Infinity Times Bad
Overall Album Score: 7.4 out of 10 HEY!!! STEVE PERRY JOINED THE BAND!!!! OHHHHHH, HOW AWESOME!! He comes on here and he sings and stuff! And he has a pretty good voice, I say. And what else can I say about this album??? It has Steve PERRY on it and ... and ... and ............................. CRAP! This band is still FLAT. I don't believe it! I was hoping for some sort of grand revolution in melody and song-production! While there was a revolution of some sort (this is more pop-oriented than prog-oriented), and this album does decidedly have the best melodies of any Journey album to this date, it fails to impress!!! I thought Steve Perry would be magical or something. After all, this is the band line-up that did "Don't Stop Believin'," which is a freakingmost awesome song if there ever was one. The best song on here is probably "Patiently," which has a few pretty good hooks in it. Apart from the chorus, the melody is pretty danged cool. "Lights" is a pretty good one, too, which has a formidable melody. I even enjoyed "Winds of March" even though I acknowledge that it leaves a lot to be desired. The flat spots greatly outweigh the awesome spots …… and all those awesome spots I mentioned have their own dull quality within them! I can't get too excited about this album, unfortunately. Just kinda dull. ... I'm still waiting for the ultimate Journey classics with anticipation. Overall Album Score: 7.4 out of 10 (This isn't quite what I was hoping for now that we're into the classic Journey lineup. A small handful of decent tracks intermingled with boring, flat stuff.) Average Song Score: 7.8 (Eh. These songs are pretty good. There's nothing much to get excited over, though.) Album Tilt: 7.5 (This is a product that needed to be worked on some more, to be frank.) Artist Rating: 7.0 (It needed SOMETHING. Better melody? Better production? ... Better something. That said, this is a pretty substantial improvement over Next. That's for sure.) Track Reviews Lights 8.5/10 Oooohhhhhhhh mannnnnn... From the first line of melody on this song, I can already appreciate this Steve Perry feller. This song has a MELODY!!! Granted it's not a *great* melody. In fact, it's kind of weak. But compared to those studio albums, this isn't weak at all, because it exists! And this is a genuine pop song. No more of Schon's rollicking electric guitar licks are needed to keep these songs afloat ... barely. Feeling That Way 8/10 I think Perry's vocals make him sounds like a total geek. But he is a good vocalist. ... Much better than whoever-the-heck was doing it on the last album. He has range! And he uses this range here! In this rather average arena-rock pop song. I like a bit of the chorus. The rest of it is enjoyable but rather underwhelming. Anytime 8/10 Yuppp... the radio-bred pop is officially here. But why don't these songs seem to be as phenomenally catchy as, oh, say "Don't Stop Believin'." ... I still appreciate the pop-leanings after their unsuccessful dabblings in progressive rock, but .......... The melodies still must be catchier. LA DO DA 7/10 La do da? ... La doodah???! Freak! This song attempts to be all HARD and GRITTY, but ... it was nowhere near catchy enough. Schon is seen here trying to save it again by providing some nice electric guitar work, but that's not a total success. Blah Do Da. Patiently 9/10 Oh, finally! Here's a solid melody!! (The chorus isn't as such, however.) And Perry's vocal performance even seems to be heartbreaking (even though we all know very well the phony's faking it). I don't care about that, though. Apart from the rather bland chorus, this ballad has a solid melody! Yay! Wheel in the Sky 8/10 Man! This is supposed to be one of Journey's greatest hits! And it's blander than Mr. Bland from Blandsville. The melody is passable, to be sure, but the thing is danged FLAT if you ask me. ......... Could it be that Journey's only great songs are limited in quantity to one or two???????? Hmmmmm.............................. Somethin' to Hide 6/10 I have an idea of somethin' you can hide. THIS SONG! ................ It sucks! The melody doesn't have many hooks in it, and the thing as a whole is CRAP. Good NIGHT. Winds of March 8.5/10 Boyyyyy... with a little work, this could have almost been turned into something priceless. Just the same, this is a pretty decent ballad. It has medieval tendencies suggesting that perhaps this is a retread from the band's early days ... that they probably should just forget happened. Just the same, though, this song is okay by me. Can Do 8/10 Sounds like they're trying to revisit Cream or somebody ... it sort of succeeds and it sort of doesn't. There's a nice melody going into this and some good instrumental performance, but there's a stark lack of innovation going into its production. It's rather flat and it shouldn't have been. Opened the Door 7/10 This is very nearly a good song. The melody has several good hooks in it (but not enough) and it sounds nearly heartfelt (but it's not sincere enough). The instrumentation and production on this one, however, is terrible. There are certainly elements of goodness here, but the end product is dull and plodding. I want an infinity amount of comments from idiots here. |
All reviews are copyrighted by the author, Michael Lawrence. He's a good person, really.
