Topic: Rate/Review The last Album you heard

[Plugabugz]

Best 4 albums of the year:

Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid. This album has no specific genre: if you like ANYTHING listen to this.
Rick Ross - Teflon Don
Jazmine Sullivan - Love Me Back
Cee Lo - The Lady Killer a fat black guy can SANG! SANGGGGG!

I'm still deciding whether Chrisete Michele's "Let Freedom Reign" is #5.

Most disappointing album?

Bruno Mars - Doo wops & Hooligans - he has no upper range in his voice and gets to screeching fast. That itself gets old very fast.

Black Eyed Peas - The Beginning - a european influenced album with nothing actually unique about it (except the worst use of a sample in music history with "time of my life"), and little use of fergie.

The Dream - Love King. After 3 albums of essentially the same thing he should just stop. He should just go back to being a writer and producer because he falls into the trap of producing his own stuff. "Ella ella ella" was cute on Rihanna's Umbrella in 2007. It's not 2007 anymore.

Kid Cudi - Man on the Moon II: I didn't like the first album because "I Poke Her Face" gave the wrong impression of what his album would be like (fun and cheeky and bouncy) and it wasn't. He sounds dull and uninspired and almost coasting through the tracks, album 2 fixes none of these things.

B.o.B - The Adventures of Bobby Ray. When you release the best tracks off your album as the lead (and following) singles, which are all featuring other artists when you're gonna create the mindset that you can't carry a track alone.

Travie McCoy - Lazarus. I'm not sure why i thought i should listen to this, but i thought i'd be unbiased and try it anyway. I don't understand why he decided to make a solo album as i dont hear what unique identity brings to the table. Beyonce brings her all-round talent, Christina Aguilera and Anastacia bring their respective powerhouse voices. Rick Ross brings that larger-than-life persona, Eminem brings his craziness etc.

Trey Songz - Passion, Pain and Pleasure. Some artists like Monica make an album every 4 or 5 years. It's a large gap but it makes you want a new one by the time it rolls around. In Trey's case this album came out 18 months after the previous and it's just moresex music, which itself would be fine except he's not Tank and no Toni Braxton. There's nothing "sultry" about it.

[kraken613]

The Souljazz Orchestra- Rising Sun

This is an excellent modern feeling funk latin jazz. Just some awesome sound and I am a sucker for some great jazz music. The song Negus Negast is my favorite from the album just a blend of some sick sax and jazz flute solos. I have just been replaying that song over and over the past few days.

9/10

[kraken613]

Buke and Gass - Riposte

Just to give a reference of what this band is listen to this song:Page Break

"A Brooklyn-based duo, Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez play with customized homemade gear that includes heavy-duty amps, a "toe-bourine," a kick-drum with noisemakers and, of course, the modified baritone ukulele ("buke") and guitar-bass hybrid ("gass") that inspired their name."

This album is awesome, just such an interesting sound I have been listening to it none stop!!!

9.5/10

[EasyCure]

first-bump

Sooo... anyone heard of The Protomen?

The wikipedia link above will give you the full picture, but for those who don't care to read much: They're an indie band who put out two rock opera albums. The story? A bleaker version of a dystopian Megaman universe of course!


Act I (aka The Protomen): 10/10


Act II: The Father of Death: 9/10

Maybe I'm just caught up in the excitement to rate them so high.. or maybe I'm not? I actually listened to the second album  first THEN the first album. Coincidentally the second album is a precursor story to the first album so in a way it made sense. However, the second album has a higher production value (in fact they share Meatloaf's producer, so you know it's going to sound epic) so going backwards like this put the original album in a negative light, at least for the audiophile in me. It wasn't just the production though, the sound felt sloppier - a much more grungy feel which I couldn't find myself getting in to... until now.

With Act II there were some amazing, outstanding, tracks but overall while being a great rock opera, I eventually felt it felt short as a general album. In other words, it wasn't something you could pick up and listen to at random, and for the most part the album *only* works as an opera - if you don't sit and listen to the rest of the story, certain tracks won't have much of an impact.

However, with the first album: once I got into the feel of the record, and realized that the music reflects the environment being portrayed (bleak, chaotic, etc) and how much more epic the storyline was than Act II - I was blown away. Every single track is also a rocking fucking tune, so you can enjoy individual tracks for the music alone than for the story. That's what really pushed Act I over the top for me. I can honestly say I've been listening to at least one track from this album (probably on repeat) a day for the past few weeks. I can't believe how long it took me to give this one a shot!

Since I'm feeling generous, here are (in my opinion of course) some of the best tracks from the album (in reverse order so you can somewhat get an idea of how the storyline progresses):

Keep Quiet
Light up the Night

Unrest in the House of Light (w/neat animated video!
Vengeance**

Enjoy!

**In the off chance you're somewhere that you can't access the youtube links above, and/or are just curious about the lyrics, here's my favorite part from that last song. Ever envisioned an enraged, blood thirsty Megaman? You will now:

" Send your armies. There's no man or machine who can stop me,
and you'll soon see.I come for vengeance for the first Son of Light, and I'm ready, and I'm willing, and I'm prepared to...

Send me the best you've got. Send me your strongest machines.
The fight my brother fought, here, now, will end with me.

All you wounded, those of you who can, pick yourselves off the ground,
Hurry back, tell your leader you'll need more men."

I may or may not have already posted about this band in another music thread, however I couldn't find it and this album should really make a return to the forums, who doesn't like to be put on to new music??