AWmusic

Here are all the posts and reviews from the last week:

Jess reviewed American Dollar’s A Memory Stream for your weekly fix of post-rock.

Chad VanGaalen’s album Soft Airplane is awesome. Tons of feedback + disagreement for giving the album a 4.25 out of 5… Was I too harsh?

Coko profiled Cori Green a local R&B artist.

Matt covered The Dutchess and The Duke’s She’s the Dutchess and He’s The Duke. I love the photo he uses.

Josh reviews Eric Hutchinson’s popular Sounds Like This.

I reviewed Okkervil River’s The Stand Ins. A little bit of a miss but they are still one of my favorite bands.

Joe covers The Ready Set. Judging from his picture, they man could eat some more junk.

Adrian covered Scars on Broadway’s self titled release. For you System of A Down fans.

I reviewed the Stars’ Sad Robots EP. Solid little disc you can get on Itunes or on tour.

Lu reviews The Swear’s Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks.

Christian covered The Verve’s Forth. People say a lot of great things about The Verve but outside of Bittersweet Symphony, I haven’t really heard many other songs.

Young Sensation’s Kitty Magic EP is a nice little EP.

Reminder: Metro Station contest ends next week!

Friend, Zack reviewed the Virgin Festival finally.

New around the blogosphere and such and such:
Jenny Lewis’ album was streaming on her myspace. Release date is Sept 23rd.. I can’t wait, I’m in love with her. To be honest I didn’t check out Rabbit Fur Coat since my ex said it sucked…she listens to Britney Spears now so I took some great advice! Snob’s Music (from Toronto) gave it a 5.5.

Metallica’s Death Magnetic hit stores with some good reviews. I still hate their stance on P2P etc. Hopefully one of our writers will pick this up (hint hint: Adrian).

Kanye West was arrested for “having issues” with the paparazzi. He also managed to post 10 posts during the same day *cough* ghost writers *cough* on his blog. Hot Biscuits burned Kanye West saying the only time he’s acceptable is when is not on a track and links to an instrumental track of Love Lockdown…hilarious.

Coldplay is somehow on the new guitarhero. Bands like Interpol long deserved to be on there but come on Coldplay… who really rocks on pretending to play a Coldplay riff*?

Captain Melody loves the new Emiliana Torrini album. I personally would take Lykke Li over her… maybe because Lykke Li is so hot (yes I’m shallow).

A new solo attempt by Daron Malakian from the now on hiatus band System of a Down which provides a new sound that some may love and others may hate. It isn’t System of a Down but it’s something fun and new and is definatley worth a listen.

The Good : Something brand new from a SOAD member while the hiatus continues, new sound, great lyrics, catchy vocals and guitar solos, strays away from SOAD, album artwork is phenomenal, John Malayan delivers excellent drumming as always

The Bad : Some may argue that Daron’s vocals aren’t as strong as Serj’s, it’s not SOAD, guitar riffs on some songs aren’t all that great, Daron sporting a new beard, aquired taste

So it’s been a while now since both Hypnotize and Mezmerize were released and System of a Down went on hiatus. Since then there has been tons of rumours that they have actually split up and will never get back together. This is totally false as they’re just taking the time right now to do what they want and go off and do their own things for a little while.

Serj Tankian came out with the highly acclaimed album Elect the Dead last year and proved that he coud do very well off on his own, and I even got to catch his second show on tour here in Toronto at the Kool Haus which proved to be a total blast of a killer show.

Since then there has been much talk about Daron and John’s solo project after SOAD went on hiatus and there has been much speculation to whether Daron could pull out from being a back up vocalist to lead. Well the time has come and the name to add to the faces now is Scars on Broadway, which takes a great leap away from the traditional System of a Down we have come to love and drool over.

There’s no Serj to be found anywhere near this album and why would there, this is Daron’s debut as full lead singer and I have to say I used to think that he had such a whiny annoying nasaly singing voice and now that I’ve gotten used to it I just think he sounds whiny and nasaly.

It’s true what they say about Daron, his vocals are either totally despised or totally loved, it really is an aquired taste. First time listening to Scars on Broadway, all I was thining about was whether it was going to sound like System of a Down or not. I listened to every track and decided immediatley that I hated the album just because it strays a lot farther from SOAD’s earlier stuff. Then I remembered, this isn’t SOAD at all, this is Scars on Broadway. So I gave it another listen, and once I let go what I wanted the album to sound like, it started to grow on me. I started finding that most of the tracks weren’t half bad.

One of the greatest aspects of this album may not be Daron’s voice per se, but more or less his skills as a lyricist. Now Daron wrote tons of memorable songs back in the day when he was playing with SOAD and has used his creativity to inspire some truly great songs on this album such as “3005″ or “Funny”. Song writing is definatley one of Daron’s strongest points on this album and I’m sure if he wasn’t as talented as he was in this area, the album would have surely flopped.

Drum wise, John Malayan has returned to help his old SOAD to do what he knows how to do best. Deliver explosive and exciting beats on each track. This is basically the only flawless thing done on this entire album. John Malayan is one of the world’s top drummers and he truly brings it out on this album and does his best to show his 100% and prove that he can also lead a life that doesn’t follow the old ways.

Now as for the guitar, this is half and half. Sometimes the song will have a great opening riff such as “They Say” and will get you automatically hooked and then later on during the song some of the riffs will just bug the hell out of you and basically turn you off the song. Daron basically tried something new with each song on guitar to try and leave his old metal persona behing for a more rocker approach. Well it only half worked, and I kinda wishhe had of stayed with the super fast booming metal riffs of old. But hey nothing is perfect and this is one of those moments. I’m sure if he worked on the guitar side of things more he could get it a bit better but overall the guitar in each song plays pretty differently and for the most part sounds awesome, but there are those rare moments to be careful of.

Now the biggest dissapointment on the album was not the vocals, which I have come to enjoy a lot these days, but the direction Daron wanted the album to go in. He decided to put a lot of electronic style music onto the album, and it can get pretty old pretty fast. Don’t get me wrong, I love all sorts of electronic music, but putting Daron from System of a Down to electronic music, I mean come on. I know what you’re thinking and yes once I let go of the fact that this wasn’t a SOAD album I finally started to take a shining to the whole thing especially on the song “Chemicals” which has now become my favourite song off the entire album, but this is just one of those albums where you have high expectations that are wanting to be met on the spot. Although I didn’t care fo the electronic stylings of Daron at first, they did grow on me, it just takes some time I guess.

Once again Daron’s vocals are the main contreversy over the entirety of the album. All I can say is that if you didn’t like Daron when he was singing in SOAD, then you won’t like him here. If you did then all the more reason to buy the album.

In closing I really enjoyed this album personally and I know it may not be for everybody and I admit there are some things I disliked about the album, but overall I believe this was a great effort by Daron Malakian and John Malayan on their first solo album and if they keep to it, the next will album will be perfect. So if you’re a System of a Down fan like myself and have been wanting something to listen to while waiting out the hiatus, I say give it a listen, you may just find yourself enjoying it and going to see them live in concert soon enough.

7.5/10

Scars on Broadway – They Say
Scars on Broadway – Kill Each Other/Live Forever
Scars on Broadway – 3005

Buy Scars on Broadway Debut Album Here

or Buy The Album Here

or Even Here