EP Results Part 2
I Want You To Hurt Like I Do - An Aural Bandage for a Wounded Heart
Kattelox1. Randy Newman - I Want You To Hurt Like I Do
2. Chroma Key - Another Permanent Address
3. Randy Newman - I Think It's Going To Rain Today
4. Kings of Leon - Pyro
5. Sonata Arctica - Shamandalie
6. Sonata Arctica - Paid In Full
7. Tom Waits - MarthaI have very mixed feelings about this EP. There are songs I really like and ones I really don't. Then there's a couple that there was 1 or 2 aspects that I thought were terrible when the rest of the song was really good.
It start with Randy Newman (I usually always think about the Family Guy parody of him when I see his name). I Want You To Hurt Like I Do is a pretty messed up song. The lyrics make him sound like a sociopath. I like the music and melodies, but the lyrics make me cringe a bit. Another Permanent Address picks up the EP though. I am somewhat familiar with Chroma Key. I've heard a few songs here and there. I've always like Kevin Moore's style of vocals. They are especially fitting with the type of music he does. The lyrics are really interesting too. If this EP is intended to be a story about a guy who left his wife and kids (which I think it is), this song works really well following the Randy Newman song. He seems to be wandering aimlessly not sure what to do with himself after leaving. It's a good song. I Think It's Going To Rain Today is next. This song has problems. The lyrics are pretty good, but the vocals are not. The musical ideas are good, but the execution and production is terrible. This continues the story with the guy feeling depression coming over him. I like the Kings of Leon song that's next. I've always enjoyed what this band does (the few songs I've heard). They have a unique style and unique vocals. This carries the story forward with the guy snapping and basically turning in to an emotionless person. Which I guess is fitting since we established the guy is a sociopath in the first song. The two Sonata Arctica songs work really well fleshing out the story that I've been making of this. Lyrically they are both really good, especially for a power metal band. They show why our "protagonist" ended things with his wife and then him coming to accept his life since that day many years later. I was confused by the last part of Shamandalie at first. It completely destroyed the flow, but then I remembered what you wrote in your PM you sent to ignore the last third of the song, since it's some kind of bonus song thing (gotta edit that stuff out in Audacity
). Paid in Full is the most upbeat song on the EP. The music is a little repetitive, but it's a decent song overall. The Tom Waits song has our protagonist trying to reconnect with his former wife decades later. I don't get Tim Waits. I like the lyrics and piano, but the dude cant sing and I don't like his style of singing.
The flow sort of works here. The songs all do interconnect in to a story. Even if it's mostly fabricated in my mind
The second Sonata Arctica song doesn't quite fit stylistically to me. Randy Newman mostly doesn't work for me. I get what you were trying to do with the EP, it just kind of fell a little flat for me.
13 (EP Score) + 2.5 (Flow Score) = 15.5 Total
No Wonder I Am Focked Up
Indiscipline
1. Ronnie Montrose - Town without Pity
2. Funkadelic - Who Says a Funk Band Can't Play Rock!
3. Brand X - Earth Dance
4. UK - In The Dead of Night
5. Area - Il Bandito del Deserto
6. Rory Gallagher - Overnight Bag
7. Gary Moore - Parisienne WalkawaysHaving gone with songs exclusively from your birth year, this is a lot of old school Rock, with some jaunts over in to some prog. I suspect you might have selected different songs if the bands hadn't been on my banned list, but what is here is actually quite intriguing. The on;y band here that I know I've heard before is UK. I have their other album the one with Terry Bozzio on drums. I've heard of Montrose and Gary Moore, but I couldn't tell you if I've heard one of their songs.
The Montrose song is a cool guitar led instrumental and works as a great intro (you really like those instrumentals). Funkadelic comes in and is a groovy funky Funk-Rock song. The guitarist (whoever he is) is just going off the entire song, just soloing the crap out of the whole 6 minutes basically. The underlying rhythm sections don't really deviate much, which may be the only bad part of the song. The lyrics do tend to get a bit repetitive, but that can be overlooked here. The Brand X song is up next and we are back to more Jazz Fusion. So this is what Phil Collins was doing outside of Genesis. I had no idea. That drum groove throughout the song is quite infectious and groovy as hell. Lots of other percussion all over this track as well. The bass player definitely tries to keep up. He's laying down some nice bass licks. I really like the UK song here and it's much more enjoyable than a lot of the stuff on their other album. I think a lot of that has to do with Bill Bruford (who makes another return in this roulette along with John Wetton, last roulette it was Michael Kiske who kept rearing his ugly head
). I enjoy Bruford's style so much more than Bozzio's. Bill Bruford and Neil Peart were the two drummers that made me want to start playing drums over 20 years ago. The Area song sure is something. It's got a cool groove. That bass line is soooo goooood. The vocals are not really my thing though. Thankfully they don't take up much space in the song. It's mostly a cool instrumental song with lots of layers and instruments. I like when bands throw in tons of instruments and is able to make it sound coherent. Overnight Bag is a change of pace with some Bluesy Rock. There's a lot of recurring musicians between submissions. You have Ted McKenna on drums here, who is also the drummer on the MSG song Stadler sent. I have a love/hate relationship with Blues rock. This falls on the love side. It's a great song. To wrap things up we have Gary Moore, with a slower more delicate bluesy ballad. You have the crying guitar solos and some great atmosphere created by the keyboards. I don't like the fade out at the end, I don't get any closure to finish out the EP.
Overall it's a good EP with many things to enjoy and a few things that I don't like. The flow is pretty good from song to song. The one thing that bothered me throughout the entire EP was the sound quality. I listened to a few of the individual tracks on Google Music and the sound quality is way better. Something must have happened when you did some editing and converted this to a single track.
14.6 (EP Score) + 3.5 (Flow Score) = 18.1 Total
It's Deja Vu All Over Again
JinglePrimal Fear - Unbreakable (Part 1)
Eden's Curse - Unbreakable
Masqued - Broken
InnerWish - Broken
Hardline - Human Nature
Manimal - Human Nature
Hemina - Soulmates
Nation Beyond - SoulmatesThis is an interesting concept and a Yogi Berra quote for the EP title.
I like the idea of using a specifically made intro track for an EP, such as Unbreakable (Part 1). Unfortunately it doesn't quite flow in to Unbreakable (Eden's Curse). No matter the Eden's Curse song is good. It's a cool faster tempo, upbeat, major chord, Heavy metal song. It's got fun sing along parts, good guitar solos, and a cool guitar rhythm. This actually flows really well in to Broken by Masqued, which is a more Symphonic leaning Metal track. There are a lot of problems with this song. I don't particularly like either the male or female vocals here. The lyrics are kind of lame. For the most part the instrumentation is pretty good, but the song as a whole just doesn't work very well for me. The Innerwish song is much better, with some good Power Metal. The vocalist kind of sounds like Russell Allen at times and maybe a bit of Tom Englund. He doesn't seem to have the same range as Allen though, but his voice is still enjoyable. The song is actually fairly straight forward Power Metal, but it's well written with lyrics that fit the mood of the music. Next are the two Human Nature songs by Hardline and Manimal respectively. The Hardline song is a very enjoyable ballad-like Hard Rock song. Kind of similar to what Journey does. The guitar solo is short, but sweet. Manimals song is more Heavy Metal with some Power and Prog leanings. The vocalist is like the love child of Dio and Geoff Tate. He definitely gets those early Queensryche soaring screams down pat. There's lots to like here besides the vocals too. The guitar riffing is really good. There's some great solos. The whole attitude of the song is perfect too. This is definitely the opposite end of the spectrum from the Hardline song. Then we get Soulmates by Hemina, which starts off back towards the more ballady end of the spectrum. I really like the duet vocals here, both do a great job and the lyrics are actually fairly touching. I like these emotionally engaging type of songs. Especially when the vocalists can make it sound convincing. There's even a fantastic harmonized guitar solo with what sounds like keyboards? It has an interesting effect in there that sounds cool. Nation Beyond's Soulmates is the closer here. Another ballad-like duet. This one leaning more in the power metal end. This one also has really good lyrics and singing. This one I actually like the singing more than the Hemina song. The problem with this song is the production. It sounds terrible. I thought maybe the Google Music version was messed up, but I listened to it from other sources and they are all the same. It's way too "hot" and brickwalled, especially in the heavier sections. It becomes fatiguing to listen to. I actually think the flow would have been better if you swapped the two Soulmates songs.
Overall this is one of the EP's that was a real grower. It started out toward the bottom of the ranking, but slowly climbed its way up. The flow is going to take a bit of a hit here, mostly because there are some hard cuts and awkward transitions. The lyrics all seems to fit though and the theme is definitely unique as far as the whole EP round goes. The Masqued song hurt your score the most, but it's still a great EP.
16.4 (EP Score) + 3 (Flow Score) + .5 (best EP title) = 19.9 Total