Posts Tagged with CD review

A bicameral review of Def Leppard’s “Def Leppard”

Posted on

Def Leppard banner

When it comes to reviewing the latest album by pop-metal maestros Def Leppard, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, at 43 years old, I want to be fairly critical and give an honest opinion. On the other, having seen the band live for the third time this past summer, it’s clear some of their songs will be forever etched in my mind, and as musicians they’re at the top of their game.  So I’ve decided to review the eponymous Def Leppard as my current self and as the audience to whom Def Leppard probably mattered most, 15-year-old me.

43-Year-Old Self: Hello, younger self.

15-Year-Old Self: Hey old self. Hey, do you have flying cars and cool stuff in the future?

Continue

Metal Monday: Iron Maiden’s Dance of Death

Posted on

Cover of "Dance of Death"

Few bands besides KISS and Iron Maiden are known more for their iconography than their music.

KISS may have transformed their fans’ nostalgia into big bucks, but as Maiden show on Dance of Death, they seem to want to prove their fans right in thinking they are still relevant.

Continue

Metal Monday: Faster Pussycat’s Faster Pussycat

Posted on

Faster Pussycat (album)

If you want to understand why glam metal was so popular in the late ’80s, you should listen to a band that had more bite than Poison and better sense of the absurd than Cinderella, which is to say: Faster Pussycat.

Named for the Russ Meyer movie Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill! the band was just as ludicrous and awesome as its namesake. On its debut album, the band is rough, cocky and a hell of a lot of fun, whether their lyrics are making sense or not.

Continue

Metal Monday: Def Leppard’s Hysteria

Posted on

Cover of "Hysteria"

With an album as popular as Def Leppard’s Hysteria, the memory of when you first heard it may be overshadowed by the point at which you became sick of it.

As with Def Leppard, so went the fates of pop metal — they reached their height of fame with Hysteria, released in 1987, and it’s arguably one of the last great albums in the genre. The numerous singles released from it kept it on the airwaves for years, and that was part of the problem.

Continue

Middle-earth music: The Return of the King

Posted on

Soundtrack - The Return of the KingComposer Howard Shore draws from the themes he created for previous films in Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Lord of the Rings for The Return of the King, and this score caps the trilogy off superbly.

Continue

Werewolf songs from Sweden

Posted on

Werewolf Songs (cover)Given the subtle, moody atmosphere created on the new CD by Swedish publisher Malört förlag, Werewolf Songs, weaving in dark emotions and barely-suppressed savagery, it’s fair to say the Swedish werewolf’s bite is nastier than its bark.

The collection was released as a companion piece to by Malört förlag’s new reissue of ethnologist Ella Odstedt’s Varulven i svensk folktradition (The Werewolf in Swedish Folklore) which was first published in 1943. The songs on the CD, by musicians from Sweden, Finland, Belgium, England, and the United States, are based on the book.

Continue

SN Google Plus