Sara Hammerzmith

My friends, I suppose some of you have heard of Korzus. Brazilian thrash-metalband formed in 1983 starting off their career a little odd, you’d say – by releasing a livealbum first. So far they’ve released eight albums spread over the years, and it’s been four years since they last had an album out, “Discipline of Hate”, which was praised by the press.

The album opens up with the aggressive tones to “Lifeline” – both musically, and lyrically. And this sets the tone for the whole album. Continuely, throughout the album, the theme gets heavier and heavier, and I would imagine it would when your lyrics seem to reflect the political nature of where you are from, especially thinking about the song “Broken”. The whole album is a lot heavier and darker, more intense than “Discipline of Hate”, which I must say I personally don’t find all too good.

The overall production of the album is good – the material is wellcomposed and arranged, but it’s just something that’s lacking on the album. Perhaps it’s the darker theme – but it just doesn’t speak to me.  But all in all – it’s a job well done, and I’m sure the fans will be satisfied.

CDON | Ginza |

// Sara

TODAY IT FINALLY CAME. It was originally released yesterday, but I didn’t get it until today. Really though – it doesn’t matter. FINALLY.

Alright, so The Gray Chapter. It’s been six years since the Knot gave out an album, and this marks their fifth with the name being a homage to the late Paul Gray. I can’t tell you enough how excited I was for this album, and even now when I have it I can’t seem to grasp it’s actually HERE! My lord!

Anyway, with all this being said… let’s talk music, shall we?

I have always said, at least to my friends ever since “Custer” was released, that this album was going to be an absolute killer. And that’s what you’d expect you know, after six years of complete silence.

And you know what?

It is a fucking killer, excuse the french.

I’ve had the album on repeat ever since it came, and I just can’t stop listening to it. All from the terrifying “XIX” (yes, terrifying, I get chills, it feels like Corey’s gonna come and kill me or something) into the aggressive “Scarcastrophe”  to the sweeter “Killpop” to madness in “Custer” and eventually dropping out in “If Rain is What you Want”.

When “The Devil in I” came out I expected the album to be almost like “All Hope Is Gone” – more to the “soft” spectra, rather than their self-titled, but I was dead wrong, and I’m glad I was. Now, “The Devil..” has grown a lot on me ever since, but. The album is like a fine mix between “Iowa” and “Vol 3” with some small, small tiny elements from “All Hope Is Gone”, which is just fine in my opinion. It’s heavy, it’s raw, and the lyrics are as mesmerizing as always. I may have my opinions on Corey, but seriously. That man knows how to write lyrics alright. And I do like to think that the chorus in “Skeptic” is refering to Paul. It breaks my heart a little.

The only thing, if I may say so, that bothers me a tad bit, is that parts of “AOV” reminds me too much of “Dead Memories”. I found myself going “Dead memories in my heart…” when they started chanting in the chorus. The song is good, but perhaps the arrangement was a little too close to the previous one.

Alwaysmaggot asked on Tumblr what your favorite songs of the album was, and I had a hard time choosing. I’m so stuck between “Custer” and “Killpop” mostly, but you know. “Skeptic” is also good. “The Negative One” too. And “Goodbye”. You get the point. I could continue on forever about it. If we talk about the production for a while, I like what they have done with everything. Aside the little… “mishap” in “AOV”, I think it’s a well arranged album, not only in the songs themselves, but also the way they built the CD, the song order. It’s almost like a journey, if you’d like.

Well. As you’ve understood by this entry, I’m mighty impressed by the album. While I did think the album was going to be a killer, I sure as hell didn’t expect it to be THIS good.

Thanks SlipKnot, truly. Thanks.

// Sara

So, as I promised yesterday, I’d write a little bit about my favorite album with Mother Monster, which is “The Fame Monster”. The album itself is pretty short – only eight songs (No, I do not count ‘The Fame’ as a part really). But then we are also talking about eight songs of pure perfection. There isn’t a single one of these I don’t love.

Where do I even begin – The melodyline in “Bad Romance” (and the video, hello? Can we discuss her diamond outfit? It’s perfection!) to the beat in “Alejandro” to the emotions in “Speechless” to the beat in “Telephone” to the lyrics of “So Happy I could Die” to the rhythm in “Teeth”.

Another thing that makes The Fame Monster so special to me, isn’t just that the overall tracks are amazing, it’s also the fact that this is the album that contains my number one Lady Gaga song – “Dance in the Dark“. I can’t even begin to tell you on the Monster Ball – I geniunely thought she was gonna leave the song out, because you know, that’s the kind of luck I usually have with my favorite songs, but nope. She did not. She fucking opened with the song. This song people. This song has been the one to cheer me up so many times, so so many times. I can’t even begin to tell you, and I’m normally good with words. The beat, the music, the lyrics. Everything was just perfect.

So, “So Happy I Could Die” could perhaps be the Gaga song I’ve qouted the most, but it doesn’t beat everything that “Dance in the Dark” is.

// Sara

Figured it was time for me to tell you about one of my favorite albums, and one of them is “Need To Believe” by swiss rockband Gotthard.

I don’t even know where to begin with this album. Here’s the deal. Gotthard close to always makes perfect albums. They are one of those types of bands, together with H.E.A.T and Amaranthe. They just can’t do wrong, no matter what they do. “Need to Belive” is of course not an exception, however, it’s the theme of the album that captures my heart a little more.

I had the oppurtunity to have a chat with Leo Leoni, their guitarist, after the release of the album. I recall I asked him about the album and what it portrayed, or what the meaning was, and he told me “Have you ever heard of being so strong you can squash water out of a stone? The cover means that if you truly believe in something and keep on fighting, you will reach it“.

And that seems to be the main theme for the whole album, you know. There are the average Gotthard songs, but then there are some golden ones. Those songs, that captures me a little extra is the titletrack and “I Know, You Know”. Songs that, excuse my overanalyzing here, speaks a little bit about how society works. Take “Need to Believe” for instance, where I interpret the lyrics, that we all need to believe in order to make a change.

“I know, You know”…. That one, alongside “One Life, One Soul” always makes me cry so hard. “I know, you know, secrets no one ever should keep, but we don’t, let show, and that makes us guilty of the same crime”. How we, as people, see things happen. We see people being tore down by be it bullies or work or stress or whatever, but we never pay attention to reach out a hand. I wanna applaud those people who everyday make a change.

Another thing that makes this album so extremely special is that it’s the last album Steve would record before his death on October 5th 2010.

““We want to encourage. Especially in these times that are full of crisis it is important to believe in something. There is a wonderful saying, that ‘will can move mountains’. If you are positively thinking and never give up, you will win in the end. That has always been Gotthard’s belief.”” – Steve Lee about “Need to Believe”

// Sara

Mwaaaa!! Guess what I got today! THIS PRECIOUS THING!

It’s Honey Hellraiser’s debutalbum! And it’s signed! The story behind this is actually that I won a contest they hosted on their Facebook page. I haven’t written about the win ’til now, because I like secrets like this. I literally went all MIHIHIHIIHIH when I came home from school today and found the envelope with the CD inside on the table.

First of all, in case you people don’t know, Honey Hellraiser is a finnish three-piece band from Karkkila. They have previously released two eps, “All Night Tonight” and “Pick Your Poison“, and this is their debut-album. I was so excited to see this come out as I’ve followed the band a few years by now.

What can I say about the album though? First of all – it’s very typical Honey. Not in the way where the band is plagiarizing itself, but you can still tell from far away that it’s the Honeys. And for you who are unfamiliar with the band – Honey Hellraisers music, how would you say it, pretty pure finnish sleaze in the vibe of Crashdiet with some of the best elements from the 80’s. Even the lyrics are rooted pretty deep in Crashdiet, but with a lighter, and at some points even more humorous vibe to it, as in example “Manager” and “Leave That Bitch”.

This is the kind of CD that you put into your CD player and then you crank the volume up to ten, or as in my case, twenty and blast the hell out of it and just enjoy the distorted guitars and raunchy sounds. The mixing of the albums fits the sound pretty good, although there might be a few tweaks here and there that could be done a little differently.

Over all, I think this is a pretty darn good record. I get so happy whenever I hear the Honey’s CDs and hear how they evolve in becoming better and better for every time and record that passes, and it gives me a lot of hope. The record is promising and I really, really believe in this band.

If you like bands as Crashdiet or Santa Cruz, this is a band right down your alley. Check out the album on Spotify, or buy your own copy at CDON, iTunes or Levykauppa ÄX. I’m just gonna go ahead and blast it just one more time. And perhaps another time after that.

// Sara

It’s been three years since HammerFall’s last album “Infected” was released and in the meantime Joacim has been doing Rock of Ages, Oscar’s been writing a book and they’ve released a wine. But now they band has returned – and they are stronger than ever.

“(r)Evolution” is the ninth album in line and contains 11 tracks + bonsutracks on certain versions. I must admit, I did have fairly high expectations on the album itself, and I anticipated the album a lot before getting it. I got myself the digipack version with “Demonized” as a bonus track, and while I absolutely HATE digipacks (we can talk about this some other time) I love touching the cover. The texture they got on it makes you able to basically TOUCH Hector. Love it!

When listening to the album, the first thing that strikes me is that this album is very, VERY HammerFall. Imagine “Glory to the Brave” meeting “Legacy of Kings” and you got it. While “Hector’s Hymn” is a powerful opener, and it got some of the most EPIC back-chanting-vocals I ever heard, you can hear in the lyrics pretty clearly all the references to the past. I suppose this is intentional – almost like Hector’s resurrection.

I might add, for those of you who don’t know. Hector is their mascot, it’s basically the guy with the hammer on the cover.

While the CD is very strong, it’s still a bit… too familiar. They haven’t exaclty literally re-used the riffs,  “Hearts on Fire” meets “Blood Bound” (“Live Life Loud“), you gota bit of “Templars of Steel” in “Et Inferis” and I could really go on forever. It’s not the exact same – but it’s still not new, you know? I must admit – I absolutely LOVE the idea of having James Michael singing in “We Won’t Back Down”. It fits smoothly, and just adds to the song.

A song I must bring up here is “Origins”. And what is it I love about it? I think you already know. The acapella part. After the guitarsolo, they sing the whole chorus once completely acapella before losing it and hammering on as usual. While this is very typical HammerFall still, it caught my attention to the extent that I dare call this the best song on the album, in my personal book at least. The arrangement is absolutely perfect.

Well – all in all I guess I can just repeat what I’ve said many times. This is pretty much as much HammerFall you can get, and it’s going back to their roots with a lot of the material. But it was good. I’m gonna give them that. They still know how to deliver, even though they didn’t bring that much new to the table.

// Sara

In lack of better thing to write about, I’m going to talk a bit about something that in my eyes, or ears perhaps, is just pure gold. In 2008, Sabaton released “The Art of War“, based off the Chinese military treaties written by Sun Tzu. It contains 13 chapters on warefare – and each of the chapters has a song on the album representing them.

If you were, like me, lucky enough to score the limited edition back in the days that contained a paperback of “The Art of War” understands what I talk about. This is probably one of the core things I love about Sabaton – not only is it good music, or let me say, brilliant music, it’s also very educative. And even if I don’t always fancy the large design on their albums at times, I really like the fact they’ve started to actually include the stories behind everything, and LITERALLY teaching you history.

Anyway – The Art of War is one of my favorite albums of Sabaton. The material on this album is mindblowing – there isn’t a song I’m not enjoying. But what I’m the most impressed with when it comes to this album, are the arrangements. The way the songs have been built up, and most of all, I want to mention the titletrack. Even to this day, six years later, it’s still one of my absolute all-time favorite Sabaton song, purely based on how it’s built up. The vocals, the keys, the guitars, the beat. EVERYTHING. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s almost as if you can feel the battlefield, you know? This song, seriously. The way Joakim just kills the lyrics is… ahh.

But of course – the album is more than that song. How can we forget songs like “Ghost Division”, “40:1”, “Cliffs of Gallipoli”, “The Price of a Mile”, “Union”, “Firestorm” and last but not least – “Panzerkampf”.

This album is one of my favorite albums over all to date – mostly because, as I’ve argued before, the strong material, the composition, the arrangements and also the concept. The whole idea of taking an ancient warfare and representing it so perfectly and flawlessly as they have done, it gets me weak. Nothing gets me weaker than concepts, albums with thoughts behind them. This is why Sabaton is always high at rank with me.

And I truly, with all my heart, recommend “The Art of War” to all of you. If you for some reason haven’t picked it up yet, I suggest you do so.

// Sara