Metal Reviews

Well, Mr. Production Guru, where is the autotune in this song and how does one determine it's there?

You don't determine it is there. You gotta be in the studio yourself or you have to have an extremely good ear at telling the differences in the rise and fall of the volume and the timbre of someone's voice. You'd have to know a singer can't sing a specific note the way they are hitting it to tell. Anything unnaturally un-dynamic and violently sung that lacks the stability required to easily hit notes is pretty suspect. Some people can hit the notes 99% perfectly and don't mind the small influence. I think it is a bit lazy because you can always record line by line until perfect which is what most do anyway to make sure every note is perfectly in tune.

If Walls of Jericho came out today, it would not fare well. By today's standards, that album would be considered extremely generic.

How am I wrong? I never said anything about what it was or wasn't. It does operate silently when used properly, thus the exact reason why I said people have no idea what it is. If they can't hear it, they are clearly just insinuating a band is using it because it's a good insult to their skill.

Of course, I'd love to know how you know a lot of people are using it, you know, considering you can't hear it being used.

Presumably, this knowledge originally comes from people who work in studios and actually use it.

Here's the globe and mail article that wiki references

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/article849194.ece

The way I read this, if an entire record is sung in tune (especially by someone you know from seeing them live don't sing entirely in tune like Deris), you can pretty much guarantee that auto-tune is being used. The motivation is a strong one, because using auto-tune means less takes which means less time which means less money spent on the studio.

Reading interviews with Producers. Metal is not pop music anymore and these producers were addressing the pop records they've worked on. They say everyone except a very few exceptions use it. I've never claimed most metal singers use it because they do not. Some do, but they have usually have more integrity than that.

Really good album the bands on fire, and a great comeback after that last anniversary effort.

So I'm enjoying the hell out of this album. Maybe not as solid as Gambling, but that was my favourite Helloween since Keeper 2 and this one is still in the 85 range. Maybe a bit too long, but some awesome tracks on here- Who is Mr. Madman, World of Fantasy, Smile of the Sun, If a Mountain Could Talk and Far in the Future are my favourites.

Also, kudos to them for having a spoken word section which doesn't annoy the hell out of me in the intro to Mr. Madman- the creepy echo of the Perfect Gentleman theme really works there. It joins Rime of the Ancient Mariner as one of two songs where having a spoken word section actually works.

You left out Raise the Noise!

The two bonus tracks kick ass, too.

A very good song, but for some reason not sticking with me like those others. Still love the flute solo

Why hasn't this been reviewed yet?

I'm working on it.

The reviewer has dial-up.

No. This album is generic. Walls of Jericho is a classic. It is still brung emulated tonthis day, so by those standards it would hold up extremely well. But opinions vary. So whatever.

More like finals.

I finally got around to listening to this album today. By itself, it's a very good album. The main problem? It's not a Helloween album! This sounds more like Painkiller-era Judas Priest (raw production, similar grooves, etc.) with downtuned guitars and Andi Deris at the mic. I'm not going to fault the band for trying something a little different with this album (which is perhaps in response to the praise GWTD's harsher sound got), but I hope Helloween returns to their more traditional sound on the next release.

The other problem is that every song sounds the same. A far cry from the diversity on the band's last two albums.