September 11, 2010

Album Review: A Thousand Suns

I don't understand it either.
A strange thing happened, Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns caught me completely off guard by not sucking. It's strange because upon hearing the first single off ATS, "The Catalyst," I had given up on the band. It was way too... crap to have come from my former favorite band. Then I heard another song LP released called "Wretches and Kings" and thought it was garbage. I heard a third called "Blackout" and thought it was loud and repetitive. Then "Waiting for the End." With that song everything changed. I began to think of the songs less like individual tracks and more like pieces of a puzzle. "Waiting for the End," "Blackout," and "Wretches and Kings" are all one after another on the album in that order. Listen to them together and they don't suck so much. Listen to the whole album together and you have something that's actually much more consistant and coherent than Minutes to Midnight. Track breakdown inside lies ahead.

September 6, 2010

Uh-oh: Metroid: Other M soundtrack is bad

So Metroid: Other M got mixed reviews, but it still looks like a hugely fun game to play. I personally haven't played it yet, but as soon as it released I rushed online to check out the next awesome Metroid soundtrack. Except there was no awesome Metroid soundtrack. It was more like a bunch of ambient sounds strung together. Almost every track had no recognizable melody to it save for the few that were ripped from previous Metroid games. In short, it's almost as if the composer was so afraid or screwing up that he reused some old Metroid tunes and didn't do anything specific for the rest of it. So it looks like we'll have to wait for the next Metroid game to get a decent new soundtrack. Shame, because the Prime series was brilliant musically.