Meanest Reviewer

Read the reviews for Love Beach, there is some funny stuff in there, especially the one about jamming lit ciggerettes in your eyes.
Since I already offended lots of people over isuues as diverse as Styxx, Hendrix and music theory I am trying to be a nice guy these days .
But the kid gloves will have to come off when I review that ELO album that dares to call itself a "symphony"
As far as being hard on bands I like, I really need to do a negative 5 star review on Who Do We Think We Are.

I've been told I write some harsh reviews...but I really don't see 'em. Just blatantly honest.

I really enjoy Cert's reviews, many are a true labour of love/hate.
However his review of Lightbulb Sun is the only one I believe to be a hatchet job. I understand how he came to review the album, I just wish he'd pressed delete before posting it. One blip on a distinguished list of review tour-de-forces isnt too bad though.

My reviews for LOSS OF A CHILD are extremely mean.

They're a young, new, band, I should have cut them some slack. I couldn't help it.

TRIUMPH — Thunder Seven

Review by ClemofNazareth (Bob Moore)
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog Folk Researcher

I was stuck at a stoplight today and had the car window down trying to enjoy a gorgeous afternoon. The guy in the car next to me also had his window down, and was lip-synching away to his CD player, out of which was blaring “Spellbound”. Took me back all the way to my college days when this album came out and I had to listen to several of these songs on the only half-decent radio station in our town at the time. I realized that I hadn’t played it in over twenty years, and considering the totally crappy day I had today and fighting the desire to throw myself in front of a train, I decided to throw on my very old copy of Thunder Seven instead. After that I find myself thinking that there are still a couple of trains that run yet tonight.

“Spellbound” always struck me as rock-in-a-can, even back in the 80s. Rik Emmett has by far the most annoying metal voice I’ve ever heard, and he seems to have no real ability to stay in tune for more than a couple of notes in a row. Also, I get the impression these guys are mouthing the timing of the tempo to each other in studio when they record, or at least that’s the way this plodding song sounds.

“Rock Out, Roll On” – well, ‘nuff said.

On “Follow Your Heart” Emmett's voice is actually sort of okay for the most part, probably because he shares the vocals with drummer Gil Moore who makes Emmett sound good. The sentiment of the lyrics is pretty typical Triumph stuff – chip on the shoulder, go kick ass in the world and don’t let 'the man' deny you your dreams. Yeah team – go, fight, win! The random high-hat cymbals just seem gratuitous, and the bass has no synchronization with the rest of the song at all.

I guess “Time Goes By” is supposed to be the sort-of ballad, with strangled-cat harmonized vocals and occasional mellow passages, but the overall theme seems to be ‘I’m getting old and I need a chick’ or something to that effect. Nice little guitar solo in the middle though – props to Emmett for that.

“Midsummer’s Daydream” is a brief respite from the onslaught, where Emmett treats us to a short acoustic instrumental that I felt like copying a dozen times or so and using to overwrite the rest of the cassette. “Time Canon” is some sort of barbershop quartet lame knockoff of Spock’s Beard’s “June” I guess, but it’s so out of place and abrupt it actually creeped me out the first couple times I heard it.

“Stranger in a Strange Land” starts off as a pretty decent blues rocker, but for some inexplicable reason someone turns on Emmett’s mike and it pretty much goes downhill from there. There’s a part in the middle of this where he tries to hold a sustained screech of a vocal and my cats actually drag themselves off the floor and leave the room. Both of them!

“Little Boy Blues” is a pretty decent soft bluesy instrumental to close the album. Like “Midsummer’s Daydream”, if the boys would have just extended this to the length of the whole album then the thing would have been a much better offering, perhaps even listenable.

As it is, I know that many fans of this band believe this to be their best studio work. I agree. One star.

Tony R wrote: I really enjoy Cert's reviews, many are a true labour of love/hate. However his review of Lightbulb Sun is the only one I believe to be a hatchet job. I understand how he came to review the album, I just wish he'd pressed delete before posting it. One blip on a distinguished list of review tour-de-forces isnt too bad though.

^ No comment...

Pants?

andu wrote: ^ No comment...

As my darling other half would say, hahahahahhahaha...

I just love this one:

eview by Seyo (Sead S. Fetahagic)
[Special Collaborator ]
Posted 6:37:43 AM EST, 2/11/2007

OK, let's be serious!

Listening to "Timeless Passages" (which I would rather call “Endless Boredom”) is a very painful 155 minutes long experience. It is supposed to be a more or less comprehensive anthology of ELOY's career, from 1976 "Dawn" to 1998 "Ocean 2". But if these are "the best" moments of their music, I am surely not going to spend a cent on buying any of studio albums.

There are serious flaws in ELOY music and for me only two are enough. The first, a terrible vocal, which sounds so ridiculous that is impossible to take these guys seriously when singing about Logos, Mental Force, Sphinx, Poseidon, Odyssey, Dawn, Tide and other "higher" topics taken from the obligatory catalogue of "space rock". The guy, whom I never bothered to remember his name, is an awful singer and his English is bad. At moments it is plain funny to hear his singing.

The second, the whole musical concept of these guys is firmly stuck in the mid-1970s PINK FLOYD, TANGERINE DREAM and late 1970s ALAN PARSONS PROJECT. OK, the tutors are musical giants and many artists draw inspiration from them in quite original way, but the pupils in this case are F-mark students. It can be fine to try to emulate or cover, or cite the influences but when you do that in such a bad way, with so little originality and even without some essential composing skills, then we have a problem.

And still, there is the third one; prog-rock haters would certainly cherish the bands like ELOY - everything the people don't like in progressive rock is present here in a condensed form: dubious SF "concepts"; overblown lyrics; sterile and "metallic" production; excessive use of monotonous synth keyboards; aimless guitar solos and dull and bloodless rhythm section; long tracks without any purpose. It is rather ironic that one of the best songs on this compilation is pop-hit "Rainbow" from 1988. Even though performed in a creamy style of 1980s ALAN PARSONS’s tear-invoking sleazy ballads, it is at least a concise and developed pop song.

If you like space-rock, there is plenty of more innovative, courageous, artistically relevant and more listenable bands. If you like German rock, forget about ELOY and start discovering any of real progressive and experimental Kraut-rock ensembles. Don’t waste time and money on this.

On a less critical note, ELOY may exactly be a perfect start for teenage kids to develop a sensation and understand the elements of “ambitious” rock music, whatever that means. In that context, ELOY can be a part of 8th grader collection, together with QUEEN and IRON MAIDEN for instance (I am referring to the time of early 1980s and its music scene).

For collectors (are there any?) there is only one track, previously unreleased 1994 live version of “Poseidon’s Creation”, worth mentioning. For all others, do yourself a favour and stay away from ELOY!