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The Mick and Segue Music Commentary Thread


Lorraine
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The Mac are Special to me too. since i was 12 and saw the Dance.

 

Which they'd get off their old asses and record.

 

i mean Chris is back. COME ON.

 

Mick

 

Christine and Lindsays voices melt like buttah. Think About Me. I mean c'mon!!!

 

But, aren't you glad they haven't written anything new? Usually these late collaborations are disasters. Do you want Genesis to write a new album? What about Bon Jovi? Get real man!!! ;)

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The Mac are Special to me too. since i was 12 and saw the Dance.

 

Which they'd get off their old asses and record.

 

i mean Chris is back. COME ON.

 

Mick

 

Christine and Lindsays voices melt like buttah. Think About Me. I mean c'mon!!!

 

But, aren't you glad they haven't written anything new? Usually these late collaborations are disasters. Do you want Genesis to write a new album? What about Bon Jovi? Get real man!!! ;)

 

part of me Wants a new record. but.......i see your point.

 

Chris's last solo album was a bore and Lindsey's' was hit and miss so together. they could be less then thrilling, lol

 

 

Mick

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The Mac are Special to me too. since i was 12 and saw the Dance.

 

Which they'd get off their old asses and record.

 

i mean Chris is back. COME ON.

 

Mick

 

Christine and Lindsays voices melt like buttah. Think About Me. I mean c'mon!!!

 

But, aren't you glad they haven't written anything new? Usually these late collaborations are disasters. Do you want Genesis to write a new album? What about Bon Jovi? Get real man!!! ;)

 

part of me Wants a new record. but.......i see your point.

 

Chris's last solo album was a bore and Lindsey's' was hit and miss so together. they could be less then thrilling, lol

 

 

Mick

 

I want one anyway...it's nice to see them active!

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I ordered the tusk and Rumours Remasters. but i also got digital copies. i know i'm gonna go broke, lol.

 

i'm playing Tusk. These remasters are so full and warm. i'm hearing certain instruments more then i used to.

 

They must complete these sets now

 

Tango, Mac 75.

 

Behind the Mask even.

 

Mick

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I ordered the tusk and Rumours Remasters. but i also got digital copies. i know i'm gonna go broke, lol.

 

i'm playing Tusk. These remasters are so full and warm. i'm hearing certain instruments more then i used to.

 

They must complete these sets now

 

Tango, Mac 75.

 

Behind the Mask even.

 

Mick

 

Now I love Behind The Mask and Time, but not sure I care too much about extra stuff...

 

 

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My current rankings of Sonata Arctica's albums:

 

1. Reckoning Night

2. Unia

3. The Days Of Grays

4. Winterhearts Guild

5. Silence

6. Ecliptica

7. The Ninth Hour

8. Pariah's Child

9. Stones Grow Her Name

 

I LOVE THEM ALL!

 

Top five songs:

 

1. White Pearl, Black Oceans

2. Zeroes

3. Breathe

4. Replica

5. Love

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I also really like White Oceans, Black Pearl pt. 2

 

The Ninth Hour is a really great album!

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So...the Takaltavi EP...

 

Sort of regret buying it...I didn't really enjoy any of it, not even their own songs.

 

Never mind...it's just an EP.

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So...the Takaltavi EP...

 

Sort of regret buying it...I didn't really enjoy any of it, not even their own songs.

 

Never mind...it's just an EP.

 

Unless the material on it is must hear, I usually don't bother buying EPs.

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So...the Takaltavi EP...

 

Sort of regret buying it...I didn't really enjoy any of it, not even their own songs.

 

Never mind...it's just an EP.

 

Unless the material on it is must hear, I usually don't bother buying EPs.

 

It just has missing stuff.

 

I find all my favourite bands have amazing b-sides and bonus tracks. SA are no different. Just this EP did nothing for me.

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Well... It saddens me to say, but I don't like this new album. It'd make a fantastic EP, but as an album it falls short.

 

3/5, Sonata's worst :|

 

I've listened through it in full an exact dozen times, and now I've decided I'm only going to listen to the six songs from it which I like.

 

Here's to hoping it'll grow on me in time, but I've honestly never had this negative of a reaction to any new sonata album before. I never straight up disliked half of the songs on an album, not even on first listen.

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Well... It saddens me to say, but I don't like this new album. It'd make a fantastic EP, but as an album it falls short.

 

3/5, Sonata's worst :|

 

I've listened through it in full an exact dozen times, and now I've decided I'm only going to listen to the six songs from it which I like.

 

Here's to hoping it'll grow on me in time, but I've honestly never had this negative of a reaction to any new sonata album before. I never straight up disliked half of the songs on an album, not even on first listen.

 

Oh no!

 

It's really pleased me! Like...it hasn't knocked me back with its amazing freshness but I truly enjoy every track but the last!

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At the end of the day we did get two songs which are among Sonata's absolute best (Closer to An Animal and Rise A Night), but we get 2+ of those on every album ;)

 

For me, Closer To An Animal, Life, We Are What We Are, Rise A Night, Fly Navigate Communicate and Among The Shooting Stars are all terrific!

 

I've gone off WOBP2 a bit...I just think it's unnecessary and it's obvious the magic of the first song cannot be repeated easily. And Closure To An Animal is really bad...like...it sounds unfinished and it just ends the album in a really anti-climactic, boring way.

 

The album has left me wanting a bit more than I realised but I actually enjoy the entire record straight through until that last track. And it's getting better for the most part!

 

But I could see it settled last in my album rankings. Make no mistake, I already place it bottom three, but I am 100% convinced Stones and PC are much better albums.

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At the end of the day we did get two songs which are among Sonata's absolute best (Closer to An Animal and Rise A Night), but we get 2+ of those on every album ;)

 

For me, Closer To An Animal, Life, We Are What We Are, Rise A Night, Fly Navigate Communicate and Among The Shooting Stars are all terrific!

 

I've gone off WOBP2 a bit...I just think it's unnecessary and it's obvious the magic of the first song cannot be repeated easily. And Closure To An Animal is really bad...like...it sounds unfinished and it just ends the album in a really anti-climactic, boring way.

 

The album has left me wanting a bit more than I realised but I actually enjoy the entire record straight through until that last track. And it's getting better for the most part!

 

But I could see it settled last in my album rankings. Make no mistake, I already place it bottom three, but I am 100% convinced Stones and PC are much better albums.

 

4 of your 6 favorites are among the 6 that I'll be listening to exclusively for the next few months -- my own favorites. Treating this album as a custom EP is working well for me, soon enough I think I'll be able to just focus on what I like and actually have a pleasurable experience rather than a disappointing one.

 

Closer To An Animal, Rise A Night, Life, Fly Navigate Communicate, Till Death's Done Us Apart, and Candle Lights are the ones that get my ear.

 

I recall you saying something like "I know you hate Love, but I love it!" -- I don't hate love, I just don't really like it much and never listen to it. Fairytale and We Are What We Are on the other hand... These songs I can say I hate. It's good that you like We Are What We Are if you plan on seeming them on this tour though, they're probably playing it on every show and they also have been using part of the studio recording of the track before the opening song.

 

As for WPBO2, I could write a good couple paragraphs about my thoughts on that one... In essence, if it didn't try so hard to be an "epic" track (this endeavor lead the song to sounding generically epic for the most part) and if it didn't ride on the coattails of WPBO1.. It could have worked. As it stands, there's some decent melodies, but there's too much fluff. It's something that I can imagine working if revised. The chorus at 2:46 in particular is very strong, it just needs a better song to reside in. A huge fault of this song is the fact that they repeat the white pearl black oceans (1) melody on strings, all while the new WPBO2 content is going... That's not only lazy songwriting and a lazy way of saying "See! It's WPBO part 2!", but whenever I listen to that bit I just think to myself, "this does the first part no justice whatsoever.. All this is making me want to do is listen to the original song".

Sheesh.

 

Oh and another thing.. I could tell from the song preview videos that the band themselves don't really favor WPBO2 -- aside from Tony, that is. Henkka didn't say anything about it other than, "well, I just played some piano on it. it was an easy song to record because Tony just had an orchestra do all the work".. He didn't say anything positive or very descriptive of the track like he did with all the other songs. Pasi said "wow. yeah. white pearl black oceans part 2... epic song." but he earlier made clear that his favorite songs of the album were Closer To An Animal and Among the Shooting Stars... AND his favorite song from Pariah's Child is Larger Than Life, the last album's epic... So the signs are all there when it comes to Pasi, the second I found out that WPBO2 wasn't among his favorites from the album I knew to lower my expectations even more surrounding the sequel.

Edited by Mr. Not
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Someone remastered The Ninth Hour. I don't have much of a problem with Pasi's mixing, but I realize many others do. With that in mind, I do like this mix better than the actual.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aejFdmgEXD0

And...it's taken down. Damn, wish I could've listened to it before it happened.

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Okay, considering how I view Not and Segue to be the two biggest Sonata fans here (with me at a distant, third wheeling third), I want to get my thoughts on The Ninth Hour expressed before I forget. I think now's a time to finally weigh in on the album w/o being as emotionally influenced by my opinion as I tend to be with my concert reviews.

 

Yeah, when I gave the album a listen the first time...I said I liked it but quite honestly, I couldn't remember more than half the songs. That's nothing unusual as it happens with at least 1/4 of songs on nearly every "new" album I listen to. Sadly, the second time, fared no better and I could only remember the songs that I liked upon first listen. In that case it was the singles (Closer To An Animal and Life), and the three song run of Fly, Navigate, Communicate, Rise A Night and Candle Lawns and I see that Not has those latter three as his favorites as well. What I can say that's positive about the album as a whole is that it validates my opinion that Pasi era Sonata is the band at their most rejuvenating since Unia. Sadly, the half the songs here don't click with me here as much as Pariah's Child.

 

I was quite fascinatingly puzzled about Til Death's Done Us Apart because apparently it's another song in the Caleb saga...which in and of itself did not (and still does not) make sense to me because I thought Caleb died (or depending on how you look at it, Juliet killed Caleb) in "Juliet" so either this song's sandwiched somewhere between the four songs before it or that whole Caleb saga theory thing is wrong, hahaha. Being biased about the Caleb saga as those songs happen to be some of my all time favorites in their respected albums, I had high expectations for it...and...it was a "in ear-out ear" song. IDK, maybe I have to take time to listen to just that song alone before I can make an objective opinion about it, but both listens that song passed by me without me ever realizing it. Both times I went, "Wait, that's it? That song's already finished?" And then there's White Pearl, Black Oceans Part 2...the first time around, I said I liked it for what it is...I'm gonna backpedal and say it's one of the most un-epic epic songs in their discography. If anything, it makes me want to listen to the original for the duration of a standard length album.

 

I've been quite candid about my un-enthusiasm for Stone Grows Her Name due to it's (IMO) straight forward approach, but now after listening to TNH album and how my thoughts on it corroded in just two listens, I'm very inclined to go back and listen to it (and The Days Of Grays to a lesser extent) cause I have a feeling that being away from it so long will, my opinion is likely to be more receptive to that album cause I'm not the naive Sonata fan I was at the time it came out. Back to The Ninth Hour, it's definitely one of my least favorites next to SGHN and TDOG as of now.

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Okay, considering how I view Not and Segue to be the two biggest Sonata fans here (with me at a distant, third wheeling third), I want to get my thoughts on The Ninth Hour expressed before I forget. I think now's a time to finally weigh in on the album w/o being as emotionally influenced by my opinion as I tend to be with my concert reviews.

 

Yeah, when I gave the album a listen the first time...I said I liked it but quite honestly, I couldn't remember more than half the songs. That's nothing unusual as it happens with at least 1/4 of songs on nearly every "new" album I listen to. Sadly, the second time, fared no better and I could only remember the songs that I liked upon first listen. In that case it was the singles (Closer To An Animal and Life), and the three song run of Fly, Navigate, Communicate, Rise A Night and Candle Lawns and I see that Not has those latter three as his favorites as well. What I can say that's positive about the album as a whole is that it validates my opinion that Pasi era Sonata is the band at their most rejuvenating since Unia. Sadly, the half the songs here don't click with me here as much as Pariah's Child.

 

I was quite fascinatingly puzzled about Til Death's Done Us Apart because apparently it's another song in the Caleb saga...which in and of itself did not (and still does not) make sense to me because I thought Caleb died (or depending on how you look at it, Juliet killed Caleb) in "Juliet" so either this song's sandwiched somewhere between the four songs before it or that whole Caleb saga theory thing is wrong, hahaha. Being biased about the Caleb saga as those songs happen to be some of my all time favorites in their respected albums, I had high expectations for it...and...it was a "in ear-out ear" song. IDK, maybe I have to take time to listen to just that song alone before I can make an objective opinion about it, but both listens that song passed by me without me ever realizing it. Both times I went, "Wait, that's it? That song's already finished?" And then there's White Pearl, Black Oceans Part 2...the first time around, I said I liked it for what it is...I'm gonna backpedal and say it's one of the most un-epic epic songs in their discography. If anything, it makes me want to listen to the original for the duration of a standard length album.

 

I've been quite candid about my un-enthusiasm for Stone Grows Her Name due to it's (IMO) straight forward approach, but now after listening to TNH album and how my thoughts on it corroded in just two listens, I'm very inclined to go back and listen to it (and The Days Of Grays to a lesser extent) cause I have a feeling that being away from it so long will, my opinion is likely to be more receptive to that album cause I'm not the naive Sonata fan I was at the time it came out. Back to The Ninth Hour, it's definitely one of my least favorites next to SGHN and TDOG as of now.

 

I do like Till Death's Done Us Apart, but I basically just see it as a poor man's Juliet. It's still among the good half of The Ninth Hour though.

 

As for when the song takes place, I think it belongs in the series' chronology near the beginning:

 

1. Caleb

2. Till Death's Done Us Apart

3. Don't Say A Word

4. Juliet

5. The End of This Chapter

 

If I'm not mistaking, these songs weren't even related to each other until Tony thought up the song Juliet (if not, then it was Caleb) then he said, "okay, we'll call this an on-going story, here are the songs within the series".

 

Stones Grow Her Name is straightforward on all songs except for the two wildfire epics, which are actually proper epic songs by Sonata. And while these other songs are all straightforward in approach and structure, they're all very different in style. It's a cool album, four really good songs on it, and the rest are enjoyably consistent. The only track I don't like much is "Tonight I Dance Alone".

 

As for the remastered Ninth Hour video, I got in contact with the creator and he's going to e-mail me a .rar of the remaster, he said... So hopefully he will do that soon.

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I'm finding The Ninth Hour is slipping in my affections.

 

I must say, it's surprisingly bland. Brilliant for the most part as I love them but this is the first album which doesn't offer anything new.

 

I'm thinking it's the weakest album to date.

 

Which is fine because I still rate it about 8/10.

 

I really dislike the last track though. It just sounds and feels pointless.

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It needs to be addressed that Tony's surprisingly not very good at making epic songs, once he goes over 8 minutes run-time filler starts to appear and the songs aren't even as epic as his shorter length songs - just decorated or drawn out. White Pearl Black Oceans (1) is the only flawless epic, I love The Power Of One but the ending of the song I do have a problem with.. There should have been no more singing after the keyboard solo ended, just more instrumentation and then the spoken word, and then rain fad out. That's a forgivable mistake, it's still a great epic, it's just about 30 seconds of the ~11 minutes I don't like, very forgivable.

 

But it just puzzles me why those 30 seconds exist anyway, the repetition of "no one was born to be a slave" is so strange, the lyric was delivered with so much more emotion earlier on in the song. WPBO2 and Larger Than Life make similar mistakes - they repeat earlier parts of the song, but change the delivery in a way which is less epic... If anything, you're supposed to make that go the other way around, the first occurrence of the segment being weaker than the second in order to give the song build-up. The way Tony does things, the "finale" actually happens during the first half of the song :LOL:

 

Amazing

http://u.pomf.is/xouigd.mp3

 

Underwhelming

http://u.pomf.is/rdeyjk.mp3

 

I really want to give Larger Than Life 5/5, but I can't. The first half is really busy and exciting with each new part introduced, but then the second half is kind of patchy.

Edited by Mr. Not
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I never had this much of a backpedaling reaction to a Sonata album since SGHN, but that was primarily because of going back to the older albums I had not yet listened to at the time (Silence and Winterheart's Guild). Another reason for my backlash against SGHN and TDOG is because I thought the guitars were quite...thin sounding even when it's got the crunch. Even with Pariah's Child the guitar's aren't the best sounding on a Sonata LP but the songs made up for it. TBH, I thought Unia had the best guitar tone.

 

The problem with The Ninth Hour for me was that both times I listened to it trying to focus on the music and the songs yet I still can't remember anything from Fairytale through Among The Shooting Stars. And for that matter, I can't even remember how WPBO 2 goes other than that I remember it was un-epic. :LOL:

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Stones Grow Her Name is a classic slice of AOR infused power metal to my ears...

 

The Days Of Grays is hands down my favourite SA album, although at times Reckoning Night is the best...

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Fairytale is.. Bad. The lyrics lack any sort of subtlety and are especially lacking by Tony's standards. The song is half-way energetic, and it's simultaneously dark and goofy in tone. That sounds like it might be accomplishment, but it's not, those two elements don't mix, it's like putting spicy chili into your ice cream sundae.

 

The vocal melodies are asspulls, anyone could think them up just f***ing around. It doesn't sound good, Tony's singing in this is flat out annoying. Tony has done absurd clownish singing in the past (see: Champagne Bath, Cinderblox) but the melodies in those songs are well fleshed, thought out, actually enjoyable, discernible, and there's a sense of beauty to them.

 

The only part of Fairytale that I like is Henkka's keyboard solo (the one that occurs after Elias's solo, not the intro keyboard solo). 1/5, bad f***ing song. Second worst on the album to We Are What We Are. Those two songs are scourges, the first two Sonata songs that I actually can say I hate.

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