bryce

presumably the one in the thread title. there isn't any acoustic guitar though.

The thing with his voice is more tremolo than vibrato. Mine does the same thing and I try to minimize it, honestly.

For anyone buying the album on iTunes, it seems like the last parade has 2 seconds of silence tagged on the end of this, ruining the gapless segue into boy who could explode. i was originally disappointed with this (an awful feature of the itunes media, or maybe just bad encoding?) however right clicking the file and changing the "stop time" under options to 5:54.741 fixes this beyond my ability to detect it.

It's my least favorite other than maybe astronauts, but I still enjoy it. We're So Heavy and Blue Skies over Badlands are highlights for me... ironically, these are the less stripped down of the songs.

want to buy US tour (since about 2000 or so)

so burn it to a disc with WLR&RR and reburn hospital music w/o it?

The constant build up of Last Parade, along with the overall feel of the song and the lyrics (which are both well written and well-delivered) really makes for an amazing opener. I absolutely love the segue between the first few songs, especially when The Boy Who Could Explode starts up (musicgasm). The atmosphere and ambience represented here is unmatched by so many other bands/musicians and including this is something I really appreciate in musicians. It's little things like this that really set apart something in my mind, and in reality, it's not terribly hard to pull off, it's just that few musicians take the time or put the thought into doing so. Both of these songs are amazing, and I think whales keeps it going nicely. Us Remains Impossible sort of feels like a MGB song to me. There's more to it than that, but it has a nostalgia element to it maybe because of the verse guitar. I go back and forth on it. I really like how On Nights Like Tonight begins, but it sort of loses me when the dual vocal part comes in like 30ish seconds in. I love the "who's at the helm" part though. There's an interesting time signature quirk in the middle of this song... nine bars of three (eight would be standard). A rarity in Matt's music, that--because of my nerdery--I wish there was more of. Volcanoes is fucking incredible. It's my favorite by far with amazing lyrics and music to match. The build when the "chorus" if you can call it that (gonna buy me a volcano...) comes in is my favorite part of the album. The vocal delivery here is amazing and the harmony adds tremendously to it. I think the lyrics to A Silent Army in the Trees offer a great juxtaposition of how war is so nonchalantly accepted in our culture (kids playing with guns and army men) with the reality of kid growing up and actually having to deal with the horrors of war and violence. Unfortunately I don't think the music really carries the same weight of the lyrics, but that's what I get for reading them before hearing the song I suppose. Musically it feels a little too up tempo, but I suppose that could just as easily reflect the lighter side of the comparison and less of the dark that I was expecting. Fought to Fight It makes me think of the Audio of Being. Maybe it's the strong bass line at the beginning or the powerful drums with the future-y accent on some of them (synth or something). Feels slightly like "...Mass Production" perhaps. This isn't really a bad thing for me though and in fact I really like it. I love how the "fought to fight it" section is lyrically omitted on the second pass through in favor of the just the instruments playing. Nice touch there. Vancouver.. great beginning. Sort of a weird song altogether. Fits well next to FTFI. I love the downtown chant and the lyrical change between stepping over sleeping people -> stepping over the dead. I imagine this could be big in concert. Empty's Theme Park.. best closer since House of Smoke & Mirrors? Great atmosphere, vibe, vocals/harmonies, and I love bouncy precision of the drums. This album does an amazing job (sort of like hospital music did) of mixing the orchestration and layering of avalanche (something i love) while still maintaining a very cool slightly dark lo-fi quality to the music. the two really balance one another well and prevent either from being overbearing.

song is really boring. the piano at the end comes in and saves it right before i hit the skip button.

his voice would fail at this one.

Calling him anti-American because of his movies is a stretch and a misunderstanding. I believe these issues are important to him in part because he wants to see America live up to values and ideas it is supposedly based upon. And honestly, regardless of the content, I find his film-making style to be enjoyable.

It's not bad. It feels a lot like Zwan and his solo album, so it's hard for me to really distinguish it in my head as a Pumpkins album. At the same time, this album is more like SD and MC than any album since, however I actually prefer the later Smashing Pumpkins work, so this stuff didn't really wow me right away like I was hoping it would. The vocals are mixed too high which kind of bothers me. United States owns.

That's what I was thinking. Reminds me of 'like spinning plates' or something from kid a.

I agree, it's a really trite line. This is probably my least favorite song on the album, although the flare he adds with pianos and shit help improve it a bit.

i really like this. it's not as immediately awesome as avalanche, but i feel more satisfied after the first listen than i did with white light, which was a bit too ordinary and underdeveloped. these songs have a great raw and minimalistic feel while still conveying a ton of atmosphere with the ambience + other instruments + samples. it's sort of like there's a lot going on, without a lot going on. hard to explain, but this sort of production actually makes me like the acoustic setting rather than want to hit my head against the wall repeatedly (which would have happened if it were just him and an acoustic guitar). it was a relief to find that most of the songs still had a bit of musical depth to them.

champions of nothing is ownage. ballsy way to open an album.

There's a Fantomas connection in the new Tomahawk in that a number of the tracks are more instrumental based with less straight-forward vocals. I think this album could've been done better, but it's still pretty interesting and enjoyable. It's sort of upsetting, however, because Tomahawk is my favorite of Patton's bands because it was more song-based, while still being a bit avant garde and strange.

Tomahawk - Red Fox

this was a surprise.

I'm interested in how it was redone. I really like the music of the original but Jello Biafra's voice isn't really comparable to Matt's (which I think is leagues better).

What killers riff? Sorry if I'm bringing back painful/repressed memories XD

I'm fine with someone liking whatever music. If you find entertainment value in something, that's fine. But it seemed more like you were trying to defend the integrity of a band that I find to be very superficial and musically boring.

dredg - it only took a day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpWpYl6kmNg Acting like retards to bad generic rock music: check. Furthermore, I could throw together a terrible song about doing a line of coke off of a stripper's ass while listening to Immigrant Song. That doesn't make it good or give it any amount of inherent credibility. This band is terrible and represents the most disposable and embarrassing sect of rock music.

Witness the horror.

The title track has like eight lines of backing vocals by reznor which are only in one channel of the audio, and basically unnoticeable unless you are specifically listening for them. Not really a big deal here. That said, I'm sure there are still things the band leaves out of their live set, things more prominent and integral to the songs than that.