• Voivod - Angel Rat

    They are not from this world any more! Voivod has transcended the waves of space and time and floats somewhere high above an ordinary human state of mind. I may warn you, because this album has nothing to do with the band's early thrash metal albums or the later extreme post industrial metal. This isn't even metal at all, it is pure and perfect progressive rock, somewhere between King Crimson's "In the court of the crimson king", Rush's "Moving pictures", Genesis' "Wind and wuthering", Pink Floyd's "Darkside of the moon" and the band's previous "Nothingface", just to give you an idea.

    When I first bought and listened to the album, I thought that somebody had put the wrong CD in the slipcase. This doesn't sound like anything you have heard from Voivod before and later on. Even today, when the band still plays "Panorama" or "The prow" live on stage, it sounds much heavier and down to earth than on this album and doesn't have the same feeling at all. Voivod truly created something that they were never able to do again, they wrote this song in a very special mood. This album is softly floating and I wouldn't be surprised to know that those guys were completely on acid while they composed this album. Singer Snake completely flies away in the video clip for "Clouds in my house", high above the earth, sorrounded by starnge white paper floating around him like snow. This image represents perfectly the mood of this album.

    Snake sounds softer and more emotional than ever before, the drumming is relaxed but still tight in the same way, the bass guitar creates really eerie or spacey vibes and the melodic guitar produces sounds that you have never heard before. Voivod even integrate some new instruments like the harmonica part on "The outcast", but those surprising elements are decently used and fit perfectly to the songs. Voivod do not abuse those new elements and that's why there are many little surprises to discover on this album.

    It is difficult to mention highlights on this album which works as a whole masterpiece, but half of the songs of this album also work out of the conceptual basis and give me regular chills and goosebumps.

    "Panorama" reminds somehow of the syle of the previous album and is the heaviest song on the album and very well chosen as a tight opener.

    "Clouds in my house" is a perfect title as this song makes you dream and fly away and has brilliantly tender and dreamy finale.

    During "The prow" you hear ocean waves and the song has a mystic atmosphere that surrounds it in a very eerie way and you can't get this song out of your head once you have listened to it.

    The title song "Angel rat" is the most spacey song on the album, has a really eerie atmosphere and feels like a bizarre dream with its floating guitars, multiple dreamy choirs and voices and almost electronical or decent new or dark wave parts.

    "The outcast" surprises with many interesting changes of style and the harmonica part in the beginning.

    "Freedoom" begins as a very tender hippy ballad and is the most relaxed song Voivod have ever written.

    I just mentioned six songs out of twelve which are six unique masterpieces to me. The other ones are almost as strong and the whole twelve songs form something really unique and perfect. Thrash or heavy metal fans may not get a good approach to this album which has been largely discussed, criticized and is until today very controversial. If you are a fan of progressive rock, you will adore this album though and maybe see it as the rebirth of a whole genre, it is the greatest progressive rock album since "Wind and wuthering" almost fifteen years before this one.

    Every song creates a really bizarre, tender, spacy, floating, mysterious atmosphere and makes you dream and chill. This album is the most underrated album I know, it is one of my favourite albums of all time and really close to perfection!

     

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  • Apocalyptica - 7th Symphony

     

    The phenomenon of Apocalyptica is dead. What has been original and unique one decade ago when the band began to reinvent well known metal songs into a classical and symphonical style or when the band made their first entirely acoustic albums which were really intense and profound, has now become a mainstream band which repeats itself. At least, the last albums had still a few very interesting collaborations but that isn't the case on this album.

    All the songs with guest singers, a part of "Bring them to light" which is a positive exception but has already been recorded several years ago, sound very commercial and faceless. The worst one is really the pop rock song "Broken pieces" which could be on a "Twilight" movie score. The first single "End of me" is really faceless and boring. "Not strong enough" would have been the better choice but this song is also far away from emotional collaborations like the dreamy and soft "Faraway Vol. 2", the darker and intense "Hope Vol. 2" or the very melancholic "Bittersweet". The band decided to chose mostly some less popular singers from some modern and commercial bands and they lose all their charm and uniqueness by doing this. While collaborations from the past still gave a lot of space to the celli and their unique sound and atmosphere, the new songs are concentrated on some cheesy lyrics and the classical instruments sound like ordinary guitars.

    At least the instrumental songs deliver the expected standards. The only negative point is that the drums are more present in most of the songs which destroys their old and unique style somehow. The band only shows its brilliant talent in the songs without or with less drumming and when they take their time to develop epic and intelligent structures somewhere between Mozart and Metallica like they used to do a few years ago. There are four nice songs on the album, two very good and two brilliant ones. The opener "At the gates of Manala" goes more into a metal style and is a little bit too long while "Beautiful" has an original classic and acoustic approach but is way too short. The only really well done songs are in fact the melancholic "Sacra" and the very interesting and fresh sounding bonus track "Throgh Paris in a sportscar" even if the song title makes you think of the modern crap which mostly dominates this album. It's a funny antithesis that this bonus track is one of the most traditional and profound songs on the entire album. The rest of the songs feel like some fillers and are only average stuff.

    I must conclude that this album is the weakest one in the complete discography of Apocalyptica. The songs sound too metal during most of the instrumental parts ("2010") and too commercial and boring during their collaboration with guest singers ("Broken pieces" is maybe their worst song ever). One nice collaboration and four interesting instrumental songs save the album and make at least one half quite enjoyable. But overall, this album is still somehow boring. The bonus DVD is very interesting too and shows us that the band can still perform in a very personal and intense mood. I have seen them recently on stage and know that they are still really intense and powerful there.

    Let us hope that their next album will not only be based on commercial collaborations and want-to-be metal riff shredding, but on the unique power and creativity which has made this band unique. If they will fail, one of the most dynamical bands risks to become as horrible as pseudo-innovating metal clowns like "Van Canto". Let us pray that those boys go back to their roots or reinvent themselves completely but that they won't chose the commercial and faceless path.

     

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  • Ozzy Osbourne - Scream

     

    After the infinite boredom of the previous "Black rain", a very poor cover album and the departure of guitar player Zakk Wylde, I thought that this would mean the end for the prince of darkness and I didn't expect anything from the new album.

    Well, I was completely wrong and got blown away by this album. Maybe it's because this is the very first album that Ozzy entirely reminds to have written, sung and composed or because of the influence of the new guitar player Gus G. Whatever the reason is, Ozzy sounds fresh and hungry on this album and has nothing of an old and broken madman. This album really kicks ass and is not only concentrated on the older Ozzy albums from the eighties, but adds some new and interesting elements as well.

    The opener "Let it die" is already a big suprise and really heavy and controversial stuff. The song structure is cut into pieces with its industrial sound and eerie rap like verses with weird voice effects and may shock the old and traditional Ozzy fan. But he seems to be amused to shock us from time to time, like in the very modern, industrial and almost Neue Deutsche Härte like "Latimer's mercy".

    But don't be afraid, there are also some more simple and traditional songs like the very powerful first hit single "Let me hear you scream" or the more melodic "I want it more".

    The rest of the album contains a few average heavy rock songs and one or two expected ballads. Those songs are more traditional and ordinary, but there is still nothing bad about them and no fan of Ozzy Osbourne should be in a mood of deception about this album.

    But the two very experimental songs as well as the more traditional but very powerful other two songs are just great and make me hope that the prince of darkness will not transcend into hell and dig his grave, but work on another ressurection. He really shows us here that he still has something to say and that he is quite well alive!

     

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  • Stratovarius - Polaris

     

    I don't understand why most of the fans, magazines and webzines give enthusiastic reviews to this album at all. Did they listen to more profound and darker stuff like "Twilight time" or the classic European power metal rebirth with "Infinite"? The band sounded so diversified and fresh once and even the last studio album was somehow dark and heavy and had the famous certain something.

    This album leads me to the conclusion that Timo Tolkki really was the heart and soul of the band. And with his departure, the style of Stratovarius changed. The new sound is so faceless and cheesy and the main problem is the guitar play in here, well - which guitar play? The guitars are completely overruled by the annoying keyboards which dominate each song. There is no single emotional guitar solo on the whole album with one single exception.

    Ordinary and fast happy metal average songs like "Higher we go" or the darker and spacier "Deep unknown" figure out to be still two of the better songs, but those wouldn't even have made it to a b-side of "Twilight time" or "Infinite". No, the most terrible songs are those where the bands tries to be epic and intellectual. The songs are all very slow paced, overambitious, soft, undynamical and overloaded with cheesy keyboard sounds like the overlong "Emancipation suite". Songs like "King nothing" or "Somehow precious" are so lousy and weak that I had to skip them even at my first and very open-minded try to find an approach to this album.

    There is one single good song which saves this album and this is "Winter skies" which makes you dream and fly away through a frosty winter world with its cold and still very positive and dreamy keyboard sounds, Kotipeltos amazingly emotional voice and the only intense but very short guitar solo on the whole album. This song has a certain magic and is really powerful. A part of the nice cover and booklet, this is the only positive point of the album and explains my thirty percent rating. The band is still able to write an excellent song but there is only one on the entire album and this is not enough. They should have released this little masterpiece called "Winter skies" as a single, but as they didn't do it, you are forced to listen to two or three average songs and a full load of boring crap - what a pity.

    More than one year after I’ve listened to this album for the first time, I must say that this is the weakest album that this band has ever done and the worst metal record of the year 2009 which I have listened to.

     

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  • Welcome to my first official blog and own internet site. I hope this site pleases you. In the next couple of days and weeks, I will start working on this site and try to get used to the world of eklablog. I will change the design, add some articles and make some experiments as you will see. I will write in three different languages on this site: in German, in French and in English. I would like you to share your thoughts, ideas and comments about my blog with me.

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