I can’t wait to hear the new Gathering album coming this spring. I hope they’ll do something of the quality of if_then_else. I’m in love with that. It’s simply fantastic. I don’t know what came to musicians in 2000, but that year spawned great stuff. Just a few examples: the Dark Ride by Helloween, Brave New World by Iron Maiden, Modern Szerenád by Macskanadrág, Wishmaster by Nightwish, Crimson by Sentenced, and i could go on with the list for a long time still.
Now there’s also a nice bunch of great music, but also a lot that disappoint me. For example the new Iron Maiden album is nowhere near the level of Brave New World or Dance of Death, and that’s not what i expected, even though it’s still great.
The new Rage, Carved in Stone’s pretty good too. It’s almost as good as Speak of the Dead, which was simply fantastic (2006 was a great year in music too). The title song, Carved in Stone is very catchy, i was humming it for days now. And there’s more like that on the disc… Great.
All that is left now
Rage – Carved in Stone
Is only names carved in stone
Forgotten heroes underground
Not much is left now
Some rusty nails and rotten bones
The dead heroes names carved in stone
The new Mötley Crüe… now that’s a good question. Mötley Crüe has always been playing this music. They did great, the title song, Saints of Los Angeles is a single hit, and it’s no surprise. The new Guns N’ Roses is something different though. It’s not GNR any more, i think. This is more like Axl Rose doing whatever he likes. Except for the vocals there’s nothing similar to the good old GNR feel. The sound of the guitars is more like Mötley Crüe, but it doesn’t match the vocals at all (the the lyrics are Nirvana-ish). I’m not saying it’s bad. It just shouldn’t be sold as GNR. I just can’t feel like it’s similar to the GNR of Welcome to the Jungle or Coma, it’s something completely different. I guess Axl felt it (and he felt it right) that he can do whatever he wants, people will buy that disc no matter what. I guess the next one will be more traditional GNR so that it’ll lure back those disappointed by Chinese Democracy, then again something like this. It sure seems that i don’t like this album. I do. It’s like Maiden’s Matter of Life and Death. You have to listen to it dozens of times to catch the feel of it. Though…
I don’t know if it’s better if an album is a huge hit, and everyone listens to it countless times and gets bored with it, and it goes down the drain, while these “lighter” ones will stay. Dunno.
