The Great Unknown

How good is The Great Unknown on a scale of 1-10?

  • Total voters
    16
I fecking love this track. This is the first song that immediately hit home with me off the album. It's incredibly powerful and dynamic. That little note progression riff that Adrian plays under the main section is the hook that really drives me into the song.

Bruce is singing really high here, but honestly, it doesn't sound as strained to me as his stuff from TFF.
 
No matter how much I enjoy this song while listening to it (and I do!) I can never remember how i t goes when thinking about it, I don't have this problem with any other song on the album. It's weird because I think it's a good song.
 
Bombusbombus said:
No matter how much I enjoy this song while listening to it (and I do!) I can never remember how i t goes when thinking about it, I don't have this problem with any other song on the album. It's weird because I think it's a good song.
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I have the same problem. It doesn't really have a hook like all the others
 
Really? I think the chorus on this one (never ending the desires of man) is pretty catchy. It's the highlight for me for sure.
 
The verse melody of this song immediately hooked me. The octave jump with the band coming in is incredible, equally as powerful as the "soldier of war!" section in Mother of Mercy.
 
The red and the black is just crammed full of different hooks to my ears, several of them got stuck in my head after the first few listens. A note though, that how easy something sticks in my head and how much I enjoy listening to a song isn't the same thing.
 
I honestly think this song should have been extended a bit. It kind of stops a little abruptly for me. Could have been a really good epic.

Still a killer song. Love the chorus.
 
Babo 91 said:
I guess the whoahs are quite memorable. And the red and the black part is sort of catchy
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I don't know. It all sounds pretty generic. For me, that song isn't bad, it's just unremarkable and unmemorable 13 (!) minutes in a middle of the f'kin record. That's why I don't like it.
 
I like this track better than the other two "filler" tracks, in the form of WTRRD and SOTV.

But other than the pre-chorus, there's not a lot going on in the song that I find vaguely interesting. I just find it slightly bland.
 
Brave New Pilgrim said:
I honestly think this song should have been extended a bit. It kind of stops a little abruptly for me. Could have been a really good epic.

Still a killer song. Love the chorus.
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I totally agree with this.

And about the song not being memorable... I think this is subjective, because I can remember everything. The slow intro, the build up, the verses and so on. The pre-chorus and chorus is incredibly catchy, it hooked me at the first listens.
 
The juddering verse riff, when it kicks in, is seriously heavy. It sounds like barely-contained fury. And Janick's solo is perfect; just the right side of scratchy. It suits the riff exactly.

The rest of the song is beautifully structured and executed. Probably my favourite from the album.
 
I love these kind of intros, anyway but, on this one, the low, pulsating bass snarl reminded me of 22 Acacia Avenue. Of course, sooner than I thought, the guitars came with this eerie vibe that sets the mood. I like how the intro has Adrian doing the main melody with arpeggios and Dave's on the back doing another one; later, Janick comes in with those third chords adding an electric layer to the crescendo and it bursts into a powerful rage with the guitars doing another intervals of the key notes. Bruce sounds aggressive (not this annoying 'strained' bullshit!) and when it gets to the pre chorus, the twists and turns of the vocal phrasing reminds me a lot really of Michael Kiske (there are more vocal parts on TBOS which are like Kiske would do).

Jan's solo is killer! The other instrumental part is wonderful and after the H and Davey solo section, there could've been another instrumental part attached to it. A pretty powerful song with lyrics that are contemplative but, punches the face, too. The 'unknown' in the title points towars ignorance, I understood. Bruce said Steve didn't allow him to change a few things on the way the vocals should be sang and that he found a new vibe to sing Steve's lyrics on this record and I did get that before reading this particular interview.

I give it 8,5/10.
 
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Just read this great little interview with H and this explains my song description above, about the weirdness of the intro and the verse chords shape:


The Great Unknown definitely reflects yours and Steve’s styles. How did that track come to life during recording?

“I was messing around with a tuning, an open D tuning [DADF#AD]. You can play interesting picking patterns and you can also play solos. I forget what [other] song it is, but I used it on a solo.

“It sounds very strange, but it kind of works. The Great Unknown’s riff came out of that tuning, really. But I also used a capo on it, which makes it weirder, and I’m dreading playing it live [laughs]. But that’s a different little thing I did on this album.”

The capo is, probably, on the 2nd fret. On Bruce's wonderful Skunkworks, there's a lot of capo usage on the songs.
 
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Thats very very interesting.

Cool that there's a chance of them playing this live. From the first time I heard it, it sounded like a song they wouldn't do.
 
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