Ace Audio: "The Good Doctor" - The Protomen

Hey, I never said all the odd stuff was bad, did I? Also, a joyous noise because this is the first song from 2009 that I'm covering on Ace Audio!

So what exactly is this? Well, this is a song from the album Act II - The Father of Death, a rock opera inspired by Mega Man, you read that right, inspired by Mega Man. So if you think that this is going to be some nerdy techno rock song, than think again because these guys know what they're doing.

The first sound of this song is actually a western style guitar sound. You know, lots of western themed movies and games use this kind of sound, you can hear something similar to it in the game Red Steel 2. It continues to go on with slow guitar and heavy bass, and it just sounds beautiful. The drums kick in around the twenty second mark, but stay for a short bit. It's a bit distracting, but not too much so.

As I said, the album is based on the Mega Man series of video games, and makes it a rock opera, not to dissimilar to Tommy. This song is basically the catalyst for the series. For those who don't know, Mega Man is about a robot (Aptly named Rock, and titled Mega Man), who fights the other robots from Dr. Albert Wily, with help from his creator Dr. Thomas Light. Wily and Light were originally colleagues and this song focuses on that aspect, and also why the robots were created in the first place. It's show cased beautifully in the opening lyric. "My father worked the mines until the day it took his life/It stole him from his only son, and it stole him from his wife." this is Thomas Light's first verse and it suddenly gives things a perspective.

The third verse is also really good, and it really does show Tom's side of the situation. "They've waited so long for this day/Someone to take the death away/No son would ever have to say/"My father worked into his grave"." The drums really kick in around this point and have a kind of military beat to them, which I think compliments the rest of the instrumentals.

Next is Albert's verse, and gives a good metaphor "If you replace the working parts, you get a different machine" which could mean many things, even in the context of the song.

Since I talked about these verses separately, I think I should talk about the vocalists. The first one playing the part of Dr. Light is very heavy and it works well, Dr. Wily's singer is a bit off for what I would consider his voice to be, but the singer isn't bad at all, and it does create a nice contrast between the two.

The instrumentals are also nice, and not just the drums and guitars, but also the horns, yes horns. They have horns in this song and they just add something right, I don't know but they just add to the song. It's really nice.

Light continues the song with probably my favourite lyrics of the song. "I never said that men should bow. I never said that men should break."

I also like how the lyrics give Light some good motive and they really make us side and sympathize with him. I don't want to give away all the lyrics to this song, but then again you always have the chance to listen to it. Speaking of the lyrics, if you do look up the lyrics to this song, you'll also get descriptions of what goes on before the verse. I also like the conversations that the two have. Debating about human nature, what the robots would be used for, and ethics.

Overall, I think that this is an amazing song and shows a lot of promise for the album. The instrumentals, lyrics and story all work beautifully and create a unique song, the likes of which I haven't ever head in any song before, not even in the rock scene. Would you guys believe that this album and it's previous one have yet to be reviewed by major reviewers and have still gained a bit of a cult following? Well, if I ever find a copy of either album, I'm going to buy them. This song was just to good to pass up.

I'm the Entity of Darkness, and rock on my friends.

Auditory Abominations: "The Fear" - Lily Allen

So, apparently 2009 is going to be my pick for worst year in music. In some respects this makes sense, every music nerd always says that the 90s died in 1994 after the death of Kurt Cobain, well the 2000s are similar in that they kind of died out around 2007-2008. If you look at the music scene of the early 2000s, yeah there was a lot of pop and electronic, but there was also quite a bit of rock here and there, even if the bands weren't good, they were successful. I've already talked a lot about early 2000s mainstream rock but that scene just kind of faded out in the late 2000s to be replaced with the more marketable pop princesses of Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and the like. Much like how the early 90s was the heyday of the grunge scene, then it shifted into gangster rap and mainstream rock, the early to mid 2000s was the heyday of rap and hip-hop, and mainstream rock before it shifted to pop music. Which brings us to today's specimen!

The song opens with, I don't know if it's a keyboard, a guitar, a bass or what, it's a confusing sound that sounds like all three of them, and yet none of them at the same time. It also doesn't help that the opening lines are "I want to be rich and I want lots of money."

Being fair, I did put the cart before the horse with that one, as the song is a lot like "Royals" in that it's about the problems with the lifestyle celebrities endorse. However, I think I should point out, what made "Royals" a good song was that it was using it's lyrics to mock the lyrics of hip-hop songs that were popular at the time (I say that like it was released a long time ago). This song's lyrics are "here is something in a celebrity based life-style, isn't it awful?" and aside from the chorus, that is really it, it's like "We Didn't Start the Fire" if there was no historical aspect to it.

The chorus itself sounds vaguely auto-tuned, which is odd because Lily Allen is not a terrible singer, being up there with Lorde in not having a beautiful voice, but still sounding good. I can't help but think of Cher's "Believe" when I here the chorus, which was one of the first commercial recordings to feature auto-tune. To give you some perspective, it's like watching a CG animated movie from the mid to late 2000s and saying the animation reminds you of Toy Story, the first movie with movie quality CG animation, except in that case Toy Story actually did look amazing for it's time.

Speaking of crappy club songs, this song uses a lot of electronic effects for I don't know. I mean, I don't think this was supposed to be a club song, and with that strange keyboard/guitar/bass sound that goes with it, it sounds kind of out of place.

The song has a good theme and some decent lyrics here and there, and being fair this isn't the worst song I've ever heard, but when I have a song that came out after this to compare it with, I'm naturally gonna, and I think that "Royals" is the much better song, because unless I was really paying attention, I could easily mistake this song for endorsing the celebrity life-style. However, I think what also makes this song inferior to "Royals" is that this song is boring. Not even comparing it to "Royals" again, I've heard this theme done before in "Californication", the music is something I have also heard a lot of before and even if Lily Allen has a decent voice, she sounds half asleep in this track.

I'm the Entity of Darkness, and next time, something special.

Auditory Abominations: "The Climb" - Miley Cyrus

One thing that I stated that I will never review on this blog is a modern song by Miley Cyrus, yes, a lot of it is bad, but you know what? Miley Cyrus sucked before "We Can't Stop", and being honest, a lot of her newer stuff is at least an interesting kind of bad, hell, I don't even hate "Wrecking Ball". I would actually make the argument that modern Miley Cyrus is actually better than the Country Pop Miley Cyrus, and my first piece of evidence to support that claim is one of her most popular songs from the time, "The Climb".

"The Climb" was Miley's song from the Hannah Montana movie where she ends the persona of Hannah Montana and sings the song about how life is not about the destination, it's the journey. To quote another music critic who is better at this than I and has also talked about this song, it's like staring at this picture for a few minutes:

Actually, I think staring at this one picture would be far more interesting than this song. However, the message must have reached people, or whatever we qualify pre-teen girls as, I usually call them a nuisance, but it must have spoken to them because it peaked at number four on the Hot 100, Number Four, to give you some perspective "Use Somebody" by the Kings of Leon also peaked at number four and Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" topped the Hot 100. That is a pretty big achievement for any song, but now since the decade of "deep and heart-filled" pop songs has slowly been over shadowed by songs about have a large posterior and break up songs, is there any reason to come back to this song? Short answer is no, there is not. The long answer? well...

The opening piano is literally just pressing one key over and over again, give credit to where credit is due, at least "Call Me Maybe" has more than one key pressed in it's keyboard. Then we get a terrible opening lyric, "I can almost see it/That dream I'm dreaming", which is only the first part of the opening line, but seriously, those may just be the worst opening lyrics I've ever heard, yes, worse than "Starships". You know what those lyrics remind me off?

Yeah, that forty second parody of the lame, generic songs from The Thief and the Cobbler (Note: check out the songs from Thief and the Cobbler someday). I mean, the combination of those lyrics and the beyond basic piano, yeah this reminds me of this little joke.

Miley's beginning vocal work is dull, I can tell she isn't as invested in this song as she was in something like "Wrecking Ball". Her vocal patterns and the overall tone of the song sound a lot like "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", and huh...
Between this and my last review there is quite a bit of ripping-off happening here, if the next Abomination I look at makes me think it's a rip-off, I will kill something.

The song tries to be inspirational, especially with the building instrumentals, which alright being fair sound alright, they don't sound amazing, but I have heard worse and you know what that in some cases is the best compliment I can give. The instrumental solo sounds pretty good though, not great, but passable.

I guess since I am on positives, the chorus is not too bad, it does drive the message home pretty well, and yeah there is always going to be an obstacle, but again, just because the message is good does not mean the song is, although the song ends pretty well, that does not excuse the atrocious beginning and middle.

So yeah, modern Miley Cyrus is better because it is at least a lot more interesting. Even still, this song is crap, the instrumentals and chorus are fine, but the song as a whole is a mess with poor vocal work, a lousy intro, and dull and often generic lyrics. The good news is, this song is quite forgettable.

I'm the Entity of Darkness and, I think my next abomination will be a classic.

Auditory Abominations: "Hero" - Skillet

And now, back to the foray of bad heavy metal, last time I looked at bad heavy metal tracks I looked at two songs by big named bands, and one song by a band I did not like. I don't think that it's any coincidence that both Skillet and P.O.D. are Christian Metal bands. Honestly, Christian music should not be so bad, I mean the messages are usually fine, but the performances are usually so tasteless, it's like watching Kevin Costner in Waterworld, not a whole lot of anything really.

Actually, that may also be my biggest problem with Skillet, that there is really just no flavour to them, I mean when you think about heavy metal bands, there is always something that makes them stand out, System of a Down has Serj Tankian, GWAR has their personas, Alice Cooper has his stage act, Metallica has their songs, and Rammstein is Rammstein. Skillet has none of that, no incredible frontman, no enjoyable personas, no on-stage antics, no really amazing songs, nothing, but hey, I picked this song at random, maybe this one is okay.

The song opens with one of the weakest riffs I have ever heard. Compare this opening riff to something like "Du Hast", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "Ace of Spades" or "Back in Black", you know how all those riffs just get you immediately hooked? This one doesn't, and even has some weird stopping effect to it, kind of like Metalstep, the fusion genre of Heavy Metal and Dubstep. The riff also reminds me of a weaker version of "The Diary of Jane", which sounded like a slower and sludgier version of the opening riff to "Sweet Child O' Mine", jeez do we have enough of the ripping-off here?

Out of nowhere, the instrumentals just kind of die and shift into the rest of the song, where I really have no comment to make on the instrumentals, they just sound, meh. The big problem with this song is the vocalist, if you took Chester Bennington, David Draimen, and Ian Gillan, threw them all into a blender and sifted out any vocal power, than you'd get something like John L. Cooper. The track also has backing vocals by his wife Korey, and she sounds like Ke$ha, I have no other thing to compare her to, she sounds like Ke$ha, that's it.

Like I said, a lot of messages in these kinds of songs are not terrible, although this one is kind of obvious, talking about how mankind needs a hero. Insert Castlevania: Symphony of the Night reference here. The message is not terrible, although since this is Christian metal you can assume whom the hero they are reffering to is.

Thankfully, the lyrics aren't total trash, I mean they are quite preachy, and I think they aren't using some metaphors properly, I mean in this context what does "Just another war" mean? Like, another war on religion? A war on Christians? Another war in general? And then it ends with the usual "I'll stand up and fight" lyrics that were so much better in a song like "Stand Up and Shout" because that song actually makes me want to stand up and shout, where tis makes me want to shut it off. But the lyrics are about average, I'm not expecting Freddie Mercury levels of writing here anyway.

Really, the song itself is bland, but the song also has uninspired instrumentals, rather blah vocalists, and meh lyrics. I wonder if this truly is the best we can get from Christian Music, even if not, this genre may be a recurring one on this blog.

I'm the Entity of Darkness, and believe what you want to believe in, that's what I say.