competent at what they do, the electronics are usually spot-on, but the rest of the band do not go beyond basic performances nor steal the show (where are the solos?). The lyrics are simple, but they work and sometimes contain good messages.
Bonus tracks include the electronic-pop ballad "My December" (6.5 average), and the rap-oriented "High Voltage" (8.0, good) that is better than most songs here and has the strings sound of "Cure for the Itch""
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zitro has interacted with 168 releases.