Top Ten Album Ranking: Nine Inch Nails

Queens of the Stone Age, Review of Songs for the Deaf Genre: Stoner, Hard Rock, Alternative Rock/Metal

Queens of the Stone Age

Songs for the Deaf (2001)

Genre: Stones Metal, Hard Rock, Alternative Rock/Metal

Man this album blew me away the first time I heard it, and it pretty much blows me away each time a listen to it now. I had to go to work to Paso de los Libres for a month this year, it’s a very isolated city here in Argentina near Brazil and Uruguay, which has no rock music, what so ever, and much less a live music scene, so I had this album and Slipknots Chapter 5 running 24/7 on my tablet, this help me rediscover the brilliance of this production.

Vocals and Lyrics: Josh’s trademark is vocals are fantastic as usual and the guest appearance of Mark Lanegan on a couple really helps the albums dark and somber moodiness. 10

Instrumentation:

Guitar: The guitars on this album are great Josh’s riffs, licks and solos serve perfectly each song, and as a nice plus Dean Ween plays on a couple tracks.

Bass: Nick Oliveri’s simple but lumbering bass playing was the basic model for me to copy when I had my own stoner metal band.

Drums: Dave Grohl should scrap the Foo’s and start drumming full time for these guys.  7.8

Melody and/or Structure: The equilibrium between these two aspects is what sets this band from the rest Josh use of melody is enviable, and the guy can pack some really interesting riffs in each song.  10

Sound, Production and Feeling: This is the first album that I have encountered the stoner sound, and it fascinates me, the dark, low end sounding production. Josh manages perfectly the dark and sexy mood of the album not letting you have everything at once, and there are a ton of production treats in this album. 10

Songs: Every song on this album is a classic. You can divided the songs in two groups: the Rocker and the experimental stuff, it’s all good.  14

The Bad: Nothing. 

Originality: This album probably is a defining record for Stoner Metal, a album that tons of bands use for reference and it was a break though album for these guys they gain relatively mainstream status.  10

Overall: 61.8

Foo Fighters album review Sonic Highways (2014) Genre: Hard Rock, Post Grunge, Alternative Rock, Pop Rock

Foo Fighters

Sonic Highways (2014)

Genre: Hard Rock, Post Grunge, Alternative Rock, Pop Rock  

If you are a music nerd like me you'll really appreciate this project, but you must see the documentary series that has the same name made by Grohl to really understand what Dave trying to do on this  fantastic album, in many ways its similar to Dave's Sound City Project.  

                                 

Vocals and Lyrics: Dave Grohl, does an OK job but vocally and lyrically none of the songs really stand out, that's what I thought till I saw the Sonic High the documentary, and I discovered how personal the lyrics are to Grohl,  the songs have tons of references about the history of the music of the places that Dave visits, for example on one of the songs Dave makes a couple of references to Gary Clark Jr. and if you didn't see the episode of Sonic Highways about Austin Texas, this it just flys right past you.10

Instrumentation:                                                                

Guitar:  Smear and Shiflett guitar playing is one of more interesting aspects of the album, their playing has a more of a Rock and Roll feeling, which is refreshing.Gary Clark Jr. is one of the guest guitar players with Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick and Joe Walsh from the Eagles

Bass: Nate Mendel, is one of the most uninteresting bass players in rock, his playing is as basic as they come.

Drums: Taylor is a solid rock drummer, his executions flawless. 7.5

Melody and/or Structure: Grolh knows how to make great songs.  10

Sound, Production and Feeling: The production of Mr. Vig leans on adding extra musicians to add to the songs making them sound bigger and more epic at moments. Now after watching the doc series I want to kill Vig the A-hole instead of taking advantage of the sound of each of the special places that they used to record  the album, he just used his standardized style of mixing, what a wasted opportunity. 8

Songs: It's good from front to back 8

                                                                                                                         

Originality: Fascinating project a real treat for music nerds like myself. 10 

Overall:53.5

Hey guys are your opinions on this album; I love comments good and bad.