Falloutbrad Reviews

Yes - 90125

Almost every band has a few “classic” albums. Those albums that every diehard fan says that you need to listen to first and foremost if you want to get into a new band or artist. Mostly, those albums are very early ones, but there are some bands that have classic albums later on in their discography. A lot of fans of a band like Rush, for example, may love 1977’s A Farewell To Kings, or 1976’s 2112, but 1981’s Moving Pictures is considered a classic as well. That’s an essential album from them that features a synth-driven prog-rock sound that’s far removed from their 1970s prog material, but it’s still great, regardless.

Another band that follows the same formula as Rush is Yes. I’m not super familiar with Yes, having only heard a few of their albums, mainly 1972’s Fragile, but I also really love 1983’s 90125. The version of Yes on the latter album is basically not the same version as the band on the former album, as members and their sound changed, but I’ve always loved that record. It has what I believe is their biggest hit, “Owner Of A Lonely Heart,” but it has a sound that I’ve always loved. I just talked about Asia’s 1982 self-titled debut, and how I’ve owned the album a few times, but I can say the same thing about this one. I’ve been wanting to get it again, it’s just never in stock anywhere and/or I don’t have the money. I saw the album was only $5 on Amazon recently, and I picked it up, along with Asia’s self-titled and Deep Purple’s Perfect Strangers, so I’d have a little 80s rock haul.

Michael McDonald - Motown

Have you ever found an album or an artist that you took a chance on, because you were curious and/or the album(s) was/were cheap, so you wouldn’t be losing much of anything if they weren’t good? That just happened to me recently. I went to a local Goodwill, and I found a random copy of Michael McDonald’s 2003 covers album entitled Motown. It’s exactly what it says it is: a covers album of Motown songs. That sounds like a great idea on paper. Give a classic blue-eyed soul / yacht rock singer an album’s worth of Motown songs that he can definitely make interesting.

He definitely makes them interesting, almost utilizing a yacht rock sound on these songs to make them feel more like Doobie Brothers songs than the actual Motown songs. They’re still the same songs at their core, but he puts his touch on them to make them more in his style. The thing with covers albums is that there isn’t much you can say about them, aside from the covers being good or bad. The artist didn’t write those songs, so you can talk about how they interpreted them, and I think McDonald interprets them well. The album is a little too long, clocking in at almost an hour, and the songs do end up sounding similar, but they’re still fun and catchy, or emotional when they need to be.

Rush - Moving Pictures / Signals

Before settling on writing about the first Rush albums of the 1980s, 1981’s Moving Pictures and its follow-up, 1982’s Signals, I was thinking about working on a piece titled “I Finally Understand Rush.” I did that with the Irish band U2 a few years ago, where I got a greatest hits albums of theirs and realized that U2 is mainly a singles band for me, although I really love some of their albums. I understood their music a lot more, and I began to appreciate it in more ways than one, but I could never get into Rush. I had multiple albums of theirs, even the classic ones, but they just didn’t click for me. I’ve been wanting to get into them for years, because they’re a band that I feel I should like. I don’t know what it is, but I ended up getting Moving Pictures a few years ago, and I’ve really grown to love it.

I’ve wanted to get into more of their 1980s stuff, because I realized something: I really enjoy their 80s material because of how accessible they became. I ended up picking up a lot of some 1980s Rush CDs on Mercari, as well an early 1990s album from a flea mall. but the one from that haul I’ve been playing a lot is 1982’s Signals. I’ve never listened to this album before, but I was curious to check it out if I thought Moving Pictures was so good. I’ve been listening to the album for the last couple weeks on and off, and I’ve got one major takeaway from it (which is why I’m reviewing both of these together): this is basically Moving Pictures, Pt. II.

Deep Purple - Perfect Strangers

Out of every 70s hard rock and proto metal band, Deep Purple is a band that has escaped my radar. I haven’t spent much time with them outside of a few albums of theirs from the early 1970s, namely 1972’s Machine Head. That’s the one everyone knows, but I do like some of their other albums, too. I don’t know anything from the 1980s and onward, but I’ve always been hesitant to listen to a lot of 1960s and 1970s artists’ work from the 1980s and onward. A lot of the times, these bands and artists struggle to adapt with the times, whether they’re still making music that was popular 20 years before the decade they’re currently in, or they try to make an album with current trends and it sounds painfully dated and generic.

Some bands update their sound just enough to make it work, and that’s honestly what Deep Purple did with 1984’s Perfect Strangers. I saw this album on Amazon last week on sale, so I went ahead and grabbed it, especially because I was in the mood for some 80s rock and prog. I also got a couple other albums I’ll be talking about, which are also 80s rock and prog-ish, but I wanted to talk about this one first because it’s honestly my least favorite. I still like this album, but it’s very basic hard-rock with a metallic undertone. They dropped the blues-rock influences from their 1970s work, and went for an updated 80s hard-rock sound, especially reminding me of bands like Def Leppard, Van Halen, and Guns N’ Roses. Those bands kind of got lumped in with the hair metal scene, but they were much more straight forward hard-rock / metal than anything else.

Perfect Strangers does have solid moments, especially the title track, and “Nobody’s Home,” but the rest of the album is fine. It’s cool that this is their first album in nine years, at least since 1975, and they still sound good. They updated their sound to make it a bit more current, but there aren’t flashy new wave synths everywhere, or anything like that (not it would be a problem if there were; Van Halen dropped 1984 the same year, and it’s a great hard-rock album with synths that don’t feel dated whatsoever). I just haven’t found myself going back to this album much, because of how basic it is.

Queen - A Kind Of Magic

If I had a nickel for every time I found a Queen album at a particular Goodwill, I’d have two nickels. That’s not a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. I found a copy of 1980’s The Game by Queen at a local Goodwill a few months back. I was really excited about it, because that’s my favorite Queen album. I never thought I could get that lucky again, but I thought wrong, because just recently, I found a copy of 1986’s A Kind Of Magic at that same Goodwill. I couldn’t believe it, and this one is one of the few Queen albums I haven’t heard yet. I haven’t listened to their late 80s and early 90s stuff, at least before frontman Freddie Mercury passed away. I always was under the impression it wasn’t as good, but I know that’s not the case now.

A Kind Of Magic is a great album, and a kind of underrated one at that. I didn’t know a lot about this album going into it, other than its weird artwork (where the band are huge muscle men that are very 80s looking), especially where it doesn’t have any big singles that people would instantly recognize. There are a lot of great songs here, though, but what’s funny is that this album is an unofficial soundtrack to the movie Highlander. I’ve never seen it, but this album has a lot of callbacks to the movie, even including some dialogue from the movie by Clancy Brown, and some songs even seem to reference the plot of the movie. The songs are cool, but the lyrics make no sense a lot of the time.

The Alan Parsons Project - Pyramids

I’ve made it clear that prog-rock isn’t my jam, at least 1970s prog, because what I’ve found is that I really enjoy 1980s prog. The same bands that I can’t get into from the 1970s has some great stuff from the 1980s that I really can get behind. I’ll talk about that more in a few other reviews, but I’ve found myself enjoying the 1980s material from bands whose 70s work I’m just not as invested in. One of those bands is The Alan Parsons Project; I got a few of their albums at a local Goodwill a couple weeks back, one being a 1983 greatest hits (I haven’t spent much time with that one, only because I got two actual studio albums that I wanted to get into more), 1982’s Eye In The Sky, and 1978’s Pyramids. I’m not super familiar with this band, only knowing a couple of songs and seeing the artwork for a couple albums, but I was really curious to give those a listen, especially Pyramids.

I’ve been in a proggy mood as of late, but I’ve found myself not going back to Pyramids all that much. I love Eye In The Sky, but Pyramids just hasn’t been doing much for me. I’ll have to remind myself to listen to it, because I end up forgetting about it. Not because it’s bad, but I have so much else to get into, or that I want to listen to. Pyramids is basically a typical 1970s prog album, and you can take that in a few different ways. Some people love 70s prog, complete with its expansive song structures, lack of real hooks, and the myriad of influences that get thrown into the mix, but other people hate it. I’m indifferent, but I’ve tried to get into a few bands and albums. I found that I like these bands’ output from the 1980s when they got poppier and more accessible. I still like this album, and I’ll listen to it, but I don’t go back to it much. It’s not that there isn’t anything to go back to, but it’s that there’s too much.

Rush - A Farewell To Kings

I’ve tried for many years to get into Rush, and I’ll be honest — their late 70s work does almost nothing for me. I do like 1976’s 2112, and I also like their early 70s hard-rock stuff, but I mainly enjoy their 1980s electronic / synth-driven prog-rock. It has poppier elements to it, and albums like 1981’s Moving Pictures and 1982’s Signals are very accessible yet still progressive and unique. I like Rush a lot more now, and I’m glad, because they were a band that I just couldn’t get into, but their late 70s work still isn’t for me. I like some prog-rock, but 70s prog-rock is a beast all its own. Today I wanted to talk about one of their 70s albums, specifically 1977’s A Farewell To Kings, and I may have already reviewed this thing a long time ago. I don’t know, though, but what I do know is that this is album is very much up its own ass with how self-indulgent it is.

Metallica’s Load & ReLoad Are Good Albums: A Retrospective

Metallica’s 1996 album, Load, just turned 30 a few days prior to writing this, and I had the urge to revisit the album, as well as finally get a copy of the 1997 follow-up ReLoad, because I’ve been wanting to get a copy of that album forever, so I can be one step closer to completing my Metallica collection (I just need St. Anger now, and if I wanted to, I can try to find Lulu, but I’m not dying to get that one). I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Load and ReLoad; when I got into the band, I loved the thrash of the first four albums and the huge and gnarly heavy metal of The Black Album (yeah, yeah, yeah, they “sold out,” but it’s good), but Load and ReLoad always both intimidated and bored me. I never really liked these albums, but I also didn’t really understand what they were and their place in Metallica’s large body of work.

I’ve gotten more into the blues and blues-rock over the past few years (I was always a fan of 1960s and 1970s blues-rock, but I stopped listening to it for awhile, so I’ve gotten back into it recently), and I’ve begun to appreciate the albums more. These albums also require some context, too, because if they put out by any other band, or even a side project that didn’t have the name Metallica on them, they’d probably be lauded as pretty damn good albums by people. Because they’re Metallica, and people were expecting breakneck thrash albums; they were already disappointed by 1991’s The Black Album, so to come back five years later with haircuts and a bluesy hard-rock sound, that made people even more disappointed.

I really enjoy these two albums, though, especially looking at them for what they are. They’re hard rock and blues-rock records with some really gnarly, sludgy, and heavy riffs, and some surprisingly good vocal performances from James Hetfield. There are a couple of major problems that these albums have, and that could be why people have decided these records aren’t good, and that they’re a stain on Metallica’s legacy. The first issue is that these are two albums; I guess they were originally going to release these two albums as one double album, but the label said not to. They split them up, but instead of making them 40 minutes each, both of these albums are 80+/- minutes a piece. That’s way too long, which goes along with there being two albums. Not only are there two albums, they’re both the length of a double album.

Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster - II

The same day I found a copy of Corrosion Of Conformity’s Wiseblood, I found another southern metal album that I was excited to see — Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster’s sophomore album, 2007’s appropriately titled II. I remember seeing it at a local flea mall for a while, but it wasn’t in the booth I remember seeing it at. I found it in a totally different booth, and it was only $2, so I went ahead and grabbed it. I’ve been seeing it for awhile, but I’ve always passed on it every time I’ve seen it. I decided to finally get it, but I didn’t know I’d be finding some more southern metal as well. I mentioned that COC album kickstarted a rabbit hole down southern metal, and this is one of them that I found to go along with it. I absolutely love this album, by the way, but calling it southern metalcore is a bit misleading.

This isn’t really a metalcore album, per se, but it’s a southern-metal album with some breakdowns. You can call it metalcore, and that would be fine, but there’s not a lot of “core” to be found here. It’s more or less sludgy and southern-fried riffs with gruff vocals and a few breakdowns here and there, which I really like. This band is mainly comprised of former Underoath vocalist Dallas Taylor, and he sounds gnarly throughout this thing. His vocals may take some getting used to, or they might not be your thing at all, which is completely fine. It took me a minute to warm up to them back in the day, but I do really like them here.

Aerosmith - Rock In A Hard Place

By the early 1980s, the music landscape had begun to change quite a bit; new wave, post-punk, heavy metal, and even early forms of hip-hop had begun to ease their way into music, but a lot of bands and artists that were popular in the 1970s had to find new ways to adapt. Some of them wouldn’t, at least not for awhile, anyway. Rock band Aerosmith, who just had their ride at Disney World remade into The Muppets, were one of those bands that didn’t really adapt until the late 80s and early 90s. They were huge in the 1970s with their brand of blues-rock / hard-rock, but by the 1980s, those types of bands were considered old and out of date. They would showcase that with their first album of the 1980s, and their only album without founding guitarist Joe Perry, 1982’s Rock In A Hard Place.

I found it at Half Price Books recently, and I decided to get it, because it’s not a common Aerosmith album that you see everywhere, but I also want to get more Aerosmith in the collection. I have a 1980 greatest hits album that isn’t on streaming anymore, but I also have a 1988 greatest hits album called Gems that focuses on the heavier and bluesier side of the band. It’s got a lot of deep cuts from each album up to the early to mid-80s that’s actually really awesome. Around that same time, they would have a resurgence within hair metal and glam metal, ultimately adapting that style and it worked well for them. They really became a lot more popular again than they were, but the early 80s were the low point for the band. Their creative spark had almost run out, for the lack of a better phrase.

Corrosion Of Conformity - Wiseblood

There’s something to be said about bands who change their sound a good bit into their career, and people actually enjoy it. Such is the case with Corrosion Of Conformity. They started off as a hardcore and thrash band, but they turned into a southern-metal, sludge metal, and hard rock band with elements of their classic sound. I had only heard their early 90s albums that moved into that latter sound, and they’re pretty cool, but I did pick up one of their earlier albums last year at Half Price Books. They were signed to Metal Blade for a brief time early in their career, and they put out some great stuff with them. Their thrash and hardcore albums are pretty cool, especially the one I have, but people really love their newer sound. I say that, but those albums are over 30 years old at this point, so they aren’t new anymore

They did just release a new album that I’ve heard is pretty good, but I’m not talking about that one today. I’ll be talking about is 1996’s Wiseblood. This is the one album from the 90s I haven’t heard yet, but I found it at Goodwill recently. I couldn’t believe it, because you never see stuff that good, but I also got a Queen album and some Alan Parsons albums, so I made out good. Someone must have donated their collection, or some of it, anyway. The album turns 30 this year, actually, so I figured it would be cool to get into it and spend time some with it. This album actually took me slightly down a southern metal rabbit hole, so I’ll be talking about a few other albums in that vein, but this is the one that kickstarted that rabbit hole for me.

Son House - The Original Delta Blues

The blues are one of my favorite styles of music, especially over the last handful of years, but it’s very misunderstood. Sure, the movie Sinners raised its profile once more, but the genre has faded back into obscurity with only a few names being easily recognizable. One of those names is not Delta blues singer and songwriter Son House, but that’s not a bad thing. Son House is one of the originators of the Delta Blues sound, starting in the 1920s and 1930s alongside Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters (the latter two took a lot of influence from his work), but he faded into obscurity, as a lot of blues artists did in the first half of the 20th century. Music wasn’t as widely distributed as it is today, so if something was popular within a certain region (hence the term “Delta blues,” for example), chances are, it never got outside of that region.

Maya Hawke - Moss

There are a lot of actors that double as musicians, and now that Stranger Things is all said and done, let’s talk about Maya Hawke and her music career. I knew she started a music career a bit after she joined the cast of Stranger Things, releasing her debut album in 2020, but I remember listening to her sophomore album in 2022, entitled Moss. I picked it up recently, and I’ve been listening to it here and there. I’m not much of a folk fan, but I remember thinking the album wasn’t half bad. For $4.99 at Half Price Books, I thought, why not? I’m glad I got it, because it’s a pretty cool album, despite not being something that I’ve been coming back to a lot.

I’m not coming back to this album for one main reason — it’s very slow and delicate, versus having a lot of power, grit, or energy. There is a folk-pop sound running throughout it, but it’s quiet and slow, versus being more on the pop side of the spectrum. I love her voice, as it’s very hypnotic and catchy, but her sound is very sparse. There are no drums on the whole album, as a traditional folk album does, and it’s better for it. The album is kind of long, clocking in at 45 minutes, but it doesn’t feel its length. I had to look to see how the album was, because I thought it was a lot shorter.

Anthrax - For All Kings

Out of every band in the Big Four of Thrash, Anthrax is my least favorite; it’s not that they’re bad, but I haven’t really sunk my teeth into them enough. I’ve heard a bunch of their albums, but they aren’t a band I’d say I really love or know well. I’ve been wanting to add more of their albums to the collection, so I found a copy of 2016’s For All Kings a couple weeks back to add to the collection. I was pretty excited about it, because it’s their most recent album, and it’s from Anthrax, so that alone is pretty neat. I was just excited to get into it, and spend some time with it, although I had this album back in the day. I just didn’t remember it at all, especially for it being from ten years ago, but after spending some time with it, I kind of remember why I never went back to it.

Now that sounds harsh, and this album isn’t that bad, but it’s got a couple of big issues that prevent me from really loving it — its sound and length. The album is around an hour long, which isn’t bad on its own, but it’s pretty exhausting. It’s done well, but the songs on this thing go on way too long, and they all kind of sound the same, so I’m just left looking at my watch and seeing how much time I have left. Every song on here is at least over 5 minutes long with some going into the 8 or 9-minute mark. This isn’t a prog-metal album, it doesn’t need to do that, but it does. The songs are way too bloated, making its runtime very bloated in the process.

Fine Young Cannibals - S/T

One of the most underrated bands from the 1980s has to be British band Fine Young Cannibals, especially their second and final album, 1989’s The Raw And The Cooked. I love that album, and it’s one of my favorite albums of the 1980s. I’ve always wanted to listen to their debut album, which is their 1986 self-titled album. I could never find a copy of it, but I’ve been seeing a copy of it at my local Half Price Books every time I go in, and I just haven’t gotten it yet. The third time I went in the last month, it was still there, so I decided to pick it up. It was only $3.99, so even if I wasn’t super into it, it wouldn’t have cost a lot.

Walk The Moon - Talking Is Hard

The early 2010s was such a fun time for indie and alternative music, and I’ve talked about the folk-pop / stomp-clap-hey bands and albums from the era, but there were also a lot of indie-pop and pop-friendly bands that were popular as well. One of those bands was Walk The Moon; I’m sure that’s a band you haven’t thought about in years, but their second album, 2014’s Talking Is Hard, is such a great example of this sound being so good and so catchy. The album doesn’t weirdly feel dated, either, even though a lot of albums in this vein are. The big single from this album was “Shut Up And Dance,” a very huge, loud, and catchy indie-pop song that got a huge following and a lot of airplay back in the day. The rest of the album surprisingly holds up as well, but it’s such a fun, catchy, and vibrant indie-pop record with a lot of great hooks and melodies.

St. Lucia - When The Night Comes

There’s an issue that I have with certain albums that I don’t talk about enough, but it’s because it doesn’t come up a lot. What issue is that? It’s when an album is really cool, but its sound is very repetitive, and the album is also really long. An album being either long or repetitive doesn’t bother me, but together is where the issue lies for me. I like long albums, especially when I love the sound and ideas they present, but if an album is so repetitive, it can get old quick, and the long running time isn’t justified. A repetitive album doesn’t bother me, either, especially when it’s short enough, and the songwriting is good enough as well. Both an album being long and repetitive just doesn’t always work, even if I love its sound, and that’s how I feel about the album I wanted to talk about today.