Finally got the album yesterday after seriously considering just canceling the damn delayed order. But I'm a completist and would probably end up buying it later, possibly for an inflated price, so I held out. To summarize my opinion up to this point, I REALLY wanted to like this band. The roll out was so clumbsy (Mike getting mad at fans for correctly guessing who was in the band), Derek was being a dick, they claimed they were the new kings of prog and then ended up making a strait forward metal album with some proggy elements, 50% of their songs not being very good and then the other 50% frustratingly good to great, and it very quickly seemed like they all lost interest in the band, possibly due to the problems of booking them in decent venues and lackluster sales.
Needless to say I wasn't too excited for the live album and the people here that already saw it gave it generally poor revues, so perhaps it's a good thing my expectations were so low because I actually really am digging this.
Granted, I think overall the covers are unnecessary and the orchestra can't be heard well over Derek that is just doubling the strings, but if I just took this release at face value or had no expectations and didn't know all the baggage, I'd be pretty pumped to learn more about this band.
First thing was watching the show I was reminded about how much fun I had seeing them. Jeff sounded decent for the first part and thankfully I shut it off to go for a walk and listen to it on headphones. The second part you could tell he was struggling but in my headphone mix he sounded much better. Coming through TV speakers he sounded kinda bad. Laptop speakers were even worse. But with my headphones cranked, I was really digging it.
The fact that he was struggling *almost* made me like it more. You could tell he was putting everything he had into it. On the other hand, him struggling strained his voice more and he couldn't hit some relatively easy notes later in the show. It also reminds me about how Mike was so critical of James who, disregarding the occasional off night, is much more consistent with the high notes than Jeff is.
I was surprised to see all the bonus features on the DVD too, then just as surprised to realize they were all things that had been released in promotion for the album. I enjoyed them and Derek's enthusiasm but then just as quickly was sick of him when he threw out the slams on ipads and gadgets and whatever. The one new feature was the behind the scenes documentary of the show. This seemed like it was just thrown together and pretty underwhelming.
Oh yeah, there was a TV appearance in Bulgaria that Mike and Jeff were on. There was a translator that went between them and the Bulgarian host and you couldn't understand a damn thing because they were talking over each other for 20 minutes. Still cool but needed subtitles or something.
Sadly, it seems a lot of people don't share my opinion and also that the band doesn't seem to care much about promoting this aside from the occasional tweet or Mike (illegally) sharing the two numbers cut from the DVD. It just seems like the ol' "Hey let's get excited for this next release!" and then once it's out, they feel like moving on which is about par for them.
I doubt I'll listen to this much but for now I'm digging it.
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Topic: Sons of Apollo (feat. Portnoy & Sherinian) (Read 468318 times)