Demi Lovato
Though Demi Lovato does not fit in with much of the music Freshly Unique features, there is no way to deny the talent this girl has.
With her new album, Here We Go Again, Demi Lovato shows that, this time, her album was not sanctioned completely by Hollywood Records (DISNEY), and instead, she took over much more creative control this time.
Starting off with her first single, “Here We Go Again”, Demi’s new cd seems to be heading the same way last year’s Don’t Forget did. The vocals, production, and lyrics are pretty much the same style, with a bit more skill involved this time. After finishing the first track though, listeners will hear the difference this time around.
“As if you’re gunna get away with this/You’re not sorry/I can’t believe I fell for this” Solo, the second track on the album, is definitely much more of what Demi Lovato claims she is than her last album showed.
The songs on this album are much more mature than Don’t Forget’s track listing consisted of. Lovato even wrote a song about her estranged father, but it was unfortunately cut. If she can get out of this Disney era she is in, I’m 100% positive she can be a huge star in the future.
Other notable songs are “U Got Nothin On Me” and “Catch Me.”
Artist: Demi Lovato
Album: Here We Go Again
Genre: Pop
MySpace: http://myspace.com/demilovato
-Track List-
Here We Go Again
Solo
U Got Nothing On Me
Falling Over Me
Quiet
Catch Me
Everytime You Lie
Got Dynamite
Stop The World
World Of Chances
Remember December
Everything You’re Not
Gift Of A Friend
So Far, So Great
Read More
All Time Low
Over the last year, All Time Low is a band name that has been on the tip of the tongue of just about every pop-punk fanatic. Between wearing the crown of Alternative Press’ band of the year, directly supporting genre titans Fall Out Boy on tour and selling out multiple headline tours of their own, the Maryland-based group stretched their popularity to new heights. Armed with a wicked sense of humor – on and off stage – the quartet also packs an arsenal of irritatingly irresistible, hook-filled pop-punk tunes that are turning these 21-year-olds into household names. On their second full-length record, Nothing Personal, the crab state natives make it clear they are not interested in being a short-lived trend.
Picking up where they left off, All Time Low rely on their gain-friendly guitar tones, groovy bass lines and smooth vocal melodies to craft a memorable, albeit generic record. This formula succeeds on singles “Weightless” and “Damned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don’t).” The aforementioned features one of the finest choruses in the group’s discography while the latter finds frontman Alex Gaskarth showing his lyrical wit with the line “I’m drowning in a river of denial,” further escalating the record’s already high fun factor.
Their octave-chord based, up-tempo and light-hearted tunes dominate the majority of the record. “Keep The Change, You Filthy Animal” and “A Party Song (The Walk of Shame)” find All Time Low maintaining their initially established momentum deep into the album. Both find success off of their immense choruses and persistent youthful energy.
With the success endured over the last year, many have labeled the group with traditional name-calls, ‘sell-out’ being the most common. Not wasting an opportune moment to exercise their humor, All Time Low named one of their headline tours “The Compromising of Integrity, Morality & Principles in Exchange for Money Tour,” a phrase taken verbatim from Wikipedia’s definition of sell-out. On Nothing Personal, Gaskarth and crew take a more serious route in dealing with their fiercest critics. “Sick Little Games” is a surprisingly mature, mid-tempo song that showcases the band confidently stepping out of their comfort zone. Utilizing an acoustic timbre in the rhythm section, the opening verse finds Gaskarth confessing, “I’m turned on by the tabloids, you would never have guessed/that I’m a sucker for their gossip, man I take it too far.” The tune certainly stands out on the record, marking a newfound sense of songwriting ability and collective maturity.
While there is much to praise throughout its 12 track duration, Nothing Personal does not finish without faults. Along with the fact that there are minimal amounts of originality and progression, production becomes an issue. The far too sugary studio fabrication brings sections of the record down. “Stella” recalls shenanigan filled nights after enjoying one too many Belgian ales (last name Artois) and its excessively glossy production is cavity inducing. “Too Much” finds the pop-punk quartet forgetting the second half of their genre. The embarrassingly awful song features an overuse of sampled drums and auto-tune heavy vocals, making it reminiscent of a half-hearted attempt at covering a 90s boy band.
Even despite their faults and lack of originality, All Time Low does enough right on their sophomore full-length effort to warrant multiple spins from any fan of the genre. Nothing Personal rarely takes itself too seriously and infrequently asks listeners to. Its youthful feel makes it a fantastic summer record that is also worthy of listens throughout the other three seasons. Nothing Personal makes a clear point as to why the foursome are soaking up the spotlight as of late. The truth to their success is rather simple: All Time Low is playing generic pop punk; they are just doing it better than everyone else at the moment.
Review By SputnikMusic
Artist: All Time Low
Album: Discography
Genre: Pop Punk / Pop / Punk
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/alltimelow
-Album List-
Read More
Set Your Goals
Flash back to 6 years ago. Drive-Thru Records was all the rage, pop-punk wasn’t cliché yet, and New Found Glory ruled the scene. You loved NFG, Sum 41, and Blink 182, and there were no scene police to tell you otherwise. It was a time of music enjoyment without guilt. Now, the scene has changed. New Found Glory has moved on to the mainstream, hundreds of other bands have attempted to follow in their footsteps, and while some have succeeded, many have failed. An evolution of the music scene has occurred to the point in which it’s no longer acceptable to listen to hook-driven pop-punk songs without being ripped into by your peers on internet message boards. Part of that reason is because somewhere along the line, pop-punk lost its edge. Bands like New Found Glory rose from a thriving Florida hardcore scene (guitarist Chad Gilbert was in Shai Hulud pre-NFG) and their music contained a punch that packed more energy into their songs than their peers or eventual followers. Flash forward to 2006. A resurrection of what we once knew and loved has emerged, in the form of Set Your Goals.
Set Your Goals are a band who defies genres or musical boundaries. They are adored by pop-punk fans, hardcore buffs, and others alike. Their refreshing blend of hardcore energy and gang vocals mixed with familiar hooks creates a sound that can appeal to us all. While many of us have come a long way in 6 years in our musical evolution of personal tastes, there’s a huge portion of us that began in the same scene. While some of us still listen to pop-punk, others may have gone the hardcore/metal route, and others indie. But this debut full-length from Set Your Goals is just the right balance of an old sound many of us used to love. It’s enough to throw away the scene police whistles and come together once again for a ridiculously fun album.
Though Set Your Goals is far from a rip-off of their predecessors, the influence is evident. With an alternating vocal approach, the higher pitched side bears a mild resemblance to Jordan Pudnik (NFG). The other side of the vocals are more hardcore influenced, and Mutiny! features a mini-breakdown or two, as well as gang vocals and quickly paced, driving beats (see: Comeback Kid, 7 Seconds). Bursting full of instant summer anthems, Mutiny! does a good job balancing the two styles on refreshingly familiar (yet nostalgic) tracks like “Mutiny!” and “This Very Moment.” Other songs combine the styles a bit more awkwardly, as “To Be Continued…” has hardcore growls in it, with Tom DeLonge-esque vocals alongside in an unatural pairing that comes off as a bit much. Unfortunately, this song is almost 4 minutes long, and by the time it sinks into the 3rd minute, the song has lost significant amount of energy. Acoustic guitar parts in the middle of the song seem to kill the momentum it has gained. One of the main criticisms of this album is that it clocks in at less than 30 minutes with 4 songs that are around 4 minutes long. Having more songs at shorter lengths would keep the pace moving along smoother. Lasting value is also a concern for this record. While instantly fun and catchy, it doesn’t appear to have a significant amount of depth and it has a tendency to fade quicker than it should.
Despite its flaws, Mutiny! is a very solid debut from a band with a tremendous upside. The fact that the band struggles to find an identity is actually a good thing for them, because the clashing of hardcore/pop is outweighed by pop and makes the balance easier to stomach for most listeners. The problems with this album aren’t nearly big enough to change the fact that this is a fun summer album that reminds me of a sound that was completely lost in the scene about 4 years ago. Plus, the last song on the record, “Echoes,” ends with a resounding collection of harmonious da-da-da’s coming from every direction through your speakers that will bring a smile to anybody’s face. Pick up this record the day it comes out, no matter who you are or what your tastes are now – you might be pleasantly surprised.
Review By AbsolutePunk
Artist: Set Your Goals
Album: Discography
Genre: Punk / Rock / Pop Punk
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/setyourgoals
-Album List-
Read More
T.I
Clifford Harris has gotten pretty good at this self-fulfilling prophecy thing. Though 2003′s Trap Musik made him a regional royal in Atlanta, 2006′s King accurately predicted he’d go nationwide. That record, combined with the positive reception of his film ATL the same year, gave hip-hop the legitimate multimedia crossover star it needed as interest in 50 Cent flagged. But his predictive powers worked against him on last year’s T.I. vs T.I.P., a sloppy and rushed collection loosely based on the notion that no matter how firmly the rapper entrenched himself in the pop world, anything from his hustler past– from his hotheadedness to his felonies to his associations– could compromise his success. Which is exactly what happened: He’s now staring down jail time for attempting to purchase machine guns from a federal agent in a Walgreens parking lot.
T.I. apparently learned his lesson, and on Paper Trail, he’s not taking any chances with an extraneous narrative. Although some recent mixtape tracks suggest we might be getting a 25th Hour-like confessional from Harris on his way to a one-year sentence in 2009 (or reality TV), Paper Trail bases itself on the assumption that everything’s going to be all right for him, emotionally and financially. Breaking rank from his previous two efforts by writing down his lyrics again, he immediately shows a willingness to do something other than coast from hook to hook– at least at the outset, on “56 Bars (Intro)” and “I’m Illy”. Not that he’s morphed into Pharoahe Monch or anything: His wordplay likens his weed to celery and his money-getting ability to the U.S. Treasury, which are pretty lame boasts these days.
The real shift in tone, though, becomes apparent in T.I.’s eagerness to please: Even with “Swagga Like Us”, Paper Trail hosts as many obligatory guest R&B hookmen as rappers. The conciliatory lover’s rock of “Whatever You Like”, with its near-absence of rapping, spotlights a synth pluck as flirty and debauched as a coked-up celebutante as proof that this “Lollipop” thing is a full-blown trend, not just a one-off WTF. And despite T.I. making an uncomfortable number of veiled threats to bloggers, Just Blaze goes all Rivers Cuomo by cratedigging in YouTube; the internet-approved “Numa Numa” song is now a hook via Rihanna at her most robo. (The song bottoms out on listenability even before you get to the surprisingly unctuous moralizing of its second verse.) And if you justifiably figured “Porn Star” would be the album’s low point, wait til Tip stoops to using a “life is like a…” device so cornball that even Travis beat him to it.
Paper Trail more often succeeds when the positivity sounds more earned than court-ordered. Beyond the fact that “On Top of the World” squashes a Ludacris/T.I. beef that threatened to get even more stupidly dangerous (though T.I. isn’t above going at Shawty Lo on “What Up, What’s Haapnin’”), it’s a perfect pairing that makes you wonder how many awesome collaborations we missed out on. Luda’s verse is infectiously joyous and quotable (“We see Samuel L. Jackson, like, ‘What’s up motherfucker!’”) as T.I. provides the perfect foil with the weariness of someone whose fight will never be over. The same goes for “No Matter What”, the most musically striking track, with Danja’s churchgoing organ sighs and punched-up drums. While T.I. lords over wannabes that want to “get a beat from Toomp and make a hook like shawty,” ending with a line like “I just let go and let God deal with it” may seem deflating, but in the context of a rap persona that owes its success to otherworldly confidence, it’s a telling display of how little control he really feels.
For better or worse, “Swagga Like Us” defines Paper Trail. In the style of those can’t-miss 90s posse cuts, T.I., Lil’ Wayne, Kanye West, and Jay-Z spit over a martial beat that samples M.I.A.’s pop chart infiltrator “Paper Planes”. What could go wrong? Unfortunately, one-upmanship gives way to self-assured competence and Khaled-inspired complacence. T.I. effortlessly bests them all, but in this track, you see how the album manages to be a more detailed manuscript of Tip’s complexity: An impending incarceration has lit a fire under him, triggering an impulse to challenge himself. But T.I. has spent too much of his life fighting to get where he is, and Paper Trail’s desire to play things chill suggests a different sort of trap than we’re used to hearing about from him.
Review By Pitchfork.com
Artist: T.I
Album: Discography
Genre: Rap/ Hip-Hop
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/trapmuzik
-Album List-
Read More
Bullet For My Valentine
Forgive me if this review seems somewhat bemused; either I was distracted by the Lost message boards while scribbling my notes or Bullet for My Valentine’s newest record, Scream Aim Fire, just couldn’t keep my attention. We’ll just say it’s a combination of both.
I’m one of those people who judge bands by their names. If the name is dull, chances are I won’t check the band out, which is probably why I spent the last couple years ignoring the Welsh metal outfit, Bullet for My Valentine, due to the daft nature of their name. However, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I heard some tracks from their debut album The Poison, released early in 2006. Being a sucker for a good riff, I found The Poison to be entertaining, but not the next Ride the Lightning.
Scream Aim Fire kicks off with the title track, immediately setting the tone of the album with ripping guitar lines and accelerated drum beats. Surprisingly, Matt Tuck doesn’t distort his voice with gruff screaming until the breakdown, instead showcasing his strong vocal talent which is often compared to Metallica’s James Hetfield. “Eye of the Storm” follows along the same lines, with the typical syncopated drum/guitar opening. The guitar work is impressive, offering classic metal influence on the solos and expeditious riffs on almost every other part of the song. However, flashy guitar work is a staple of metal and isn’t anything new. If you want to make it big, you have to offer something new and exciting. “Waking the Dead,” however, offers the much needed attitude to revert my attention away from the computer screen and back to the notebook with powerful guitar riffs and authoritative drums. The band’s arena rock influences are certainly evident on “Hearts Burst Into Fire” and “Deliver Us from Evil.” Both songs (which slightly remind me of Finch, around the What It is to Burn-era) have a largely epic feel and seem to be tailored specifically for the large arenas the band will be playing on this year’s A Taste of Chaos Tour. “Take It Out of Me,” however, wins the award for the best song on the album. Opening with a hint of southern flavor, the song bears a fashionable guitar hook and skillfully transitions into a soft bridge before the intensity builds back up before the song’s denouement. The album closes with the disappointing “Forever and Always,” a song that sounds almost as cheesy as the title.
Bullet for My Valentine aren’t bad any standards. Scream Aim Fire is an album that showcases the band’s meshing of older arena rock influences and modern metal. However, the album lacks attitude. Rhythmically, the band doesn’t offer anything new and exciting; instead they seem to fall back on the same ideas and rhythms that have defined the strong genre lines that few bands are afraid to cross. If I were to give the band some advice, I would advise adding a “presence” to their music. Use some more pinch harmonics. Write drums parts that show some agility. And for Pete’s sake, show some double-kick skills.
All in all, Scream Aim Fire is a rifftacular journey into the world of arena metal. If power ballads are your thing, then you’ll love this album. As for me, however, I’m going to close my notebook and re-watch last night’s episode of Lost.
Review By AbsolutePunk.net
Artist: Bullet For My Valentine
Album: Discography
Genre: Metal / Hardcore
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/bulletformyvalentine
-Album List-
Read More
Carnifex
Heavy music has been rising in popularity over the last few years, with each trend getting more radical than the last. For a while, post-hardcore was the hip thing, and when fans grew tired of that they sought out something more extreme but still accessible. This lead to the explosion of metalcore, which has recently created a new cash cow offshoot in the form of deathcore. The subgenre, an amalgam of death metal and metalcore, features the speed and technicality of the former mixed with the heavy breakdowns of the latter. The scene has become over-saturated with bands following the fad, and labels are seeing how profitable it has become. Victory Records’ newest contribution comes in the form of Carnifex.
The Carnifex moniker comes from an Old English word meaning “executioner,” and I could say that the name is appropriate given the sheer brutality of their output, but their latest release, The Diseased and the Poisoned, is nothing but a by-the-numbers deathcore release. Frankly, I’m surprised Victory signed them, given how similar they sound to labelmates With Blood Comes Cleansing. Don’t get me wrong – they deserve to be signed, I’m just surprised they were picked up by such a high-profile indie label that already has a similar act. Others do it better, but there’s also hundreds that are much worse. If you’re a fan of the subgenre then you will surely enjoy this release.
The music is predictable and formulaic, but the San Diego-based quintet is fine at what they do. Noteworthy are the constantly pummeling blast beats from drummer Shawn Cameron and mosh-worthy breakdowns from guitarists Cory Arford and Ryan Gudmunds. Scott Lewis’ vocals range from deep growls to higher pitched shrieks, which he frequently switches between; he can be heard screaming about unrequited love and the despair and hatred that comes with it. The first words on the album, after all, are “This is hate and all the passion that goes with it / This is love and all the sickness I feel because of it / Because of you” from “In Coalesce with Filth and Faith.” There are some embarrassing moments lyrically, such as the Senses Fail-esque line “Death’s romance wanders like lost love upon this blackened dreamscape” in “To My Dead and Dark Dreams.”
The disc sounds precise and polished thanks to the top-notch production job from Zeuss (Hatebreed, Shadows Fall, Unearth). The Diseased and the Poisoned is a tad more aggressive than the band’s full-length debut, 2007′s Dead in My Arms, but overall it’s just more of the same. It’s certainly nothing special, but if you’re looking for a new deathcore band for your top 8, Carnifex could certainly fill the void.
Review By AbsolutePunk
Artist: Carnifex
Album: The Diseased And The Poisoned [2008]
Genre: Metal / Deathcore
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/carnifexmetal
-Track List-
1. “Suffering” – 0:50
2. “In Coalesce with Filth and Faith” – 3:16
3. “The Nature of Depravity” – 3:16
4. “Adornment of the Sickened” – 2:27
5. “Innocence Died Dreaming” – 2:45
6. “The Diseased and the Poisoned” – 2:37
7. “To My Dead and Dark Dreams” – 3:10
8. “Sadistic Embrace” – 2:54
9. “Answers in Mourning” – 2:46
10. “Aortic Dissection” – 2:58
11. “Among Grim Shadows” – 2:46
12. “Enthroned in Isolation” – 3:30
Read MoreTry Album [Mediafire] | Carnifex – The Diseased And The Posioned
Hermit Thrushes
Slight Fountain occupies a dubious middle ground. It’s a pop album that leans heavily on the kind of queasy, off-kilter melodies and unpredictable chord progressions championed by David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors, but it arranges those elements into a collection of songs infinitely more accessible than anything off The Getty Address or Rise Above. While I have a lot of respect for Longstreth and the madman stuff he does with melody, the group doesn’t — at the risk of unironically echoing Stephen Colbert — speak to my gut. In a way, the (comparatively) straightforward nature of singer/songwriter Yianni Kourmadas’s compositions exacerbates my feeling of disconnection with his take on DP’s aesthetic. He, in essence, appropriates a style of music I already find emotionally alienating and further strips away much of its headiness and complexity. He does what Longstreth does, only not quite as well.
This is not to say that there aren’t interesting things happening from song to song. Take “Snowflake Heart” as an example. It opens with the halting thump of the bass drum, pounding in time with an awkward progression of acoustic guitar chords and a staccato vocal harmony in falsetto. Then, all the backing elements drop away at the verse, leaving Kourmadas to sing over a bare-bones guitar accompaniment. Following the chorus, the guitar is joined by the bass and drum, with the addition of a ringing trumpet. It’s as pure an example of Hermit Thrush’s ambitious song dynamics as I could hope to find.
Unfortunately, the pleasures gained from such excursions feel largely academic. This is due, in no small part, to Kourmadas’s total non-presence as a singer. He offers a breathy, muttered vocal performance reminiscent of Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum, if Elverum didn’t really give a shit about what he was singing. The lyrics themselves don’t do much to help the situation. On the page, they read like especially cryptic haiku. Yet for all of their mysteriousness, the songs conjure little in the way of evocative or memorable imagery.
For as many risks as Hermit Thrushes take, I can’t help but walk away from Slight Fountain thinking that I’ve heard it before. Maybe the band would be better off exploring more conventional melodies. The most vital-sounding and memorable track on the album for me is “Ceci,” a song that relies less on peculiar sounds or jarring melodic shifts and more on instrumental interplay and subtle changes in tempo. It sounds almost like a late-90s Built to Spill composition condensed to its most essential elements. This song, at least, sounds like a song and not merely an intellectual exercise. And if “Ceci” is less ambitious than the rest of Slight Fountain, consider this: the song is no more derivative than anything else Hermit Thrushes have to offer this time around.
Review By TinyMixTapes
Artist: Hermit Thrushes
Album: Silent Fountain [2009]
Genre: Thrash / Folk / Experimental
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/hermitthrushes
-Track List-
1. An Oil Fruit
2. Snowflake Heart
3. Ceci
4. Push
5. Golden Wounds
6. Broken Adze
7. Song From Boat
8. Black Cat
9. Older Trees
10. Headless
11. Found House
12. Gooseneck
13. Perla
14. A Good Dream
Read More