2017 has been a year that his delivered in spades, and with that comes a number of albums that were incredibly disappointing - and for a number of reasons. Whatever those reasons were, each of these albums fell spectacularly short of my expectations, and I'm here to drop them into the limelight for you.
Being As An Ocean - Waiting For Morning To Come
I've waited and waited for this album to click with me, for me to finally get what is going on with this fourth album from Being As An Ocean, and unfortunately I'm still just as baffled and disappointed now as I was when it finally dropped after a couple of months in the ether. If you do understand what I was meant to get out of this record please comment below because I'd love to figure it out. The band that I fell in love with on Dear G-d... is almost entirely eradicated on Waiting For Morning To Come, replaced with pretentious piano interludes and songs played in reverse. There are a handful of great songs on here, but by and large I was completely baffled by what we got with Waiting For Morning To Come. Please tell me why I'm wrong. (The album cover is pretty dope, though.)
Marilyn Manson - Heaven Upside Down
My hopes of Manson continuing in the vein of The Pale Emperor were cruelly dashed with Heaven Upside Down, which instead opted to revisit the sounds that made him such a controversial figure in the nineties. The problem is that Manson is no longer that taboo figure he was in his heyday, and so these tracks don't sound dangerous or controversial at all, but rather annoying and edgy for the sake of being edgy. Every so often there is a glimpse of what made him such an essential nineties act, but for the most part Heaven Upside Down is an utter snooze-fest from an artist who should be producing the exact opposite.
Prophets of Rage - Prophets of Rage
Billed as a return of sorts from Rage Against The Machine - retaining the spirit and ethos but changing the delivery - the first album from this supergroup pretty much failed at every major critical point. There is nothing even close to as sharp or penetrating as Rage's lesser work
even, and Tom Morello's wizardry and mastery of the guitar is sorely underused. Every time something catchy or exciting from Morello briefly sticks its head above the surface it is either undercooked or far too brief. All this record did for me was make me go and listen to Rage's debut again for the four-hundredth time.
In Hearts Wake - Ark
Time hasn't been good to In Hearts Wake, and with output quality declining steadily with every release since the still-great Divination from 2012 it's time for the band to decide whether to take a step forwards or keep making the same album. I was desperately hoping that Ark would be the next step forwards for the band that I was waiting for after Skydancer showed beyond a doubt that you can't just make the same album three times and hope nobody notices. We do. And it wasn't.
Linkin Park - One More Light
Not really sure what I was expecting from the new Linkin Park album considering I'm no longer a rabid 14-year-old fan, but it certainly wasn't One More Light. Now, a lot of people are asking me if my opinion on this album has changed since the recent death of Chester Bennington, and I'm not even going to go near that can of worms in this post - I'll address that in another post - but what I will say is that One More Light is still a lukewarm collection of weirdly outdated (like, early 2000s) electronic pop tropes and truly awful lyricism. I can still objectively say that Meteora and Hybrid Theory were watershed moments in rock music at the turn of the century, but One More Light comparatively has literally nothing to offer the wider world of music and is literally not worth any of your time. At the very least they continued their trend of not giving two shits about their fans' expectations.
Eminem - Revival
Yet another post-turn-of-the-century Eminem album that largely fails. Not since The Eminem Show in 2002 has Mathers replicated the urgency or vitality he showed on albums that revelled in Slim's unhinged insanity, and unfortunately Revival falls into that same trend. At the very least 2013's The Marshal Mathers LP2 was an attempt to find that initial spark he once had, but Revival actually sees Mathers double back on a whole lot of his previous assertions. Where once he was filled with confidence and swagger, here he is driven by crippling self-doubt (which I guess is more appropriate for a rich middle-aged father), and the guy who once mocked Lady Gaga with the line "she can quit her job at the post office, she's still a male-lady" is now dismantling the 45th president's ban on transgender service men. This sometimes becomes an issue more so when he is not only contradicting the persona he has built up on previous albums but previous statements on the album; case in point, he is scathing of the president's racism, but yet still serves up lines referencing his pussy-grabbing a-la "why do you think they call it a snatch". The guy who used to boast how he "Just Don't Give A Fuck" now apparently has a lot of fucks to give, and it culminates in an overlong, contradictory and surprisingly boring return to turn of the century mediocrity.
Which albums did you hope were going to be heaps better than they turned out to be? Let me know in the comments!
Being As An Ocean - Waiting For Morning To ComeI've waited and waited for this album to click with me, for me to finally get what is going on with this fourth album from Being As An Ocean, and unfortunately I'm still just as baffled and disappointed now as I was when it finally dropped after a couple of months in the ether. If you do understand what I was meant to get out of this record please comment below because I'd love to figure it out. The band that I fell in love with on Dear G-d... is almost entirely eradicated on Waiting For Morning To Come, replaced with pretentious piano interludes and songs played in reverse. There are a handful of great songs on here, but by and large I was completely baffled by what we got with Waiting For Morning To Come. Please tell me why I'm wrong. (The album cover is pretty dope, though.)
Marilyn Manson - Heaven Upside DownMy hopes of Manson continuing in the vein of The Pale Emperor were cruelly dashed with Heaven Upside Down, which instead opted to revisit the sounds that made him such a controversial figure in the nineties. The problem is that Manson is no longer that taboo figure he was in his heyday, and so these tracks don't sound dangerous or controversial at all, but rather annoying and edgy for the sake of being edgy. Every so often there is a glimpse of what made him such an essential nineties act, but for the most part Heaven Upside Down is an utter snooze-fest from an artist who should be producing the exact opposite.
Prophets of Rage - Prophets of RageBilled as a return of sorts from Rage Against The Machine - retaining the spirit and ethos but changing the delivery - the first album from this supergroup pretty much failed at every major critical point. There is nothing even close to as sharp or penetrating as Rage's lesser work
even, and Tom Morello's wizardry and mastery of the guitar is sorely underused. Every time something catchy or exciting from Morello briefly sticks its head above the surface it is either undercooked or far too brief. All this record did for me was make me go and listen to Rage's debut again for the four-hundredth time.
In Hearts Wake - ArkTime hasn't been good to In Hearts Wake, and with output quality declining steadily with every release since the still-great Divination from 2012 it's time for the band to decide whether to take a step forwards or keep making the same album. I was desperately hoping that Ark would be the next step forwards for the band that I was waiting for after Skydancer showed beyond a doubt that you can't just make the same album three times and hope nobody notices. We do. And it wasn't.
Linkin Park - One More Light
Not really sure what I was expecting from the new Linkin Park album considering I'm no longer a rabid 14-year-old fan, but it certainly wasn't One More Light. Now, a lot of people are asking me if my opinion on this album has changed since the recent death of Chester Bennington, and I'm not even going to go near that can of worms in this post - I'll address that in another post - but what I will say is that One More Light is still a lukewarm collection of weirdly outdated (like, early 2000s) electronic pop tropes and truly awful lyricism. I can still objectively say that Meteora and Hybrid Theory were watershed moments in rock music at the turn of the century, but One More Light comparatively has literally nothing to offer the wider world of music and is literally not worth any of your time. At the very least they continued their trend of not giving two shits about their fans' expectations.Eminem - Revival
Yet another post-turn-of-the-century Eminem album that largely fails. Not since The Eminem Show in 2002 has Mathers replicated the urgency or vitality he showed on albums that revelled in Slim's unhinged insanity, and unfortunately Revival falls into that same trend. At the very least 2013's The Marshal Mathers LP2 was an attempt to find that initial spark he once had, but Revival actually sees Mathers double back on a whole lot of his previous assertions. Where once he was filled with confidence and swagger, here he is driven by crippling self-doubt (which I guess is more appropriate for a rich middle-aged father), and the guy who once mocked Lady Gaga with the line "she can quit her job at the post office, she's still a male-lady" is now dismantling the 45th president's ban on transgender service men. This sometimes becomes an issue more so when he is not only contradicting the persona he has built up on previous albums but previous statements on the album; case in point, he is scathing of the president's racism, but yet still serves up lines referencing his pussy-grabbing a-la "why do you think they call it a snatch". The guy who used to boast how he "Just Don't Give A Fuck" now apparently has a lot of fucks to give, and it culminates in an overlong, contradictory and surprisingly boring return to turn of the century mediocrity.Which albums did you hope were going to be heaps better than they turned out to be? Let me know in the comments!
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