All I want to know is if one of these albums is explicitly more Christian themed than the other. From what I have read, that seems exactly to be the case.
"Explicitly?" I wouldn't say that. Granted, I haven't sat down and gone through the lyrics with a fine-toothed comb. But I don't really get a sense of that being the case from the listens I did (and I had to listen quite a few times to be able to review the albums). But there also aren't really that many lyrics that were changed either. I'm curious what you read that is giving you that impression.
But I really can't imagine why anybody would do an album like this if they had been able to come to some kind of compromise instead.
Well, they pretty much explained what happened. They ALL wrote this as a double album, and even Neal was completely on board and advocating that during the initial writing sessions. It wasn't until several months later after he had done Morsefest, some other gigs, and a vacation, and turned back to the album that he felt the
music wasn't working for him. So he cut it down. As he was messing around with a late cutting, he also felt that with the new arrangement, the build-up to the end felt off, so he wrote another short piece the bridge that gap. Then he presented it, and somebody else (we don't know who, other than the fact that it wasn't Roine--I can't decide whether I think Pete or Mike is more likely) also liked the shorter version better. They debated it, and decided to do both after Portnoy suggested it. Then they got label approval. THEN Neal rewrote some lyrics. But, in short, the reason was that Neal began to feel that the music didn't flow as well when it was a double album, and he thought that something more concise worked better. It kind of makes sense when you think about the fact that three of his most recent works, Similitude, JCTE, and The Great Adventure, were monster double albums, and then he went and did Sola Gratia, which was much more concise (by his standards, anyway) right before turning back to the TA album and feeling it was too long.
For what it's worth, I think it's a novel concept to let two different people produce the same album and release it at once.
For sure, except that you can't really say it was "two different people producing the same album." The entire band wrote the first one and was on board with it initially. Then Roine and either Pete or Mike advocated heavily for keeping it a double after the alternative cut was presented. And, as I understand it, it was a 2/2 split as to which was preferred.
If anything, TBOL might be LESS spiritual because I believe Neal edited out at least 2 of his compositions from the Forevermore version. He's stated in interviews that when he went to edit the album, he did so pretty fairly, taking out bits from each member's contributions, which I believe include at least two songs by Neal. Those with the album already can probably confirm this.
-Marc.
Yeah, the two that jump out at me are Bully and Rainbow Sky. Bully is a Neal lead vocal song, but as far as the musical contribution, I'm not sure. Rainbow Sky was primarily Neal on the music side, according to Roine (although the two of them share the lead vocal). I remember Roine saying he thought it was one of the best songs on the album, and was bummed that Neal cut it from the Breath of Life version of the album, whereas Neal thought it was one of the weaker songs (or maybe Neal said that, actually--I don't remember for sure).
An interesting song for this particular discussion is Swing High, Swing Low (Forevermore version)/Take Now My Soul (Breath of Life version). What is interesting to me is that both are pretty religious in terms of the lyrics. But yet, they are completely different, lyrically. I wouldn't say that either is blatantly more religious than the other.
Topic: Transatlantic Official Thread (Read 528688 times)