Isbjørn

Artist: Bon Jovi
Album: Slippery When Wet
Year: 1986
Chronological position: Third album
Genre: Hard rock/glam metal
Expectations before listening: The bad kind of cheese

Quote:

Originally Posted by Me, about 50 minutes ago **** it, now I have Bon Jovi on my last.fm

Bon Jovi is among those bands I try to avoid because my first impressions were really, really bad. If we hadn't selected this in our little club, I simply wouldn't have listened to it, unless it was some sort of new JB week challenge.

Why don't I like Bon Jovi? Their lyrics are cliched and dull, their songs are overly repetitive, and those synthesizers sound like they inspired Mylo Xyloto by Coldplay. That album had some bad synthesizers. Maybe I'd enjoy Bon Jovi if I was above legal age for drinking, drunk, and at a concert full of sweaty people with much hair and little clothes. Unfortunately, I'm not.

2/5

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Tristesse

I heard Slippery When Wet for the first time when I was about 13, and I adored it for about a year. Then I grew up and started taking an actual interest in music and realised it was a bit crap really.

The hits (You Give Love A Bad Name, Livin' On A Prayer and (to some extent) Wanted Dead Or Alive) are good and I still enjoy listening to them, but the remainder of the songs are just poor fillers and aren't worth listening to at all.

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The Batlord

I wonder why, ya perv.

Love that album. Yeah, it's definitely more Sabbath than a lot of other, later doom bands. But back then doom metal didn't exist. The only band that had really picked up with what Sabbath was doing was Sabbath. So Witchfinder General were were more like a tribute band than anything else. I guess they may have evolved the sound a tiny bit, but from what I understand their place of honor in doom circles is mostly due to being the only band since Sabbath to have done that kind of sound, and I suppose they influenced other bands just because of that.

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Trollheart

BOO to you both! Bon Jovi roolz! Seriously, I think that album is excellent and won't have a bad word said about it. From "Let it rock" to "Wild in the streets" I enjoy every single moment. Hell, maybe I'm just old. No maybe about it. But talk **** about Bon Jovi again and I'll meet you at dawn where we can select our weapons and sort this out once and for all.

Do.
I.
Make.
Myself.
Absolutely.
Crystal.
****ing.
Clear??

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Taxman

Bon Jovi makes me vomit. Nearly as disgusting as Phil Collins and that's saying a lot.

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Isbjørn

An axe is my weapon of choice, of course

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Tristesse

Even 'Social Disease'? Seriously?

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Isbjørn

Yes. Sorry.
Moving on...





Artist: Ozzy Osbourne
Album: Blizzard of Ozz
Year: 1980
Chronological position: First solo album
Genre: Heavy metal
Expectations before listening: Annoying vocals that don't go well with the music

I read Unknown Soldier's review of this album, so this may be a bit coloured, but I'll try to make it as much my opinion as possible. I thought selecting this album would be appropriate since it sparked some discussion in his journal, you know, why shouldn't I join in?

This was my first time hearing solo Ozzy, apart from a couple of songs. What can I say? I prefer Black Sabbath, by far. I know it's meant to be different, but it's a change for the worse, in my opinion. Ozzy has a fairly limited vocal range, and his voice does not fit with the excellent guitar riffs of Randy Rhoads; he's not the right type of vocalist. I also think his singing is pretty dull at times, you know, lacking expression. In the part of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" that starts at around 3:19 (please PM me if you know what the professionals would call it), his vocals are great. Why did he give that up? I wonder what it would sound like if Dio sang in “Mr. Crowley”, instead. I feel that he would be an appropriate vocalist. Then there's the keyboards. Why couldn't they just leave them out? They sound terrible, and ruin everything, in my opinion. The ones at the start of “Mr. Crowley” sort of resemble an organ, but not quite. I think all of the keyboards on the album should be replaced by an organ, surely Ozzy could afford a Hammond or something.

Tl;dr version: Good riffs, good solos, bad vocals, bad keyboards, okay album.

3/5

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Isbjørn

Artist: Amon Amarth
Album: Twilight of the Thunder God
Year: 2008
Chronological position: Seventh album
Genre: Melodic death metal
Expectations before listening: Commercialized, watered-down death metal

This was chosen by one of the others in the album club, who just joined earlier this week. He's really digging Amon Amarth. Prior to this, I had heard... one song of theirs, I think? I didn't take much note of it, thus I didn't really know what to expect before listening. Therefore, I just assumed that this would sound much more commercialized and kind of like, say, In Flames. I must say, I was positively surprised. It's very melodic, but it doesn't sound as if it was written for radio, and the growls are tolerable. Still, I think it gets a little too much of the same at times, but maybe that's just a weakness of the subgenre, what do I know. Decent album.

3.5/5

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The Batlord

I love certain Amon Amarth songs, but I bought Versus the World a while back, and while, again, certain songs have my soul, a lot of the rest are just kind of dull. I'd love to love a band that sings of nothing but Vikings, but I think they will forever be patchy to me.

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