Archive for the 'Album Reviews' Category



08
Jun
11

Treefiddy Review: Seether – Holding Onto Strings Better Left To Fray

The Down Lizzo:

After over a decade of hard slog, touring, growing their fanbase and writing and performing great post-grunge / metal anthems, the most successful South African rock band to ever leave our shores and kill it in the States has finally released a follow up to their epic 2007 album Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces and it’s godawful.

 

 

Seether’s material has always walked the fine line between legitimate post-grunge and wanky hero-rock and unfortunately this time around Seether have strayed a little far into the commercial cesspool that bands like Nickleback, Daughtry and Creed float in.

Sick Tracks:

The first time around “Country Song” is ok if not a little familiar. As for the rest of it, I can hardly distinguish one song from the rest to tell you what they’re actually like, but the words “plain as mud” come to mind.

The worst tracks are by far “Here And Now” which sounds like it should be on the Spiderman soundtrack and “Tonight”, which sounds like a really, really bad version of “Rise Above This”.

The vocal melodies, chord and strong structures and production are as predictable as the plot in a Hollywood rom com and twice as nauseating.

 

 

And don’t even get me started on the lyrics (“Save me / Even as you break me / Every time you rape me / Leave me coming all undone” – snore).

They’re so loaded with hollow sentiment and radio rock clichés it’s goddamn cringeworthy.

The only thing noteworthy about this album is how poignantly honest it’s title is.

Should You Give A Shit?

Fuck no. Let’s all just pretend that this album never happened and focus instead on the musical gems that this band has produced up to this vacuous point in their career.

 

 

Although, to be fair, if you like Daughtry and co. you’ll probably dig this album. You’ll also probably dig drinking beer through funnels, 4x4s and Rohypnol but hey, who am I to judge.

Here’s “Here And Now” to drive home my point. Enjoy.

 

 

Final Verdict: 3/10

24
May
11

Treefiddy Review: King Willow – Introductions and Demonstrations

The Down Lizzo:

King Willow is the sickest band you’ve never heard and I’d say it’s high time you did something about that.

This frighteningly talented 3-piece are based in London, but two of the members (guitarist, vocalist and frontman Matthew Schönborn and bassist Darren Beukes) are born and bred Saffas, though listening to them you’d never think it.

 

 

Take The Mars Volta, mash their intricate staccato melodies with the heavy-as-fuck, blunt force of Deftones’, wrap it up in a multi-layered soundscape of Muse-like synth effects and hey presto! You’re facing down the behemoth that is King Willow, and the guys did everything (except recording the drum parts) by themselves in their home studio.

 

 

How “fuck-your-cousin” sick is that!

Sick Tracks

“Foxes” twists and turns dextrously through clean, tight strumming patterns to a climactic, thick and heavy chorous riff, brought to life through sticksman Wojciech Hydzik’s staggering array of varying beats and fills.

From Beukes’ fuzzy bassline at the start, to Schönborn’s bone-chilling guttural roar in the bludgeoning chorous, “Death On A Pale Horse” kicks you square in the balls, takes it down a notch for a melodic interlude, and then kicks you square in the balls again. Listen out for the fucking amazing scream that Schönborn unleashes like a man possessed at the 3:20 mark. Goddamn beautiful.

 

 

I could go on. I could write about the eerie, whispered vocal lines and broken jack-in-the box guitar tones of “Lapdance” or the total change in pace that is the quiet resignation of “Magdalen”, but I’m fast running out of words here.

Let’s just say that there is something about every track on Introductions & Demonstrations that is either haunting, beautiful or badass.

Should You Give A Shit?

Yes, you should give a shit.

You should download the demo here, play it to your friends, play it to your enemies, and when this band is headlining at every major stadium across Europe someday, you can turn up your nose at all their screaming fans and say, “Yeah, well I knew them from when their first demo dropped…”

 

 

Kudos to the King Willow boys for one of the best demos you’re likely to hear in a long, long time.

Here’s “Death On A Pale Horse”, enjoy 😉

Final Verdict: 9/10

-ST

06
May
11

TreeFiddy Review: Stone Collar – Trial By Fire

It’s been awhile, but I think it’s high time I launched into another TreeFiddy review where I sum up new albums in 350 words or less for easy consumption, digestion and err, let’s just leave it at that…

The Down Lizzo:

Stone Collar is a South African band that’s been kicking around Cape Town for the last four years, melting faces with their brand of metal / hard rock in the tradition of legends such as Metallica, Iron Maiden, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, and Creed.

 

 

Their debut album Trial By Fire is rife with the kind of epic guitar riffs and solos that would have Guitar Hero enthusiasts bashing their little dorky plastic guitars to bits in frustration as they failed time and time again to keep up with lead guitarist Sean Tait and rhythm guitarist Clinton Jurgen’s masterful shredding.

Sick Tracks

The tracks on this album are all pretty much on a par. If you like one, you’ll love them all and you’ll probably know within two minutes of hitting play.

 

 

“Not For Good” is a sprawling, high-energy metal ballad that perfectly showcases Tait and Jurgens’ ability to match one another riff for riff as they tear through time honoured metal chord progressions.

In their single “SQT”, singer Leshem Peterson’s vocals soar triumphantly above the Tait / Jurgens metal maelstrom while drummer Bryan Nicol punches out some of the album’s tightest fills, lending his otherwise meat and potatoes drumming style some impressive flair.

“Poison The Well” is another standout track that builds nicely to a badass, chunky verse riff and a surprisingly catchy chorous and “…As The Crow Flies” is nice change of pace from the tight, lightning fast, palm-muted strumming that defines much of the album.

 

Should You Give A Shit?

First off, let it be known that the band recorded, produced, mixed, mastered, marketed, designed and are distributing the album all themselves so hats off to them for a killer effort.

However, I feel that the 80s and early 90s flogged the metal / hard rock / alternative genre to death and though they are incredibly tight musicians, Stone Collar’s debut feels like it landed 20 years too late.

“I’m born of a dying breed,” Petersen sings in the final track on Trial By Fire and I tend to agree. Still though, if you dig old school metal / hard rock you’ll love Stone Collar and I would highly recommend buying Trial By Fire.

In the meantime, hit play below to hear “SQT” and if you dig that crazy shit, be sure to head through to Mercury on Tuesday 17th May for their official album launch.

 

 

Final Verdict: 7/10

05
Apr
11

TreeFiddy Review: Foo Fighters – Wasting Light

We’re trying a new thing today folks. Because you’re all a buncha attention deficit, slack-jawed, interwebs-trawling goofballs, I’m changing the way I write music reviews.

Gone are the days of long, sprawling, descriptive paragraphs about the delicate arrangement and superior production of song x, y or z. Fuck that, nobody cares.

From now on we’re stripping away all the bullshit here at SlickTiger Industries and pumping out reviews that are 350 words or less with rad videos, pics and tracks to stream. They’re easier for me to write, they’re easier for you to read, everyone’s a winner.

Oh, and did I mention these reviews will be peppered with gangsta rap lingo? Yeah, apparently that’s what the kids these days are into – fo’ SHIZZLE!

So, with no further fucking around, I present to you my first TreeFiddy review featuring my good friend Dave Grohl’s band, Foo Fighters and their new album, Wasting Light.

 

The Down Lizzo:

The Foos are back for album no.7 and this time around they threw all the modern new-fandangled methods of recording out the window and literally set up a studio in Dave Grohl’s garage and did the whole thing on brown analogue tape that they then cut together by hand using fucking razorblades for god’s sake!

Check out this sick NME vid that explains everything:

 

Sick Tracks:

“Bridge Burning” will make you thrash around the room like an idiot savant who just hit a bong and downed a pint of rubbing alcohol. The drums and fucking cannon blasts, the four-chord riffs are fucking machine gun fire and Grohl’s voice is a flame thrower, roasting everything in its wake.

“Rope” follows with the catchiest, most badass Foos chorous riff since “Low”. The bridge is a goddamn carpet bomb of awesome riffs and awesome soloing.

“White Limo” is sheer, hedonistic rock music at it’s most awesome. Just watch this fucking video. It stars Lemmy from Motörhead for god’s sake! How fucking badasss is that?!

 

 

There are countless other anthemic, arena-ready rock masterpieces on this album, so I’m not going to go into the rest. All there is to say is that there isn’t one ballad or poefta acoustic track among the 11 on this album, THAT’S how hard it is.

 

 

Should You Give A Shit?

It’s very simple. This album is a testosterone-fuelled, rock behemoth that will fuck your shit up. It is an unapologetic, insanely addictive, intravenous shot of everything that is badass and rocks about the Foo Fighters and you’d be a fucking saddo not to buy this album.

 

Final Verdict: 9/10

-ST

09
Mar
11

Album Review: Radiohead – King Of Limbs

As a music critic one of the biggest schoolboy errors you can make is to write off a Radiohead album as rubbish because those same songs that went over your head completely on the first few listens can become your favourites given time.

It is for this reason that I am extremely hesitant in calling King Of Limbs the weakest album that Radiohead has recorded to date because I realise fully that my initial perception of it could change at any moment.

 

 

Still though, at 20+ listens I’m usually batshit over their albums and sadly that’s not the case with King Of Limbs.

Sure, the production is slick and Thom Yorke’s vocals are as dexterous, haunting and fresh as ever, especially on the album’s first single “Lotus Flower”, but there’s something quintessentially RADIOHEAD that’s missing from this album.

The opening tracks “Bloom” and “Morning Mr Magpie” float past in a stuttering, meandering arrangement of pianos, customary post-OK Computer shuffling drum beats, blaring horns and repetitive melodies that don’t have a single hook to share among them.

“Little By Little” is a great track though and sounds like it would be right at home on Hail To The Thief with its full, multi-layered percussion, catchy basslines and ingeniously subliminal guitar parts. It’s the Radiohead we know and love and one of the few rays of light on this album.

 

 

“Lotus Flower” is also a phenomenal track. It hangs in the balance between the sinister and the sublime, finally breaking free in a moment of catharsis as Yorke’s vocals soar above the stratosphere as the song reaches its climactic chorous.

“Slowly we unfurl / As Lotus flowers / And all that I want is the moon upon a stick / Dancing around the pit / Just to see what it is” Yorke sings in a voice so pure and unrestrained it gives me chills every time I hear it.

In comparison the rest of the material on King Of Limbs is pretty mediocre. “Codex”, for all its glorious melancholy sounds like a recycled version of “Pyramid Song”, “Give Up The Ghost” sounds like a bad cover of “Nude” and the instrumental track “Feral” is pure, unadulterated filler.

And that, bar the echoey, limp closing track “Separator” is that. Eight tracks that are almost all pretty much instantly forgettable and it’s over before it ever really started.

There are rumours of a second King Of Limbs album being released shortly and all I can say is I hope they’re true and I hope that the second one is better in every conceivable way than the first because if this is the best this band can do then I sense an imminent hiatus on the cards.

Final Verdict: 6/10

23
Feb
11

New Radiohead album – What’s The Feeling?

It dawned on me the other day that in almost every aspect of my life I’m probably in the early majority / late majority hump on the adoption curve, except music.

With music, I need it NOW! A new album gets released and I have to have it inside my skull as quickly as possible. That’s how it was with the new Radiohead album, King Of Limbs. They released it for internet download on Friday and by 2pm I’d already heard the album twice.

What’s my overall opinion thus far? I’m not sure it can hold a flame to In Rainbows. As with all their material, maybe it will grow on me, but my initial impression is that they’ve backslid into Amnesiac territory on this one and musically, guitars have taken a backseat to pianos, electronic blips and beeps and shuffling drum machine beats.

The first single, “LotusFlower” is a great track though and Thom Yorke’s spazzing out is something you gotta see to believe.

 

 

Sadly though, the main topic of conversation doing the rounds on the interwebs right now seems to be, “Is Radiohead the most overrated band of all time?”

I didn’t think so before King Of Limbs, but this paltry 8 track effort has disappointed me on the first few listens and shown an uncharacteristic lack of inspiration from this band, who have always rated highly in my top 10 bands of all time.

What do you guys think? Anyone out there heard the new album yet?

-ST

14
Feb
11

New Radiohead album lands on Saturday!

It’s probably already old news, but Radiohead announced that their new album, “King Of Limbs” is going to be available for digital download from the site http://thekingoflimbs.com/ on Saturday.

 

 

King Of Limbs costs £6.00 for the MP3 version, £9.00 for the WAV version, £30.00 for the “Newspaper album” version in MP3s and £33.00 for the WAV version (which comprises 2 x 10” vinyls, a CD, a whole lot of artwork and other rad stuffs too!).

I’m fucking excited guys. This band can do no wrong in my eyes, pure and simple. I have every album they’ve done in studio and a couple they haven’t plus a few of B-Sides and some acoustic versions of their stuff and never once has an album disappointed me.

Mark my words, 2011 is going to be a great year for music.

Thanks to Civilian for giving me the heads-up on this one. Love your work dude Winking smile

-ST

01
Feb
11

Album Review: Cake – Showroom Of Compassion

Some bands find a sound that works for an album, some find a sound that works for five and very rarely, some find a sound that works for every album.

Was I disappointed that Cake’s new album Showroom Of Compassion sounds strikingly similar to their previous five albums? No. In fact to be quite honest, I was relieved because I’m a pretty firm believer that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

 

 

Frontman John McCrea’s vocals are just as full of the esoteric ennui that captivated listeners back in the late 90s, Xan McCurdy’s guitar tone still sounds stolen from a jangly country and western song and he still works his fretboard like he’s reinventing musical scales by ditching all the crap notes.

Get the rest of the review here…

19
Jan
11

The Tiger’s Top 10 Albums of 2010

Yeah! Music stuffs! I used to post music stuffs all the time and the thing is I still post music stuffs, just not on this site, on www.pulpmag.co.za. If you go there right now you’ll see that I pretty much OWN that site content wise and it’s awesome!

If you want awesome content on your site too why the hell don’t you just mail me at tellthetiger@gmail.com, pay me a modest fee and prepare for your site views to hit the mother flippin’ ceiling yo!

I’m a gun for hire these days, which is the badass way of saying I’ll lick your balls for $5.

The Pulpmag gig helps me to pay the rent, but the diehard fans of this site get pissed off when I post my Pulpmag stuff here because I usually give the opening few paragraphs of a review and then make them hit Pulpmag for the rest.

 

 

But seriously. I think it’s time we moved past such petty grievances. This is 2011, clicking on a little link to take you to another page for content isn’t going to kill you.

Man up fer chrissake!

So check, check, check it out yo, here are my top ten albums for 2010 so you can laugh at my girly taste in music…

 

The Tiger’s Top 10 Albums of 2010

 

-ST

21
Oct
10

Album Review: Brandon Flowers – Flamingo

The Killers had a good thing going. Both Hot Fuss and Sam’s Town shook up the music scene with their hook-heavy indie ballads, foot-tappingly infectious riffs and Brandon Flowers’ primal sincerity in nearly every line he sang.

 

 

But with the release of Day And Age music critics began suspecting that the band was losing the magic that made The Killers killer. The band did what every band does when they start running out of ideas, they played it safe and as a result Day And Age had very little going for it and ended up turning a lot of diehard fans off The Killers altogether.

So it was no real surprise when Brandon Flowers announced he was striking out alone and even less of a surprise when the first single off Flamingo landed sounding almost exactly like the material Flowers used to play with The Killers.

Give it a few listens though and it quickly becomes apparent that while there are a lot of similarities between The Killers and Flowers’ solo album, there are enough differences to keep it interesting and given time, Flamingo reveals an amazing depth that it’s easy to miss if you aren’t listening carefully.

Click here for the whole enchilada…

-ST