The Night by Disturbed
Taken off the third consecutive number 1 album for the heavy metal band, The Night, being the first track completed off the album, Indestructible, is symbolic in title and delivery of the exceptionally dark material found in the band’s self-produced studio effort. So much so that the album was originally to be titled The Night.
The album is the first of the four albums that was not produced by Johnny K who masterminded Sickness among others, but Indestructible does feature some of the band’s work from the days of Sickness that were never included in that album (namely the tracks, Perfect Insanity and Divide).
The album is very sincere and close-to-the-band in terms of being influenced, particularly in terms of its lyrical content, by the bad luck that plagued vocalist David Draiman’s life – from bad relationships, to motorcycle accident and even suicide thoughts that flooded his mind as he discovered the body of his girlfriend who had just killed herself.
Draiman says the song "The Night" is, "just kind of meant to portray the night almost as like a living entity that sets you free. You're enveloped by it, enmasked by it."
Draiman screams, wails and taunts the cries of woodland animal (as termed by Q Magazine) in the track and hard hitting gigantic riffs that spat out screeching and thundering bouts of angst like in the days of Sickness. Some say that this makes the song part of heard-before set list, that doesn’t offer anything new. While others say, so what if the band still has the same angst they had ten years ago so long as it still has enough passion to emote a song.
In the end, this is a song that attacks with piercing resonance all Nu Metal syndrome and predictable rock rage that the band is usually pigeon-holed into.
FYI the song Inside the Fire was nominated at the Grammy’s for Best Hard Rock Performance.
Revelry by Kings of Leon
Yet another bold and anthemic song from the new generation’s royalty in rock n’roll, Revelry is taken off the band’s follow up to their chartttopping album, Between the Times.
The song like its album, Only the Night, offers something more arena-ready than the neo-garage style music of previous albums which labeled the band as being a southern version of The Strokes.
This song like most songs on the album was written while vocalist Caleb Folowill was on painkillers after a scuffle with Nathan, but unfortunately, in terms of sonic trajectory, belongs to the less impact-ful part of the album that forks this new collection of music from the band.
It’s not a world beater of a track with an extraordinary chorus that takes Folowhill’s Allman Brothers meets Bono type howl to new levels of stature, like Sex on Fire, which we love to play and hear on TNL (and evidently talk about), and it’s not bursting at the seams with ripping guitar like in Crawl, which we hope will raise its Zeppelin like head on Spinning Unrest nor is the track even a patch on the kind of 80’s balladry that makes Closer so brilliant.
There is however, enough droney guitars and radio-ready melody in this soft rock track to retain some of the classic-rock revivalist sound that would do Creedence proud and has crowned the Kings with royalty in the past. And all in all, the track has some, however short-lived and easily outshone, lighter-waving moments for the stadium we know it was meant to be played in.
But the Allman Brothers would never have done anything like it let alone included it in their experimental follow-up to a charttopping album. Maybe that’s the most important difference.
Whatcha Think About That by PCD feat Missy Elliott
You’ve heard of painting by numbers? Well, now apparently girl bands, like boy bands from the days of NKOB, make music by numbers.
The PCD are following a standard prototype of dance and R n’ B combination that gets them the radio airplay, in their PCD follow up, Doll Domination.
That means that this song like all others as enough R n’ B melody to do justice to Nicole Scherzinger’s so-so vocal talents and enough beat to allow the girls to keep doing the cabaret-style chair tipping-and-turning choreography that even gives the fat couch potato a work out if he’s tuned into VH1.
The song sees Nicole laying down the law to a dead beat boyfriend (no not the Formula 1 guy) that she ought to be the one to go club hopping while he stays at home. And truthfully even Lewis Hamilton might agree to that, when the demand is assisted by the big mama of Hip Hop, Missy Elliott.
This is effectively a Scherzinger track, as her small Britney-breathy voice leads melody and chorus of the entire song and even the back up harmonies (much like the remainder of the album to the extent that the other PCDs are listed as ‘additional’ vocals).
But that’s just because Scherzinger’s just the kind of doll that can’t help dominate – after all who can even name the other so-called fellow PCD’s?