Favorite Songs of The Week: Aug 21 - 27

He Is by Ghost
Ghost is probably the most quirky band to have appeared in the metal scene in a while, with their unique blend of metal, 70s rock and Satanic lyrics. However, ridiculous this concoction may sound, it works amazingly well and the song He Is is the strongest proof of it. Like all Ghost songs, the track features some brilliantly layered instrumentation. The guitar melodies never fail to impress and the solo at the end is a highlight.

Alchemy by Mick Jenkins
Alchemy, the first song off the Waves EP, establishes Mick as a poet and not merely a rapper. The song is full of symbolisms, metaphors and clever lines like "creating this gold from the lead in my pencil, I think I'm an alchemist" which is sure to make it a favorite among rap fans and English teachers alike.

All That by Carly Rae Jepsen
All That is undoubtedly the most beautiful song ever recorded by Carly Rae Jepsen. The bass guitar slaps, and the piano and synth harmony clearly show a strong influence from Prince's early music (Controversy era), and I'm sure Prince too would be proud of this heart-wrenching ballad. The song's lyrics may sometimes seem a little cliche but the instrumentals and Carly's vocals do more than enough to make up for it.

High by Royal Headache
Royal Headache's new album, I feel, was the best of the week, each song being equally catchy, raw and energetic. The title track, however, stood out to me as the best written. The melody is catchy and Shogun's vocals are powerful.

Gimmie Love by Carly Rae Jepsen
Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotion, is packed with "catchy-as-hell" tracks from the beginning till the end, but Gimmie Love is easily the catchiest of them all. It is simply impossible for a pop song to go wrong when it has such an unforgettable chorus.  

Album Review: Royal Headache - High

With their debut album, Australian punk rock band Royal Headache, turned quite a lot of heads with their raw and gritty tunes. Listening to their music, you can vividly picture the band playing in a garage or a basement packed with wild rebellious teenagers head-banging and spilling beer over each other. It's been four years since their first album, and the band has had a lot of internal tensions, but they've finally released their second album High, and I love it.

From start to finish, the album is packed with raw energy. The loud and rough guitar chord progressions and strong vocals would even get a 90 year old grandma up on her feet, leaping about like a madwoman. And of course, since they are Royal Headache, all the ten songs on the album are relentlessly catchy. The title-track - High, in particular, refused to leave my head for quite some time. The drums and guitar make a hard hitting combination, sometimes with keyboards added in the mix, and the songwriting is quite strong, but what I feel really takes the center-stage are the vocals. There is both, passion and emotion, in Shogun's voice, really prominent on certain tracks, like Another Day and Love Her If I Tried.

The band has also diversified in terms of songwriting. Apart from the hard-rocking tunes, there are also some equally amazing slower ones (Wouldn't You Know, Carolina). The lyrics too show a little variety, although most of the album is based on love. On the opening track, My Own Fantasy, Shogun sings about how he used to fantasize about the fame and "tons of girls" which he thought came as a part of being in the rock scene, but now that he is in it, he realizes how different things are from his expectations. On the other hand, there is Garbage, built around a sick bass line, containing hilariously offensive lyrics like "You're not punk, you're just scum".

High is the kind of album that would make The Ramones and Sex Pistols, proud to see what has become of the genre that they so passionately created. I strongly recommend you give the album a listen.

Favorite songs: High, My Own Fantasy, Need You, Another Day

Rating: 8.5/10 

Quick Album Review: Burning Bridges By Bon Jovi

Burning Bridges is the thirteenth studio album by the 80s rock icons, Bon Jovi and their first record without guitarist Richie Sambora, a founding member. The album has been described by the band as a "fan album" and Burning Bridges is exactly that - "a fan album". It is a rehash of the band's old and tired commercial rock sound, only meant to please the band's loyal fans and justify their upcoming world tour, as admitted by Jon Bon Jovi himself.

Most of the album's songs are unfinished tracks reworked for release, some written during The Circle sessions, and they have nothing very exciting to offer. The ballad Blind Love, however is a standout track. Although, it has been done countless times before by the band with hits like Bed of Roses, the song charms you with it's tender lyrics and fragile melody. The guitar-heavy I'm Your Man, is another notable highlight. With the ending track, Burning Bridges, Bon Jovi announces the band's departure from Mercury Records, the label which they have been signed to for the past 30 years, with some pretty harsh lyrics. Jon sings in a raspy country voice over acoustic guitars, "Adieu, good night, guten abend/Here's one last song you can sell", "Hope my money and my masters/Buy a front row seat in hell". You just can't help giggling to it.

Burning Bridges, to me, is a decent album at best.

Favorite Songs: Blind Love, I'm Your Man

Rating: 6/10

Album Review: Emotion By Carly Rae Jepsen

I feel Carly Rae Jepsen is an underrated artist. Though her sugary pop hit "Call Me Maybe" ruled 2012, she has made equally good (and sometimes better) music which went largely unnoticed by the masses. Her previous album, Kiss, in particular, deserved a lot more attention than it received.

After three years of studio silence, Carly is back with Emotion, an 80s pop influenced collection of 12 songs handpicked out of the 250 songs Carly recorded for this project. She makes it quite clear, with her notoriously catchy hooks and charming lyrics that she is well ahead of most of her peers in the pop scene, and is also a very capable songwriter. The album features some talented guest artists such as Sia (in Boy Problems) and Rostam Batmanglij ( in Warm Blood) who have assisted Carly in songwriting, and their talent is put to good use.

The album draws you in, with Run Away With Me's saxophone intro, and refuses to let go up till the very end. It gives you one catchy chorus after another and often compels you to get up, wherever you are, and dance like you're out of your mind. The 80s pop sound is ever-present and literally gushes out, on certain songs like the slow and tender All That, which immediately brings to mind Prince's Do Me Baby, with it's occasional bass guitar slaps and synth and piano harmony. The Cyndi Lauper influence shines bright on Gimmie Love and a few Madonna-isms can be found too, like in Let's Get Lost. Gimmie Love is also one of the most smartly produced songs on the album. After creating an exciting build-up to the chorus, the production reduces itself to a simple electronic beat, letting the melody enthrall us to it's fullest. The album, overall, is pretty well produced, and never sounds "choked" like a lot pop music does these days. Carly's producers have made sure that her vocals remain the main target of attention and the production serves only as a tool to complement it.

The tremendous efforts put into making this record (the 250 demos), certainly haven't gone to waste, Emotion is definitely the best pop album of the year so far. The album remains insanely catchy from start to finish, and some songs surpass Call Me Maybe by a mile. The 80s throwback that Taylor Swift attempted with her commercial blockbuster 1989, has been done in a far more effortless and elegant way with Emotion. In the end, I would only like to say that I "really really really" like this album.

Favorite songs: All That, Gimmie Love, I Really Like You, Let's Get Lost

Rating: 8/10

Album Review: Ghost - Meliora

If you're an active member of the metal community, you must have certainly heard of the Swedish heavy metal group - Ghost. They are easily one of the most hyped bands to have come out of the metal scene in a long time and this hype is a result of both - their mysterious stage persona, and their uncanny music style.

Meliora is Ghost's third studio album and they are in top form. The band has notably polished and evolved the 70s-rock influenced metal sound that they brought to the scene with their amazing debut record, Opus Eponymous in 2010, with better songwriting and some brilliant instrumentation. The vocal and guitar melodies are catchier, and the intricate harmonies backing them are a testament to Ghost's ingenious musicianship. While the 70s rock scene still remains a major influence, Ghost's sound has slightly expanded and hints of progressive rock and thrash metal can be heard in their music. Another improvement I felt were the vocals, which sound sort of theatrical and fit perfectly well with Ghost's equally theatrical musical style.

The strongest highlight of Meliora is definitely the instrumental arrangements. Throughout the album, Ghost has made use of synths, pianos, acoustic guitars, choir vocals, harps and so much more to create a layered blend to complement their catchy melodies, yet none of the songs ever feel stuffed or congested. The tracks Cirice and He Is are prominent examples. Ghost also realizes that the tiniest of details can make significant differences like the ticking sound of a clock used in the last song, Deus In Absentia during the silence between the drum beats.  

I feel that with Meliora, the band has finally succeeded in painting a vivid image of the dark and blasphemous world which they tried to portray with their previous albums, but only remained a vague idea up till now. The lyrics and the hypnotic vocals in each song do more than enough to create an overall atmosphere of the album and bring Ghost's world of Satanic Popes and ghouls to life.

Meliora is a major leap forward for Ghost.

Favorite Songs: Cirice, He Is, Deus In Absentia, Majesty

My Rating: 8/10

Album Review: Rust In Peace by Megadeth

With 1986's thrash milestone Peace Sells... But Who's Buying, Megadeth had already developed a cult following and established themselves as one of the spearheads of the thrash movement. Surging with an unprecedented level of raw arrogance and a slight technical edge, the album had brought along huge set of possibilities to the genre. Since a record of such significance is usually a singularity in most bands' discographies, fans and critics were quick to form an opinion (further strengthened by the release of the fairly decent follow-up - So Far So Good So What) that Megadeth had created their untouchable classic. But only 4 years later, they would behold the magnum opus that would permanently enshrine Megadeth in the chronicles of heavy metal history - Rust in Peace.

Frequent changes in Megadeth's line-up have been a major reason for the band's constant evolution in sound, preventing the sonic stagnation faced by countless of their comrades over the years like Slayer. The line-up behind Rust in Peace included the newly-recruited ex-Cacophony guitarist Marty Friedman on lead guitar, and Nick Menza on drums. Continuing with the band for a decade, they would be the longest staying guitarist and drummer Megadeth ever had, and also the most popular.

Marty and Nick brought along the savage technicality that steered the band away from the jazz influence ex-members Chris Poland and Gar Samuelson were responsible for and defined Megadeth's style for the coming years. Nick knew the fiercest ways of complementing front-man Dave Mustaine's heavy thrash riffing while Marty, one of the rarest talents to have joined the group, was a genius at blending exotic melody with technical virtuosity.

Though Rust in Peace may be a thrash metal album at its core, it is layered and sprinkled with its own quirks and oddities. It also wouldn't be wrong to call it experimental. Staples of the thrash metal genre like power chords or gallops never really form a major part of Mustaine's guitar riffs, and are almost neglected on some tracks, like "Hangar 18" where a strummed chord-progression makes up the rhythm. Melody has been given a larger role to play than usual which adds a slight commercial appeal; but this doesn't stop the album from being the insanely technical composition it is. The songs are unconventionally structured with multiple sections, unexpected tempo shifts and changing time signatures - a height of complexity that had remained untouched by any preceding thrash metal record although Metallica's "And Justice For All" had come close.

 

"Peace Sells... But Who's Buying" had already proclaimed how proficient a songwriter Dave Mustaine could be. Rust in Peace, on the other hand, shows us a definitive transition from a naive young rocker to a mature musician hungry to create art that would be remembered and looked up on.

What truly takes the center-stage however, is the guitar work. Marty Friedman's distinctive style is made full use of and the solos on the album are some of the best solos in the band's vast discography, if not the best in the genre. "Hangar 18" sees Marty and Dave engaging in an intense guitar duel, monstrously shredding through some Middle-Eastern melodies, while the quirky "Tornado of Souls" solo, with its powerful bends and vibratos, is simply a jaw-dropper. Mustaine's intricately composed guitar riffs keep the album's raw energy flowing; though they're mostly fierce and intense, for which the album opener "Holy Wars... The Punishment Due" would be the best example, they can also be catchy like in "Lucretia" or "Poison Was the Cure".

Apart from all the instrumental sophistication, Megadeth has made sure to add enough straight-forward thrash material to keep the purists pleased. The fast and rough head-bangers "Take No Prisoners" and "Rust In Peace... Polaris" brim with explosive aggression and are as assertive as thrash metal can get.

 

Dave Mustaine's lyrical obsession with politics, corruption and warfare is also featured in all its glory. The mood is ominous, with the subject matter revolving around the idea of the world heading towards a nuclear waste. It must be noted that the album was written at a time when the Cold War hadn't yet ended and the threat of a nuclear conflict breaking out was as real as it could ever be. And so, passing Mustaine off as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, as many people to tend to, wouldn't be justified.

Rust in Peace, along with Metallica's Master of Puppets and Slayer's Reign in Blood, stands as one of the most defining achievements in thrash metal, opening the genre's gates to versatility and broadening its expanse. Over the years, the album would become a standard-setter for 90s thrash metal bands, and also Megadeth's finest hour till date.

Favorite Tracks: Hangar 18, Tornado of Souls, Holy Wars

10/10