it came from europe

bloc party and division of laura lee, two bands which i've been following for years now just released their 3rd albums respectively. for bloc party the album is titled 'intimacy', as for doll the album is titled 'violence is timeless'. in any realm these are two totally different bands versus success and just style.

bloc party's early 2007 album 'a weekend in the city' kinda sent the wrong message to me. lyrically the album blew away however the debut musically it was not even close to the debut 'silent alarm'. sa was more dance-punk and was just extremely catchy with crazy drum patterns and guitar riffs. well weekend went for the more electronic approach which produced maybe... 3 good songs off it. thanks to myspace a solid month before the physical album came out they put up some new songs. one of which was the very catchy 'mercury' it's a grea song but the problem i had is... well it sounded like it could have been a remix, still 'silent album' is one of my favorite albums so i decided to give 'intimacy' a try. i feel like it's not as electronic as weekend was because it has some punky parts but its still too electronic for bloc party in my opinion. lyrically i feel its a step back from weekend but still strong at any rate another thing is they really threw the effects on the vocals which is kinda sad because kele has such a great voice. the production is not bad but it seems like they cut and pasted vocals A LOT on it which again kinda well... sucks. the first half of the album is not bad. the middle kinda lost me but it ended somewhat strong. still its not as good as 'silent alarm' which in turn i give it 5/10. bloc party found their sound, sadly its not the sound we want to hear.

on the flip side, after a 3-4 (i'm guessing) year hiatus one of sweden's finest is back! they emerged with 'violence is timeless' which the title alone is just great. the doll sound is really there and gritty as ever which i love plus they got the best gang vocals ever something about it just gets me. the songs are catchy and just show a band that sticks do the garage rock they are good at. the production gives it a raw feel like their debut 'black city' which works perfectly for them. songs like 'central park' and 'pirates' and the closer 'do you love me?' are enough reason to give this album a shot/give this band a shot. i give it 8.5/10. i love how it sounds like a doll album but still has song progression in it as well. we can only hope this is not the end of them and keep on going!

so there you have it, i really hope division of laura lee gets the attention they deserve they have gone far too long with no respect. as for bloc party... i'm close to giving up. i'm sure the new album will grow more on me like weekend did but i'm just not impressed, i feel like that sound has been done way more than it should be.

posted by nicholas b. @ 7:14 PM