Written by Mass (Hard Album Review)
A year full of pleasant surprises and grand albums is now past. But not all albums were of impressive quality. In fact, most fell somewhere in the middle of the huge heap of albums. There are, however, some that have hit the bottom and failed to be what they had intended to. The list provided here is of albums released in 2019 which had one of these two conditions: they were inherently weak, in terms of musical and vocal performance (but not production as many bands, especially underground ones or the ones who are active in less privileged countries, may not have access to state-of-the-art recording and mastering equipment) or they were much lower than I had expected and were a personal letdown.
I honestly never got the hype around this band. I know that they are already on many album of the year lists, but to me, they just lack that element of splendor. Surely they have a highly-praised media presence and they have been able to garner a huge fandom, still music-wise, I assume there is much room for progress.
I used to like this guy a lot. He has a voice I would kill to have, but the more I listen to his songs and the more albums he releases, the more I come to the conclusion that voice is all he’s got and his music fails to connect… at least these days.
One of favorite Power Metal bands is left without any power! It seems that they are stuck in a rut and deteriorating one step further with every album they release. They are leagues away from their 2000’s glory and in need of immediate reconsideration in their direction. They are falling way behind and that saddens me a great deal.
Of all the post-hardcore/metalcore works I listened to this year, this one was the worst. On the one hand, we had a mishmash for music with almost everything wrong from guitaring to drumming, melodies to riffs and all; and on the other hand, the vocals were some of the poorest a metal vocalist could deliver. Except for the artwork, the rest of the team belong here.
Oh boy! How I wished for this album to be on my other list and how much of a disappointment it was to me! After what Rammstein did on their Rammstein album (honestly it couldn’t get any blander with that ridiculously-minimal cover art and tasteless title) I had pretty high hopes for this album. Till Lindeman had previously established his pants-down sense of humor and his tongue-in-cheek lyrics on works of his main band and of course this personal side-project of his, but this album lacked reach. Skills in Pills was as much musically rich as it was fun, but F & M falls short of the mark as far as music is concerned. That’s why it has landed here.
For a band once dear to me for their touching melodies and symphonies and their strong lyricism, Within Temptation have fallen way too low into the pitfalls of pop metal and accessibility that they kill every living, loving cell of my body. What has happened to that gothic/symphonic edge they used to have in the 2000’s? Surely this is more of a retrogression, rather than progression.
Battle Beast is another example of Metal gone pop. I hold no personal grudges against being accessible and appealing to a wide variety of listeners, but that’s on the condition that this tendency does not overshadow the bands essence. What I mean is that when you define yourself as Heavy Metal, you need to prove that you have more than just a drum kit and some electric guitars; you must put on display your Metal nature (if you have it at all that is).
Choosing postrock as your medium of self-representation and self-expression is like walking on this ice towards mount Everest; it is immensely complicated and delicate, more often than not, those who attempt it fail and many fail miserably, but once you do get there, you are incomparable to any other band. These guys are an example of those bands which have failed shamefacedly in their very first steps. I mean postrock (impaired with avant-garde) couldn’t get any worse.
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