Today is Advent Sunday. I will use this as an excuse to post a song by the best band on the planet.
You're welcome.
Besides, I feel the word needs to be spread about Opeth. Not enough people are blogging about them. Just look here over the almighty blog aggregator The Hype Machine. When you search for "Opeth", you find that the top 20 (!) hits are from my blogs alone. Unacceptable.
There's an awful lot of Vampire Weekend around these days but very little Opeth. This will not do. Do you have a blog? Then blog some Opeth for fuck's sake.
I would hereby like to name this record one of the top 3 most retarded metal albums of the 90s.
Max Cavalera left Sepultura after 1996's Roots, an album Sepultura fans have a heated love/hate relationship with. Some love it (like me), others can't stand it. In the mid 90's nu metal was the shit and on Roots Max made sure that Sepultura used the same studio, the same equipment, the same producers and the same engineers as Korn. Fuck the thrash of old, it was time to tune down until the guitar strings flopped around like wet spaghetti.
After leaving he brought the bouncy rumbles of nu metal with him, alongside the expanded element of experimentation that had been prevalent on Roots. On Soulfly, the eponymous debut album of this new solo project disguised as a band, he kicked open up the floodgates and let all hell break loose. The whole album is like one giant jam session with Max and whatever friends happened to drop by. Producer Ross Robinson has even admitted in interviews that Cavalera had no finished material going into the studio, just a bunch of riffs that were made into songs as they went along.
Imagine Roots with each individual ingredient amplified, and Soulfly is what you get. About a third of the album is fairly traditional metal/nu metal of the Sepultura kind, but the rest is so fucked up and ridiculous it's amazing more people haven't pointed it out. Strange influences that you wouldn't expect (nor should you, as they make no sense) come shooting at you from every direction, there's always something peculiar just around the corner.
The weird thing is that Cavalera has done metal mixed with South American tribal music for so long now that it almost feels like this combination makes perfect sense. But it doesn't - it's fucking stupid. And yet somehow very awesome. It wouldn't be far off to dub this the The Shape Of Punk To Come of nu metal. Not in terms of quality, but undoubtedly in terms of diversity.
It's as though Max felt freed from the restrictions of Sepultura and just decided, not unlike a kid let loose in a candy store, to go nuts and grab every last little thing he could reach. All kinds of stuff thrown together with little to no regard as to whether they fit together or not. And somewhere in that total madness and complete lack of thinking lies the greatness of this album.
Traditional Brazilian percussion is all over the place, there are songs (or at least parts of songs) sung in Portoguese, there are covers of football anthems, hiphop beats and Fred Durst (of all people) show up out of nowhere, Chino from Deftones appears with some sort of ghost-like throat singing, Benji of Skindred (then the singer of Dub War) guests on two tracks laying down some sweet riddims, there are two mellow instrumental tracks, two songs are produced by the Beastie Boys' knob-fiddler Mario Caldato Jr., The Song Remains The Same is actually three songs in one - firstly a cover of Ratos de Porão's Caos, then a sped-up version of Sepultura's Attitude, and then finally The Song Remains The Same. Three members of Fear Factory stopped by the studio - Christian plays distorted acoustic bass (?), Dino lays down some guitar and Burton shows up to sing exacly two words ("for" and "an").
I could go on but I shant, as the list in nigh endless. This album is the metal equivalent of a retard shuffling down the street wearing his helmet eating ice cream with one hand and a hot dog with the other. They're both good so together they must be twice as yummy, right?
Soulfly would have their occasional moments on subsequent records, but while the wackyness did continue on latter releases it never sounded as off the cuff and spontaneous as this. Their other albums felt too contrived and though-out in their eccentricity, this one feels like it just sort of happened, without much thought as to what the end result might be.
But for this one brief, shining moment Soulfly were the most anarchic and absurd mainstream metal band on the planet.
I've done the world a favor and re-uploaded all of the Friday MP3 Shuffles for your listening pleasure.
Whether you want the now classic Volume 1, the classic rock of Volume 4 (still the best one yet), the back-breaking brutality of Volume 7, the noisy shenanigans of Volume 10, the swine flu tribute of Volume 11, the post-metal metal of Volume 12, the fierce onslaught of Volume 14, the upbeat Volume 17 or any of the other masterpieces I've provided this year, go on and download away. You'll them all here or by clicking the tag in the column to the left.
And of course download this week's installment too - it's short, sweet and mindblowing.
Some were disappointed this one wasn't on my countdown of the top 30 albums of the 90s, and to be honest I feel a little bad about that. In hindsight it should've probably been on the list.
An excellent album, a landmark in many ways and the album that put Trent Reznor on the map once and for all. There's nothing to say about it that hasn't already been said - it's been a part of modern rock lore since the day it came out.
You know, recorded in the house where Charles Manson's minions slaughtered five people in 1969 and all that. A disturbing masterpiece which grabbed the coattails of grunge's self-hating introversion and pushed it to its most absurd extreme. If you want to slit your wrists, this would be a likely soundtrack.
From the opening samples of a man being whipped (from George Lucas's THX 1138), via the drumming melee of Piggy, the appropriately titled Heresy (which in less than four minutes accomplishes everything that Marilyn Manson has spent 20 years trying to get across and failing miserably at it), the unlikely hits March of the Pigs and Closer, the serene A Warm Place, all the way up to the legendary end song Hurt, this album is at once an intellectual and visceral experience unlike any other.
Anyway, the reason I'm writing this is just an excuse to post these vids of the band surprising the audience by playing the album in its entirety in New York on August 23rd of this year. This was completely unannounced and by the second and third song you can hear people going "OMG! They're doing the whole album!", and at one point someone concludes "It's like I've died and gone to hell".
An almost orgasmic experience. Definitely one of those "I will forever loathe myself for not being there" type moments:
I posted a Black Sabbath cover by Neurosis last week which got me into a big Sabbath covers trip. I thought I'd might as well compile them and share them with you fine and dandy lot.
These are taken from the two Nativity In Black tributes and a variety of other places. Have fun.
1. Throne of Azaz - Black sabbath
2. Machine Head - Hole in the sky
3. System of a Down - Snowblind
4. Kyuss - Into the void
5. Coalesce - Supernaut
7. Entombed - Under the sun
8. Daemon - Symptom of the universe
9. Cathedral - Solitude
10. Pantera - Planet caravan
11. Slayer - Hand of doom
12. Metallica - Sabbra cadabra
13. The Hellacopters - Dirty women
14. The Fartz - Children of the grave
15. Faith No More - War pigs
1. Entombed - Left hand path (1990) 2. At The Gates - Slaughter of the soul (1995) 3. Nasum - Inhale/exhale (1998) 4. Soundgarden - Superunknown (1994) 5. Disrupt - Unrest (1994) 6. Slayer - Seasons in the abyss (1990) 7. The Stooges - Fun house (1970) 8. Monster Magnet - Powertrip (1998) 9. Metallica - Ride the lightning (1984) 10. Judas Priest - Rocka rolla (1974) 11. Iron Maiden - Killers (1981) 12. Ebba Grön - We're only in it for the drugs (no. 2) (1978)
Last week Metallica's Sad But True became the first file in this blog's two year existence to hit a thousand downloads. And this in only a few months, since it was first featured in this post.
As of this very moment Sad But True has been downloaded exactly 1086 times. No reason to stop there, here it is again. Let's make it two thousand!
Blabbervagina reports that some hack named Tom Sanford will auction off his "controversal" painting (see above) of Dimebag Darrel's assassination. It is expected to fetch anything from £500 to £700.
The painting is just as controversal as the attention-starved Sanford intended, but for very different reasons. It's not the subject matter that bothers us, sweetheart. It's the fact that you're a worse painter than a rabid raccoon running around on a canvas with a paintbrush up its ass. That thing is so bad it wouldn't even have made it onto a thrash metal album cover in 1988.
Sanford says he was "able to base [his] painting on the oral reports from witnesses of the four murders as well as Nathan Gale's eventual death." Apparently the audience's reactions to the murder was not so much shock and disbelief, but more like someone farted. Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas (bottom right), who I had no idea even attended the gig, looks more like someone just reminded her of the time she peed her pants on stage.
It also seems Nathan Gale looked like Lloyd Christmas with his shirt tucked into his jeans Jerry Seinfeld style, and Geddy Lee was so busy handing out View-Masters by the side of the stage he barely took notice of the murderings and shenanigans.
Here look, it took me precisely three minutes to make a better one:
I'm not as greedy as Sanford, so you can have it for only £400.
After 2005's wildly uneven The Warrior's Code (see yesterday's entry), Dropkick Murphys showed once and for all what a force they can be if they only focus their energies in the right direction. With fantabulous The Meanest Of Times they released their best album since 2001's Sing Loud Sing Proud.
While this album may contain a rendition of the classics Lanigan's Ball (here called (F)lannigan's Ball) and Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya, this their least Celtic sounding record since 1999's The Gang's All Here. There's still plenty of bagpipes, tin whistles, accordions, mandolins and god knows what, but musically I see this a combination of the straight-forward punk rock of The Gang's All Here with the more settled classic rock sound of 2003's Blackout. A lot of the Lucky Charms leprechaun flavor they'd sometimes had in the past is missing here, and I'd even say that this is the album that more than any of the others harkens back to their 1998 debut Do Or Die.
That's one of my favorite things about this album - just when you thought they'd run with the success they had with I'm Shipping Up To Boston and put out another record of easily jiggable (is that a word?) Irish rock, they revert and go back to their brawling Guinness soaked rock roots, chock full of pirate singalongs and shamrock badassery. Feelgood anthems with fists pumping, spirits are high and revolution is in the air.
I really can't praise this album enough, hands down one of the best records of the 2007. Why I didn't include it in my countdown of the best albums of that year is a mystery.
In this the penultimate day of Dropkick Murphys Week we've come to my least favorite album of theirs.
I took me quite a while to come to terms with this fact and it caused a great deal of hurt because the album paradoxally also contains my all time favorite Murphys songs. The three songs below are absolutely fantastic and as damn near flawless as any song could be. The Auld Triangle, a re-working of an old traditional, is so good it's almost hard to believe your ears. Same with the opener Your Spirit's Alive, written about their friend Greg Riley.
Other songs like Citizen C.I.A. and The Walking Dead are also great, but while the high points are staggeringly good they only make it more obvious how weak the low points are.
Captain Kelly's Kitchen probably looked like a fun idea on paper but in practice it's only silly and annoying. Wicked Sensitive Crew might be funny upon first listen, but is ultimately little more than a novelty. I'm Shipping Up To Boston, another Woody Guthrie piece set to music, gave the band a long overdue exposure thanks to its inclusion in Martin Scorcese's The Departed, but it's hardly much of a song. And don't get me started on the terrible Sunshine Highway, a cheery piece of rubbish somewhere halfway between Bruce Springsteen's least inspired moments and Blink 182.
Take It And Run and the title track aren't bad, just pretty uninteresting, they go in one ear and out the other. The Eric Bogle cover The Green Fields Of France, about a soldier in WWI, is too overly dramatic to take seriously. The final track Last Letter Home, about a soldier in the Iraq war, fares much better.
So yes, it does pain me to admit that one of my favorite bands could release such dull record. It is however arguably their most popular one, thanks to I'm Shipping Up To Boston. Many people discovered Dropkick Murphys because of that song, and they hold The Warrior's Code as their favorite as it was their first acquaintance with the band. Let's just hope these new fans don't stop there but instead keep digging deeper into the Murphys catalogue to find the really good stuff.
But let's not be a negative Nancy. As I said, the album does still contain some of the band's career best moments. Crank it up and jig until the sun comes up.
On this day, the 5th of Dropkick Murphys Week, we've arrived at what is possibly my favorite DM record. Which feels a bit unfair since 18 of its 23 tracks are covers. Of the five original tracks, the only ones I get nuts about are the fast-paced On The Attack and Mob Mentality, a collaboration with oi! legends The Business.
The covers are what really make this compilation worthwhile. The Murphys pay tribute to their heroes in a raging and most entertaining way. Once you take a gander at the bands covered here (The Press, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Iron Cross, Cock Sparrer, The Nipple Erectors, AC/DC, The F.U.'s, Gang Green, Stiff Little Fingers, The Business, Motorhead, Sham 69, Angelic Upstarts and Misfits) you begin to understand where the Dropkick Murphys come from musically. They really do sound like the best parts of all these bands.
On Blackout the band kept moving towards the more classic rock sound that had become more prominent on 2001's Sing Loud Sing Proud (see Tuesday's entry) and really ran with the whole traditional Irish music influences which at some points makes the album feel more like it belongs in the "world music" section of the record store, as opposed the "punk rock" one. Whereas in the past the Murphys had sounded like The Dubliners mixed with Gang Green and The Business, here they sounded like The Dubliners mixed The Rolling Stones, Thin Lizzy and The Clash.
I've been a bit dubious over this album since it first came out. The main reason being that I feel bass player Ken Casey takes the mic way too often. If you have such a perfect singer and frontman like Al Barr, why have someone else sing?
This was also the first time I'd heard a Dropkick Murphys song I didn't like - both third track The Outcast (sung by Casey) and the opener Walk Away sounded a bit washed out and dull to me, and they still do. I think this rather (to me ears anyway) weak opening had tarnished the album for me for quite some time. It was only a year or so ago I realised just what a brilliant album this is. And I've even grown to like Ken Casey singing.
The Ed Pickford cover Worker's Song is a personal favorite of mine, the acoustic World Full Of Hate is another and The Dirty Glass, on which Stephanie Dougherty supplied some excellent guest vocals, is a classic. Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight features lyrics for an unplublished song by Woody Guthrie, which caused quite a bit of publicity when the album came out. Prior to this only Billy Bragg and a couple of others had been given the privilage to use Guthrie's words.
While I may have accepted Blackout for the great record that it is, I must say I don't care for the bagpipes on it. The album was recorded after Spicey McHaggis left but before current bagpiper Scruffy Wallace had been recruited, so the pipes were handled by Joe Delaney who also provided some pipe action on 1999's The Gang's All Here.
Is it just me or do the pipes sound quite out of tune? I'm sure Delaney is a fine piper, but he ain't no Wallace or McHaggis, that's for sure.
The liner notes say "Dropkick Murphys don't give concerts - they throw parties" and ain't that the truth. I don't really have much to add to that, it sums it all up. You'd be hard pressed to find a Murphys gig where the audience is as important as the people on the stage. Half the time the audience is on the stage, but still.
Dropkick Murphys St. Patrick's Day shows is the stuff of legend in Boston, where the band annually spends an entire weekend performing. That seamless blend of band and audience is most definitely felt on Live on St. Patrick's Day from Boston, MA, which was recorded during three explosive shows at the Avalon Ballroom in 2002. This live recording was also included in their dvd On The Road With The Dropkick Murphys in 2004.
Singalongs and crowd interaction are a given in pretty much every song. Curse Of A Fallen Soul (from 1999's The Gang's All Here) gives me chills every time I hear it.
Buy Live on St. Patrick's Day from Boston, MA @ Amazon.com.
Buy On The Road With The Dropkick Murphys too while you're at it. Right here.
On this their third album, Boston's sort-of-Irish folk rock punk dudes changed their line up quite a bit.
Original guitarist and founding member Rick Barton took a hike, and was replaced by not only a new guitarist, but two of them. They also added a dude on tin whistle & mandolin and stuff, as well as the legendary Robbie "Spicey McHaggis" Medeiros on bagpipes. This was the only album that featured McHaggis and he was only a member for a couple of years before leaving to spend more time with his family, but his impact (and his bodymass) was so huge that his spirit still lives on within the band to such a degree that some even think he's still in the band. The fact that this album has a song (The Spicy McHaggis Jig, a big live favorite among fans) written about McHaggis and his penchant for "chicks over four hundred pounds" probably has plenty to do with it.
The addition of then 17-year old Marc Orrell, appropriately nicknamed "The Kid", was a huge improvement in my opinion. Not only did he have classic rock licks to spare, but he had an effortless, fluid playing style that Barton lacked and which suited Dropkick Murphys' ever-evolving sound as they grew into more of a Celtic rock band with punk flourishes as opposed to a Celtic punk band with rock flourishes. He was also a fucking firecracker on stage and made their already mad live show even more energetic. Orrell left the band in 2008 to pursue other musical horizons.
The result of all these changes in camp Murphy? Their magnum opus, that's what. People always tend to think the follow up, 2003's Blackout, is the best Dropkick Murphys album. Those people are drunk. Don't pay any attention to them.
While Blackout is a most excellent album, this is the one where everything clicked; this album has the best songs, the best production, the best party atmosphere, the best shout-along choruses, the best of everything. On the albums before and after this one the combination punk rock vs. Irish folk music has always tipped over in either direction. Not so here, the two styles mix perfectly.
This album rules, I cannot praise it enough. It's the kind of album that makes you wish you were Irish. Or at least from Boston.
Or at least have any sort of Celtic affiliation so you wouldn't feel like such a tool when you stumble around in a scally cap on St. Patrick's Day with green beer on your shirt.
Welcome to Dropkick Murphys week! Woohoo! I'll be going through one Murphys record a day for the next seven days. I already wrote about their 1998 debut Do Or Die during the countdown of the top 30 albums of the 90s (where it ranked #23), so we'll skip that one and leave room for others.
Their second album The Gang's All Here came out in 1999 on Hellcat Records and was produced Rancid guitarist Lars Fredriksson who also produced their debut. It's the only album the band did with both singer Al Barr (formerly of The Bruisers) and guitarist Rick Barton in the line-up.
Barr had joined in 1998 after original vocalist Mike McColgan left to pursue a career as a firefighter, and Barton left prior to the follow-up 2001's Sing Loud Sing Proud, which we'll get to tomorrow.
To me there are two phases in the Dropkick Murphys timeline, the first from 1996 to 2000, the other from 2000 to today. Early Murphys was a bit harsher, no doubt thanks to McCoglan rough vocals. Songwriting wise they were also distinctly more punk, while still having leanings towards Stiff Little Fingers, Thin Lizzy, The Pogues etc, influences that would come into full fruition on Sing Loud Sing Proud, where the band hit full leprechuan mode with jigs, The Wild Rover, The Rocky Road To Dublin and the whole bit.
This album is the transition piece between these two phases, where the songwriting is still mainly rooted in punk (plenty of Celtic influences though, make no mistake) but with a more powerful and well-produced Rancid-like sound that in many ways they still use.
While I think all Dropkick Murphys albums are great in their own way, this is one of my favorites. Mainly because it was my first acquaintance with the band, but because the aforementioned evenly balanced mix of hardcore punk and the Celtic sounds of their heritage. I also think this is where Al Barr and his drunken sailor vocals were at their best.
Tonight's the night - Fedor Emelianenko vs. Brett Rogers at Hoffman Estates in Illinois. If you're in the U.S., watch it on CBS. If you're somewhere else, watch it online at Omnisport.
And I strongly encourage you to do so. You wouldn't want to miss Fedor beating the snot out another helpless hopeful, do you?
Yeah yeah yeah, I know Rogers has won all of his ten professional fights (five knockouts, four technical knockouts) and has been called a "knockout machine", but that won't help much when he's on the floor with Fedor figuratively (and perhaps literally, who knows?) buttfucking him all the way back to Minnesota.
The most badass thing about Fedor is not even his unmatched skills, but his complete indifference in the ring. He's like a plumber with a pipe to fix, it's just another day at work for him. You know the scene in Silence Of The Lambs where they talk about how Hannibal Lecter chewed someone's face off and his heartrate didn't even go up? That's Fedor for you.
Zamišljen je kao konceptualni album, a tema pjesama je uništavanje zemljinog okoliša, te potreba čovječanstva da to zaustavi prije nego što bude prekasno. Za pjesmu "Metal Bastard" je snimljen i videospot kojeg je režirao David Snusgrop, Badass Blogger Extraordinaire.
1. Venom - The evil one (1997) 2. Motörhead - Live to win (1980) 3. Moistboyz - Great American zero (2002) 4. Poison Idea - Welcome to Krell (1990) 5. Voivod - Insect (1995) 6. Fu Manchu - Evil eye (1997) 7. Gojira - From the sky (2005) 8. Arch Enemy - The immortal (1999) 9. Corrosion of Conformity - Fuel (1996) 10. High on Fire - Return to N.O.D. (2007)
Ah yes! One more rarity from the vaults! Yet another criminally overlooked and sadly forgotten metal gem, just waiting for Metal Bastard to spread the word to the rest of mankind. You're welcome, world. You may thank me later.
Daemon was a death metal side project started by guitarist/vocalist Anders Lundemark (Konkhra) and drummer Nicke Andersson (Entombed, The Hellacopters, Death Breath). Their first album Seven Deadly Sins came out a year after the movie Se7en, and is obviously inspired by it, with one song for each sin (and an instrumental "Eighth Sin").
The album even ends with a sample of Morgan Freeman listing the seven deadly sins. It also has assloads of samples from that crap movie The Name Of The Rose (which would have been less crap if that talentless block of wood Christian Slater hadn't been in it). And also a little thing or two from Pulp Fiction.
The album was written and recorded in virtually no time at all in Stockholm's Sunlight Studios. The relaxed sessions combined with the noisy, trademark Sunlight sound gives the album a very loose, almost punkish quality, familiar to all fans of the Stockholm death metal scene of the 90s. This ain't Nile or Vader, folks. Those looking for technical precision death metal need to look elsewhere.
This is death metal of the old school, with all that that entails in terms of rawness, aggression and attitude. With, of course, a few flourishes of that signature, hellraising rock 'n' roll groove of Entombed. The album was made during Entombed's struggles with record labels and fits just right inbetween 1993's Wolverine Blues and 1997's To Ride, Shoot Straight, And Speak The Truth. Take the song writing from the former and mix it with the sound and production of the latter and what you get is Seven Deadly Sins.
My favorite song here is probably Envy, with its classic first verse: I’ve built around me a castle of dreams/What I have is what you want/I bought a gun to protect my property/I pull to kill on every occasion/So in court when they charge me, I say/“Judge, it was only for protection”.
After this album Nicke Andersson left due all his other commitments, and Daemon released their second album The Second Coming in 1999. In 2002 they released their latest (last?) album, Eye For An Eye, which isn't very death metal. It's a lot thrashier with a definite Bay Area tinge, and also quite often reminds you of Strapping Young Lad. But Gene Hoglan played drums on it, so I suppose it makes sense.
So folks: you get no less than three mortal sins. Buy the album and get the other five. Buy it today, or else God wins. And we wouldn't want that, would we?
So it has arrived, the second installment in Devin Townsend's series of four albums. After Ki, which by Devin standards was so mellow it took me three or four listens before I even knew what the hell I was listening to, he's now back to familiar, compressed wall of noise territory. Anyone who thought Death Magnetic was loud should stay away from this one. The red lights on Townsend's poor mixing desk must be worn out by now.
Devin claimed this was his "Nickleback" record. Luckily he was't referring to Nickleback's music but rather their well-produced, radio-friendly sound. Thank fuck for that. I'm not hearing much of that either though to be honest, it sounds more like 1997's Ocean Machine (his "Foo Fighters record") and 2001's Terria (his "Helloween record"). I never thought Townsend would make a positive, happy sounding record, but I guess I was wrong.
Just like Ki, this one also has a female guest vocalist, by none other than Anneke van Giersbergen from The Gathering.
The opening title track was released as a teaser and I wasn't crazy about it then and still not too fond of it. It has a nice stomping beat, but I don't feel it's going anywhere. Second track Universe In A Ball! is as silly as its title, but from the third track onwards it's some of Townsend's best work in some time.
With Bend It Like Bender!'s disco beat, keyboard noodling and female vocals, it's hard not to think of Pandora and 2 Unlimited, but somehow it works. I'm not the kind who dances voluntarily (at least not where anyone can see me) but if I was at a club and it came on, it's not unlikely that I would drop 'em like they're hot til the sun came up.
Numbered! (yes, all song titles have exclamation points) is another scorcher with its huge soaring choruses and powerful climax. It also gives Townsend another chance to prove he could easily become an acclaimed opera soprano if he ever gets sick of metal. Ih-Ah! is the only song on here with the potential to become a hit on the rock station. It sure hope it does, if for no other reason than to hear all those annoying radio hosts sound like donkeys when they say the title.
The pinnacle here though for me is track #5, Hyperdrive!. A re-write of the song of the same name from Ziltoid the Omniscient (2007), which with van Giersbergen's vocals becomes so unashamedly melodic and huge that Kylie Minogue could have a world wide hit with a less noisy version. When that chorus kicks in after only 40 seconds I curl up in a fetal position on the floor and weep sweet tears of happiness.
I'm taken right back to 2000 when I first heard The Gathering's masterful if_then_else and immediately fell in love with that stunning voice. Picture that album mixed with Ocean Machine. Hyperdrive! is that fucking huge and amazing. It makes me want to run around the neighbourhood and kiss everyone and never listen to another song again.
It's also a reminder that enormous, bombastic rock is what van Giersbergen should be doing, not the bland shenanigans she's up to in Agua de Annique. Addicted and Giant Squid's The Ichthyologist show that perhaps doing guest vocals suits her the best.
As much as I (eventually) loved Ki, it does tend to drag - it has a few songs too many and several songs are too long. Not so here, Addicted clocks in at a handy 47 minutes and most songs are around the four minute mark.
Easily one of the best albums of the year, a solid 8/10. It comes out November 17th. Place an orderright now.
And buy Ki too while you're at it, and start saving up for Deconstruction.
