The Red And The Black

How good is The Red and the Black on a scale of 1-10?

  • Total voters
    28
2026 rating - 5/10

Let's take it section by section, shall we?
  • Bass chord intro - Why? Sounds sloppy and is boring.
  • Swinging chord riff - Fine enough! Ope, goes on twice as long as it should.
  • First verse - When just the guitar is playing it's amazing! When Bruce sings with the guitar, it's awful.
  • First "woah-oh" riff - Awesome!
  • Second verse - Still bad.
  • "Woah-oh" part - Awesome!
  • "Black jack king" section - great section that is marred by the guitar playing along with the vocal again. This would be a 10/10 section without that stupid melody guitar.
  • More "woah-oh's" - okay fine. Bruce hits the "save me" line and sounds strained as hell.
  • "Black jack king" section redux - Bruce still sounds bad. Guitar still sucks. I'm already over this song.
  • Even more "woah-oh's" - we get it, guys. It's fun and all, but like, come on.
  • TRATB melody makes its first appearance - it's great! Synthy guitar + keyboard synth sounds nice enough. Ope, nevermind, Bruce is now singing along to it. WHY DO WE NEED 3 INSTRUMENTS PLAYING THE SAME NOTES IN THE SAME REGISTER. Stop it, Steve. Just fucking stop it. There's no texture. There's no sonic variation. It sounds bad. It just sounds bad.
  • Post-chorus riff - pretty cool!
  • Adrian's solo - nice bluesy shredding from H with a lot of wah-wah.
  • Janick's solo - It fits over the swinging chord riff, I guess. A bit messy, but such is Jan.
  • Dave's solo - somehow sounds messier than Janick's.
  • Synth-led uplifting section - cool melodies are at play here, but again: there's just no texture. You've got 3 guitars, a bass, and a keyboard playing the same notes over a basic chugging pattern. Why didn't one of them do anything extra?
  • Adrian's second solo - I like it and it definitely sounds like H just started soloing because he, too, was bored.
  • A different swinging chord riff - sounds like there should be more soloing here, but instead we get a really cool jig-type riff. This is easily the best part of the bridge section. It sounds great.
  • The Three Amigos come together - to play octaves. GRR. It still sounds good, at least. This whole section does go on a bit long, but it's pretty joyful so I can't fault it too much. It's the peak of the song for sure. This section adds at least 2 points to the song's total.
  • Climbing The Stairs riff - very cool section, but again: it would sound 100% better with some sort of texture besides octaves.
  • Back to "woah-oh'ing!" - okay, fine, bring it all together. You know what would have worked really well here? A VOCAL HARMONY. ANY TYPE OF HARMONY.
  • Bass chord outro - terrible.
There are so many awesome parts here and they equal up to a middling song.
 
A song of two halves

The first half is quite weak, with some bad vocal lines and singing, and a forced singalong part.

The second half has lots of nice guitar melodies and solos, but it can't save the entire song.

Listening to the album makes me realise two things

1. It hasn't aged that well
2. It's their worst sounding since The X Factor and Virtual XI

6/10
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top