This Unleash The Archers album is interesting. The core of it has a “Roy Z. and Kai Hansen formed a band” sort of feel, but with some thrashier bits and some more technical riffage thrown in. The main singer is great, but the supporting extreme vocalist is completely unnecessary and adds nothing worthwhile to the songs. At least he’s more on the breathy side and not too high in the mix, so he doesn’t outright ruin anything. The music is mostly great when it’s not lapsing into rote power metal tropes and blatant Maiden, Helloween, and Gamma Ray worship. The vocal lines often aren’t that memorable, even if they’re sung well; and the songwriting itself never really impressed me, even when the underlying music did. The title track maybe comes the closest to strong songwriting for me. This is like the musical equivalent of the street racer who takes a low-end car and pimps the shit out of it — the outer veneer looks all shiny and fancy, and the thing has a bunch of whiz-bang features, but they’re all grafted onto a derivative and unexciting frame. Then we have
Headless Cross, which is generally a great album with strong songwriting, but the music itself is simpler and not quite as interesting as its competitor, and the production also isn’t the best. I could really go either way here, and it pretty much comes down to technical excellence vs. songwriting strength. While it makes me feel a little shallow to say it, after listening to
Apex,
Headless Cross felt kind of flat and a bit less interesting to me, despite its songwriting being better. So, sorry
@Forostar, but I’m going with
@LooseCannon ’s nominee this time.
Winner: Unleash The Archers
Dream Theater is one of those bands that I don’t like enough to pick up anything past
Scenes From A Memory, but when I do hear their later material I usually wind up liking it pretty well. LaBrie doesn’t sound the best on the heavier material because his voice is so thin, but put a cheesy ballad in front of the man and he’ll knock it out of the park.
Octavarium is a mixed bag, but tracks like “The Root Of All Evil”, “These Walls”, “Panic Attack”, and the title track are all strong, and every track has at least some strong parts to it. Then we have this Motörhead album, which is surprisingly fun and solid, but obviously never reaches the same technical or songwriting heights that a strong Dream Theater track can. In the end I think Lemmy just found himself musically outclassed in this match. Sorry,
@Magnus, but I have to go with
@Black Wizard ’s choice here.
Winner: Dream Theater
Alestorm is another band I don’t get. They’re supposed to be funny, but I find their shtick to be mostly dumb rather than amusing. The singer is bad by melodic vocal standards, and the R-rolling thing is already annoying by the third time he does it, but he just keeps on doing it. They’re also not original, because Running Wild obviously plundered this thematic booty long before Alestorm ever got their start. So they’re a comedic band that isn’t funny, with an original angle that isn’t original, and aside from some good guitar work the music itself doesn’t even hold up. The synth horns are a cheesefest, and most of the songwriting is unimpressive. The title track is the closest thing to a good song on this album, but the singer’s bad performance still drags that one down to Davy Jones’ locker. No sir, don’t like it. Sorry,
@Lampwick 43, but even
@LooseCannon ’s mediocre Iced Earth album takes this one pretty easily.
Winner: Iced Earth
The
Queensrÿche EP is a bit of a mixed bag. “Queen Of The Reich” and “The Lady Wore Black” are fantastic, as is the bonus track “Prophecy”; but the other tracks “Nightrider” and “Blinded” don’t do much for me. While I’m not sure that anything on the Symphony X album reaches the same heights as the best tracks on
Queensrÿche (1983!), I think the consistency of the returning champion has to win the day here. Sorry,
@The Dissident, but I have to go with
@Lampwick 43 ’s nominee.
Winner: Symphony X
