Reviewed - 04/22/05
How
The Great Have Fallen
[SPV Records]
Hey, this is nice. And this here part is pretty good. Oh man, this album has a lot of different musical styles going on here! Oh wait, what's this? This part really sucks! Okay, now it sounds good again. Oh, man! Now it's awful sounding again! Up and down and back and forth. Oh, Raging Speedhorn, why do you do this to me? When I first put on their newest album "How The Great Have Fallen" I had pretty high hopes. The first few tracks I really liked because they were a mixture of styles that I like for the most part. But it took less than half the album for me to become extremely bored with it after I realized that along with the influences I like about this album, there were more that I can't stand quite at all.
The sound of "How The Great Have Fallen" is extremely hard to classify just because of the fact that the band seems to incorporate music from just about every band in existence whether those bands are Metal or Hard-core in nature. When I first put the disc in and hit play I was met with some music I liked a lot that really reminded me of Motorhead. Nice. Then in came some Black Sabbath influence. Really nice! Then some Black Flag if you can imagine that! Spectacular! And then it all starts to go downhill when I hear Eyehategod and Mastodon influences creeping in as well as some newer aged Hard-core song structures. Ugh, Hard-core is great, as long as it was made before 1990. If they would have stuck to idolizing Black Sabbath and Motorhead I'd have been happy, but why Eyehategod? That's like the shittiest band that ever existed, so why would anyone try and emulate their sound? By the time half of this album is done, all of the influences begin to really clash with each other The "Doominess" of Sabbath does not seem to go well with Hard-core music, at least not when Raging Speedhorn is making music that way.
The vocals are mostly a Hard-core/Punk style like a raspier Henry Rollins crossed with Phil Anselmo. The vocals are neither good nor bad and since they remind me so much of the two people I just mentioned they kind of lose points with me for unoriginality. In a few spots on the album one of the two vocalists in the band use a Death Metal guttural vocal style that is about as out of the place on this album as Madonna would be. I have no idea what the lyrical topics are on this album as they were not provided with the promo.
The production on this album has a 70's sound to me for some reason. I can't quite put my finger on it. It's a good production, but it's muffled and muddy sounding in select spots. It almost sounds like an album from the 70's that has been remastered. The cymbals could have been toned down a bit too!
The packaging is almost nonexistent as this is a promo and a skimpy one at that. The cover art is included, but it's very bland and nothing to get excited about at all. The promo did have a history of the band with all kinds of praise in it, but that's about it. No lyrics or other info was included for me to comment on here.
If you've been looking for one album to buy in the Doom/Hard-core/Metal/Rock/Stoner/Sludge category, than by all means go out and pick "How The Great Have Fallen" up. It's not a terrible album, it just has some influences from musical genres and from bands that I can't get into. The promo info stated that Raging Speedhorn was "the finest band the U.K has produced in a generation". I beg to differ, and that's a pretty bold statement if you ask me. This is the first Raging Speedhorn album to be released in the US, and I actually do seem them gaining a big following here, but I won't be counting myself among them. I'd rather listen to REO Speedwagon to tell you the truth. Maybe they should become a comedy band. My favorite part of this album is the "hidden" track at the end of it. It's a prank call that has a black dude who's obviously a rapper (or someone pretending to be) calling and answering an ad placed by someone who is looking for people to join his Black Metal band. Shit, this is some funny stuff! The rapper dude goes off on this guy and says how since he's shot some "muthafucka's" he's more evil than him and his Black Metal band. He really hands this Black Metal dude his own ass, and I hadn't laughed this hard in weeks!
[SPV Records]
Hey, this is nice. And this here part is pretty good. Oh man, this album has a lot of different musical styles going on here! Oh wait, what's this? This part really sucks! Okay, now it sounds good again. Oh, man! Now it's awful sounding again! Up and down and back and forth. Oh, Raging Speedhorn, why do you do this to me? When I first put on their newest album "How The Great Have Fallen" I had pretty high hopes. The first few tracks I really liked because they were a mixture of styles that I like for the most part. But it took less than half the album for me to become extremely bored with it after I realized that along with the influences I like about this album, there were more that I can't stand quite at all.
The sound of "How The Great Have Fallen" is extremely hard to classify just because of the fact that the band seems to incorporate music from just about every band in existence whether those bands are Metal or Hard-core in nature. When I first put the disc in and hit play I was met with some music I liked a lot that really reminded me of Motorhead. Nice. Then in came some Black Sabbath influence. Really nice! Then some Black Flag if you can imagine that! Spectacular! And then it all starts to go downhill when I hear Eyehategod and Mastodon influences creeping in as well as some newer aged Hard-core song structures. Ugh, Hard-core is great, as long as it was made before 1990. If they would have stuck to idolizing Black Sabbath and Motorhead I'd have been happy, but why Eyehategod? That's like the shittiest band that ever existed, so why would anyone try and emulate their sound? By the time half of this album is done, all of the influences begin to really clash with each other The "Doominess" of Sabbath does not seem to go well with Hard-core music, at least not when Raging Speedhorn is making music that way.
The vocals are mostly a Hard-core/Punk style like a raspier Henry Rollins crossed with Phil Anselmo. The vocals are neither good nor bad and since they remind me so much of the two people I just mentioned they kind of lose points with me for unoriginality. In a few spots on the album one of the two vocalists in the band use a Death Metal guttural vocal style that is about as out of the place on this album as Madonna would be. I have no idea what the lyrical topics are on this album as they were not provided with the promo.
The production on this album has a 70's sound to me for some reason. I can't quite put my finger on it. It's a good production, but it's muffled and muddy sounding in select spots. It almost sounds like an album from the 70's that has been remastered. The cymbals could have been toned down a bit too!
The packaging is almost nonexistent as this is a promo and a skimpy one at that. The cover art is included, but it's very bland and nothing to get excited about at all. The promo did have a history of the band with all kinds of praise in it, but that's about it. No lyrics or other info was included for me to comment on here.
If you've been looking for one album to buy in the Doom/Hard-core/Metal/Rock/Stoner/Sludge category, than by all means go out and pick "How The Great Have Fallen" up. It's not a terrible album, it just has some influences from musical genres and from bands that I can't get into. The promo info stated that Raging Speedhorn was "the finest band the U.K has produced in a generation". I beg to differ, and that's a pretty bold statement if you ask me. This is the first Raging Speedhorn album to be released in the US, and I actually do seem them gaining a big following here, but I won't be counting myself among them. I'd rather listen to REO Speedwagon to tell you the truth. Maybe they should become a comedy band. My favorite part of this album is the "hidden" track at the end of it. It's a prank call that has a black dude who's obviously a rapper (or someone pretending to be) calling and answering an ad placed by someone who is looking for people to join his Black Metal band. Shit, this is some funny stuff! The rapper dude goes off on this guy and says how since he's shot some "muthafucka's" he's more evil than him and his Black Metal band. He really hands this Black Metal dude his own ass, and I hadn't laughed this hard in weeks!
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Tracklist:
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| Rating: 6/10 | |
| Release Date: 2005 | |
| Length: 54:55 | |
| Review By: Britton Dicks | |
| Total Reviews: (1) | |
| Bands Website: Go Here | |
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