It’s not the weird lame “All songs are one song”, they’re the good “Oh I want more of that type”. They’re really nice, chill and really original with their melodies and harmonies and even effects. Effects/synth lines are not the normal ones you get to hear in almost everywhere, effects they use are really nice and got their own taste like.

MGMT, is their third 3rd, self-titled album, TADA. They really did a great job keeping the vocals, sounds, melodies, effects and all that; let’s say almost the same, In the same good way explained earlier. The album has a video clip for the song ‘Your Life Is a Lie’, which you’ll find below.

First song is ‘Alien Days’, and it sounds so much like it’s something you heard before on their earlier albums, but then you hear this weird/amazing vocal line, effects/synth on the background kick in, 3 vocal lines kick in and the song just commences being the perfect song for this kickarse album. It-is-BRILLIANT! The base line is really sound, and you can hear it almost as high, if not higher, than the guitars, also you can tell that it’s not a digital base line, which sounds really lush. The song just keeps shifting on and on from major to minor, AKA sad to happy, a lot and it’s really sound.

‘Cool Song No.2’, hmmm, is actually the song’s name, HEY! ‘Cool song No.2’ is actually a cool song. The song has this scary feel to it with only percussions and some weird piano mashing, and I mean mashing, on low notes. They just managed to keep the song grand with all these stuff on it. The song then, suddenly goes in a scarier mood, and then guess what, a scarier mood with background noises like of which you’ve never seen; well actually you’ve seen before but I only liked the sound of the sentence so I said it. They used vocals and background noises like these ones here on their song ‘Lady Dada’s Nightmare’. The song is not long, it just ends suddenly, or so you would feel.

‘Mystery Disease’ is their 3rd track on this deadly album. Sadly it sounds cliché in a way; chords, bass lines and such, are just over used, it sounds very familiar, in a bad way; though they were original on their background layers of sounds, the song wasn’t that good, and it also maintains the same rhythm so it wasn’t something special. Actually it has something special, and I mean really special… at the last 30 seconds like, other than that, no thanks.

‘Introspection’ is the 4th track and it has very unique sounds and effects/synth. They just never fail to surprise with the electronics on their albums. The song has a solo past half way in and it sounds a little traditional it does. I don’t know why, but it sounds like that, like there’s a flag somewhere and someone is doing something to it, a good something.

‘Your Life is a Lie’ is the album’s video clip, and it’s like a comic, very happy/hyper sad pessimist song. Don’t ask me how, listen to it, it’s weird. It somehow revolves about the lyrics. Music just keeps the same through out the whole song. It has, LITERALLY, nothing special.

‘A Good Sadness’ is the 6th track, it should have been the 5th song’s name, but they just did this. The song starts after 40 seconds in; they probably didn’t notice they had the red button clicked. Again, they never fail to amaze me with the effects and synth work, it’s really nice. The song though is boring, it just stays on the same rhythm and tempo and it doesn’t sound good, sadly. It has another somewhat empty part at the end. Someone needs to notice that red button.

‘Astro-Mancy’ and ‘I love You Too, Death’ are really weird. There’s nothing to actually explain or tell. It’s kind of like “If a tree falls in the woods what’s the sound it’s going to make?” I bet these 2 songs are that question’s answer. The songs are just a bunch of effects mashed with a faded, very far away, tunnel effect layered vocal line that you have to be high to notice it was there, and no, I wasn’t high.

‘Plenty of Girls in the Sea’ is the link between these past 2 “Experiences”, cause they were experiences not songs, and the next “Thank God it’s an ordinary” type of song. ‘Plenty of Girls in the Sea’ is a good song which has – as said earlier – a mixture of a normal song and an electronic, effects/synth-full track. The track has a very beautiful part half way in where it sounds really different as if it’s a different song, then it comes back to the original lines and style it started, which I think is a really good, original as usual, song.

‘An Orphan of Fortune’ is the album’s finale. The song is a chill, “What a way to end the album!” kind of song. It’s a mid-tepmo’d track with an ordinary drum line and a really nice synth on the background line which is just as dreamy as it gets. The track somehow crescendos, half way, into a really synth-full, yet calm and warm track. The track then just suddenly chills out, and again, it has the same weird ending on almost 4-5 songs on the album.

Overall the album is an “Indie, MGMT” album, so if you’re expecting something to drive/study to, then I reckon you ring your mechanic/professor cause you’re going to sleep half way in, and end up in real trouble. It’s a very mellow, chill, beautiful and warm album, and I mean really feels warm. The album is a big huge like.

Edited by: NJ Bakr

Overocoming Paranoid released 2 EP songs on soundcloud. 

First one is ‘Frabjous Day’ and it’s an electronic based song, which means that the melody, harmony and the beat are all electronic nothing is acoustic but vocals. The song has some nice effects/Synthpads, and I think it’s really cool for someone who’s into that. Didn’t do it for me for am not into that much electronic stuff, it’s still mellow though, so it was grand. The flow of the song however is very steady, so the song ended how it started with melody and beat and almost 80% of it.

Second one is ‘Imagine’, which is a tribute to John Lennon, the great English musician, singer and songwriter.

The song is very, very mellow and slow, and extremely electronic, feels like trap music somehow. The song has an oriental line in the middle, hidden somewhere in the song in there.

I personally thought it was a 6/10 wasn’t special, but wasn’t average.

The band is actually, and to be very honest, making good effort to do something, and it’s really good.

I would say I’m looking forward to seeing what their album is going to be, since they’re working on their first album right now.

Edited by: NJ Bakr

Their first Album, Echlectic doesn’t have a single genre, it’s rather a fusion that ranges from Gothic / Doom all the way to Tango. They also discuss new and powerful topics on their albums, such as many social and religious and everyday common events.

On the 8^th of 2014, Zaiph released their second album named -guess what- Zaiph and it has eight tracks; the album, much like the first one, doesn’t fit into quite one genre. It ranges, again, from loads of gothic, heavy, doom and psychedelic kind of music, but it mainly has the thrash theme all over.

The album begins with the first song -why am I surprised?- every album begins with the first song, this one however sounds rich with a nice guitar riff, Synth/keyboards in the background; But then suddenly the synth is gone, the song all of a sudden turns thrash, and vocals come in, which is not bad, but not good. The idea of having synth or keyboards in general is really good, gives a very nice rich sound, but once you add that, taking it away leaves the song and the listener with a feeling of emptiness, it’s like taking away a bass line. I really like how the song shifts from the thrashy noisy feel, to a mellow part and then back to the thrashy part it was really well done.

‘El Antidoto’ is the second song, it has really nice guitar riffs, as well as drums, and they fit perfectly. The song sounds like an absolute beast. One thing however was really off, rather annoying, and it’s back vocals. It’s really poor and just one line of screaming no harmony, melody, nothing; it’s as simple as someone getting tortured in the background resulting in our torture as well. Yet again, Brilliant shifts in riffs and continuity of how they sound.

The third song; ‘Corrosivo’, and I really really liked it. Again I must say, they know how to write and add riffs and make them sound related and continuous. Another thing is vocals, they were brilliantly done in this song, the back vocals lad is still getting tortured, I don’t know Spanish, but I think he’s asking for help.

Then comes ‘Dance Elf, Dance’ and ‘Psylocibina’, 4^th and 5^{th tracks} of this album. These 2 songs sound very much alike; nice classic chill beats and riffs, it’s like you’re taking a break of the album to just go on after these, I really loved the placement of these songs, how they’re placed right in the middle. ALSO HEY! Whoever was torturing the backing vocal actually stopped, and the vocal started to do some harmony lines. 

The album then keeps on slowly and nicely going back to it’s thrashy feel and groove until it reaches it’s last song, ‘Solitaria Pieza’, but before that,  ‘Flashback’ actually has a nice solo halfway through it that keeps on extending until the last song. ‘Solitaria Pieza’ , comes in with a mixture of both easy mid tempo beats and hard riffs. On the the ending, the song actually has Synth again and a really nice female backing vocal, having that happen, I think the back vocal actually couldn’t take the torture anymore and died, and they had to get another backing vocal. Sadly she only did, roughly, 30 seconds of the song.

Overall the album is worth listening to, really good work done on it and I really enjoyed listening/reviewing it. The album is an 8/10.  

Written by: Abdoul Ibrahim.

Edited by: Duha Mousa

What the band did, was basically just sit together, get beer or whatever they like drinking, and start recording, wouldn’t even say they listened to the riffs, because it was commercial, and in music you got 2 of songs, the good “Oh my god, I love that melody” type, and the catchy “Baby baby baby ohhh” type. Well lads, that was neither. I don’t like it, nor do I remember anything of what I heard.

The album has 12 tracks and only, it seems, 1/4 are good, while others are just all right. ‘Kingmaker’ as almost perfect, as it is the opening track, and gives that feel – rather delusion – that the album is a kickarse that will stun, has some sweet melodies, shredding is rather nice, not as much solos as they used to have so it was alright, has really nice riffs, and it sounds like a proper Megadeth album. Comes then the annoying ‘Super Collider’ and ‘Burn’ giving you the feeling that you’re listening to a rock album, more like a rock jam, with the commercial riffs, and the very normal mid tempo track and easy lines. ‘Built for War’ then comes to try to fix everything by sounding like it’s on the same page as ‘Kingmaker’ as these are the only 2 songs I liked and felt like am listening to Megadeth.

‘Off the Edge’ and ‘Dance in the Rain’, I don’t think we would need to talk much about the names where they sound like 2 songs from Disney. Forget about the rocky groove in these 2 tracks, the riffs on ‘Dance in the Rain’ are not horrible, they are a wee mellow and they fit very well with the drum groove, I really liked the pedals/bass groove on it, but sadly it drifts from good to bad, then a shredding solo that doesn’t feel good, yet it takes me back to Megadeth good old times, but suddenly they have a weird effect on vocals that felt like Rammstein with a horrible drum/guitar groove that just wrecks everything.

‘Beginning of Sorrow’ has the perfect bass line intro, that says something like “Hey we’re back”, but then they hit you in the face with “Beginning of sorrow, there’ll be no tomorrow” and it suddenly feels like a Nickelback album. Even the harmony vocal line, along with the harmony guitar line feel so ordinary and commercial, somehow feels very commercial, but the solo somehow feels good, sweet and mellow. The bad thing about it is that the song feel doesn’t change at all, and it goes on till the end of the album.

However, the album has a guest appearance; Disturbed‘s David Draiman on the track ‘Dance in the Rain’ which sounded, quite alright.

In conclusion, the album is very commercial, with a thrashy effect is all, cute shredding and such. So, don’t expect any thrashy big score on this album for you’ll be disappointed. Basically, with music like today’s music and with big bands only releasing albums for the sake of only releasing stuff with the “Goodbye cruel world “theme to it; I reckon you listen to the album, only to add it your library as “Beginning of sorrow”! The album is roughly a 4.5/10.

Written by: Abdoul
Edited by: NJ Bakr