So after the Framing Hanley thing, apparently I’m the music review bitch now.
 

Do you like games like MegaMan? Not the new ones. Old school ones from the original NES. Because if you did, you’re going to freakin’ love the new Prodigy
album: Invaders Must Die.
I mean, the name itself is a bit of a give away as to what it’s going to sound like after all… Or maybe they’re just being racist, I dunno.

Technically, the album isn’t being released until March 3rd, but with TripleJ playing it all the fucking time, I felt I needed to get it.  I mean, haven’t you heard Omen at least 6 dozen times now? But a bit thank you music pirates that leak shit onto torrents and 256kbs! Bless you, one and all. And also to the Prodigy who actually want you to hear their music online:

 

Anyway, it’s great to see that after nearly twenty years (that’s right – two decades) a band is still able to deliver music that quintessentially sounds like them. 

In a way, it’s a return to their earlier sounding work. Much less industrial, much less violent, and much less over-produced and gritty. Whilst the majority of the tracks would still feel comfortable if you were to suddenly hear them come over the speakers at the club, there are others that are just straight up dance music with a bit of a minor key to the track. <em>Thunder</em> is a stand up example of this, sounding something like Trent Reznor suddenly deciding he was on a Reggae kick. However, it is very reminiscent of work from earlier albums such as Experience.  If you feel you missed out on some of their earlier work because the first time you ever heard them was on The Matrix soundtrack, you can always go here and buy the rest of their music. Mp3s are there if you scroll down.

Perhaps the only thing that’s arguably bad about this album is that not only is every single track in 4/4 time, most have a fairly similar BPM as well. It does make the album flow from one track to the next, like a good concept album where you can only tell the difference between the tracks due to the refrain, it does tend to just lull you into it. It’s not the kind of high “NRG” album that’ll keep you going the whole night because there’s nothing to jolt you out of the groove between tracks.

If you like Prodigy, and you liked the music in games like MegaMan (I’m really serious about that part, It really sounds like a Nintendo soundtrack in parts), this album is a must have. Just make sure you’ve got some good headphones and 40 minutes to relax, instead of having dropped a tab of E.

Normally I don’t go in for Emo bands. The line gets drawn at Screamo… and maybe Sum 41, because Obscure was a good game. Anyway, I’m on this forum and someone posts a thread about really shit house covers. This guy is clearly into his rap music, because the song he posts is Framing Hanley’s cover of Lil Wayne’s Lollipop, saying how amazingly shit it was.

After enjoying the track I retalliated by saying he clearly hadn’t heard Avril Lavigne’s cover of S.O.A.D’s Chop Suey. Don’t pour shit on me for the link, you could have not clicked it after all. What I can’t believe is that there are people in the crowd still clearly cheering, evne after she clearly starts laughing… WTF!? Don’t ruin another good band’s good tracks and think it’s funny, bitch.

Anyway, this is what got me into Framing Hanley at first. Liking the first track, I promptlyhit up Amazon and downloaded The Moment album…
And no, I don’t use iTunes because Amazon is about $0.50 a track cheaper with the exchange rate the way it is and they don’t have bullshit DRM so I can actually put the music on my phone as well as my iPod, never mind about giving copies to friends.

Anyway, back to the review, I was really quite surprised. The rest of the music didn’t sound a damn thing like Lollipop. Hating myself, I decided to check out the LilWayne version. Guy’s clearly got a ghost writer, because that doesn’t sounda damn thing like his other tracks either (yeah, I have to listen to FOX and Nova at work, fucking bite me).

Back to FH. The music’s actually not all that bad. There’s some really good guitar work in there, and the album does vascillate between emo and screamo on a regular enough basis to be enjoyable for someone like myself. For the most part, it is standard teen angsty crap, but there are a few gems here and there, such as the track Hear Me Now.

Singer Kenneth Nixon clearly has some talent, being able to sustain notes for some time without vibrating between surrounding ones, and can go from a falsetto to a scream like a snap. 

Of course there are standard downsides here. The story behind the band name is typically emo, bordering on so standard goth. Prepare for cliche: Band is named for drummer’s dead girlfriend. Now, you may also be tempted to say that they sound pretty commercial… Well, yeah, they were discovered by Brett Hestia. Y’know, from Creed… Yeah. Oh well, don’t let that ruin it for you.

In 2003, our worlds were rocked by the amazing duet between Amy-Lee’s amazing vocal talent and Ben
 Moody’s fantatic guitar work. Songs like Bring me To Life and My Immortal were suddenly on every advertising campaign, in every movie sound track, and playing every 5 minutes on the radio. They were all set to be the next big thing for the Tamagothie crowd…

… and then it all went to shit about 6 months later when Moody quit the band, and their next album sounded exactly the same as the first one because Terry Balsamo is one of the elast creative musicians to ever get on the radio (except for maybe the guys in Jet).

 
So here we had this beautiful sound, which a lot of other bands have attempted to emulate and failed at miserably, until late in 2008. Memoira, a small epic metal band from Finland.

I found out about these guys entirely by accident. I was attempting to download some Lacuna Coil, and must have clicked something wrong. Clearly I wasn’t paying attention, because when the little ‘ding’ sound that tells me my download was completed, I just dragged it into Winamp and hit play… And was thinking two tracks in that “the Coil’s gone for a REALLY different sound this album”.

Actually bothering to look into my playlist I noticed that my most recent edition was not Lacuna Coil. It was in fact a band I’ve never heard of: “Memoira“. So I restarted the album, and decided to sit through the whole thing.

And I was impressed.

Now, honestly, I’m a fan of epic metal to begin with, so this review may be a bit biased. But fuck it, if I hated the music, I wouldn’t have sat there and listened to it, right?

Jemina, who performs for the vocals for Memoira, is every bit the singer Amy-Lee ever was. In fact, if you made Amy-Lee a lot fatter, they’d look kinda similar. Unlike Amy-Lee, Jemina is able to hit low notes as well. She clearly is a classically trained singer. 

Jani Haanpaa and Marko Heurlin, the guitarists, are actually the creative force behind the band. Their strong guitar work, and brilliantly forceful harmonies combine with the talents of the other musicians they’ve brought in to create music that is every bit as emotionally evocative as any of the other great epic metal bands you could care to name.

The album works well as an entire piece, with each track leading to the next rather seemlessly. It’s the sort of thing you can actually put on, lean back with a nice drink, and just listen to with your eyes close for the ~45 minutes it lasts. Not exactly a concept album, but certainly more than just a collection of the songs that were worth recording.

The image that they’re projecting, sadly, is very samey-same. They look like every other modern goth band. Actually, lookswise, the band is basically Fattenesence. The music’s great, but they’re all chubby goth nerds. In a way it’s actually inspiring, because I’m a chubby goth nerd too.

The album has been released through Nightmare Records, which sadly means that it’s not really going to be found in many places outside of specialty retailers. A true pity, as the band is well worth supporting in this early stage of their professional career. On the bright side, It’s not like Nightmare Records have a habit of whoring out the bands to merchandise. You know a band is kind of shit when the lunchbox and action figures come out before their 3rd album.

You can buy the self titled album from Amazon: CD or Mp3 Download.