Four new reviews at Angelic Warlord

In the past couple of weeks I have updated Angelic Warlord to include reviews of recent releases from Dead Moons Grey, Pastor Brad, Stairway and XINR. Following are the links:

Dead Moons Grey - DMG
http://www.angelicwarlord.com/reviews/d/deadmoonsgrey10.html

Pastor Brad - Break Out!
http://www.angelicwarlord.com/reviews/p/pastorbrad10.html

Stairway - Interregnum
http://www.angelicwarlord.com/reviews/s/stairway10.html

XINR - Beyond Woodward
http://www.angelicwarlord.com/reviews/x/xinr08.html

Next weekend look for reviews of the two Vision re-issues. After that Legacy, James Guest and the Adiastasia re-issue.

For some reason I had thought you already did that XINR review.
Oh well, off to check them out now.

I think our synopsis of Pastor Brad is pretty similar...

Loved the review of Dead Moon's Gray. Sometimes I don't agree with your rating, but I think you nailed this one. Of course, reviews are just well worded opinions, and your's are going to be better than anything I could do.

Keep up the amazing work, bro.!

Good reviews Andy. All very informative and interesting. It's interesting to read your Stairway review as I'm pretty much opposite to how you rate the albums. I'd say No Rest No Mercy and Interregnum were Stairways best 2 albums, you'd say that On Hallowed Ground and The Other Side Of Midnight are. And you thought "Fear And Lies" wasn't a great track, but I like that track the best.

Different strokes I guess

Thanks for all your hard work.

Fundy

Andy's reviews are always honest, and it's fun to see how he rates stuff compared to my personal tastes. You take the reviews at Jesus Freak Hideout. Typically, if it is a band I think I'll love, they will hate it. They are that predictable. With Angelic Warlord, however, he may love the same albums I do, or he might score them lower. You never know. I like the fact that Andy is thorough and fair, and that he is unpredictable. To me, this shows that he really does listen to each album in depth before throwing together a review. With JFH, I don't think they do much more than put in the disc and skip through it sometimes.

Fundy wrote:

Good reviews Andy. All very informative and interesting. It's interesting to read your Stairway review as I'm pretty much opposite to how you rate the albums. I'd say No Rest No Mercy and Interregnum were Stairways best 2 albums, you'd say that On Hallowed Ground and The Other Side Of Midnight are. And you thought "Fear And Lies" wasn't a great track, but I like that track the best.

I'll split the difference. So far, I thought "No Rest:No Mercy" and "The Other Side of Midnight" were their best albums.

alldatndensum wrote:

Andy's reviews are always honest, and it's fun to see how he rates stuff compared to my personal tastes. You take the reviews at Jesus Freak Hideout. Typically, if it is a band I think I'll love, they will hate it. They are that predictable. With Angelic Warlord, however, he may love the same albums I do, or he might score them lower. You never know. I like the fact that Andy is thorough and fair, and that he is unpredictable. To me, this shows that he really does listen to each album in depth before throwing together a review. With JFH, I don't think they do much more than put in the disc and skip through it sometimes.

cool observation.... no one wants to be predictable..... that also means he LISTENED to the disc he got!

I just want to thank everyone for their support and kind words- it makes all the time and hard work I put into the site worthwhile.

I guess you could say that a review is one persons opinion of one album. With that in mind, it is interesting how the opinions here vary regarding the best album from Stairway.

I

Quote :

like the fact that Andy is thorough and fair, and that he is
unpredictable. To me, this shows that he really does listen to each
album in depth before throwing together a review.

Yes, that is correct in that I usually spend more time listening to a CD I plan to review than the writing process of the review itself. So I feel it is important to become acquainted as possible with a CD before putting "pen to paper".

Since everyone else has weighed in on the Stairway album, I might as well do so. I think that "Interregnum" has some good to great songs on it held back by a very thin mix and a weak mastering job. To me, this sounds more demo-ish than a professionally done CD.

That's one of the things that I find quite easy to ignore - the quality of the production. Probably my ears just don't pick up if it's muddy or thin. I almost always just go by 3 ingredients....

1 - The vocals
2 - The lyrics
3 - The music

Production isn't really on the list for me (unlike most people). I'm mean, I'm even a fan of Omega Highway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fundy

I have some albums where the production isn't as high and I love them. While I do pay more attention to production since I started recording, it usually isn't the only part of a CD that ruins it for me. With the new Stairway, though, it is a big hinderance. Also, the songs just did not grab me.