Thoughts turned to my re-issue pile this week and part of me quivered in anticipation. I shall be doing my best to cull a few from the pile each week as the new release scheduled quiets a bit before the big spring push.
Apocalyptica: World Collide
A bit late to the party on this one, as it was released in 2007, and it seemed to have passed me by. As someone who has been following the band since its days as “cellos covering Metallica” each new album intrigues me. As is their want these days there are several guest vocalists on here including Lacuna Coil’s Christina Scabbia on “S.O.S. (Anything but Love)”. This song sounds quite a bit like her original band, but with lots more cellos than usual. Its quite a good female-fronted goth metal track and quite enjoyable.
I'm not sure the collaboration with Corey Taylor of Slipknot/Stone Sour fame, “I’m not Jesus,” works as well, ditto the track with the bloke from Three Days Grace. In fact, most every song on here features someone or other from the metal scene. Then again Apocalyptica are a talented band and pretty hot at the moment, so no one worth their salt would turn them down.
It doesn’t strike as their best effort, but that is not to say it's bad. This band rarely do anything awful. Still, I have to say I would love to hear more of the cellos and less of the stuff that sounds like “bog-standard” metal with a dash of cellos. A good album, but just not a great one.
Scale the Summit: Carving Desert Canyons
Don’t know that much about this lot and confess to never have heard of them before, but I like what I hear. I would call them a slightly heavier Dream Theater without the tendency to over-do things. Prog-metal that is, for the most part, kept to a reasonable length and with the bounds of patience (nothing 10+ minutes). This is a great sound-track to driving, when you want to think and don’t want words getting in the way.
It's damn well played stuff that really does rise about the morass of similar stuff out there, which as you well know I have a major soft spot for. It is very accessible and you find yourself not missing the words in any way. It takes a while to even miss them to be honest. I love the soaring nature of the track “Sargasso Sea” which just draws you into the waves of music that flow through it.
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