Blind Science - Mavenalli Project

Advantages: Great songs and a really original rock sound.
Disadvantages: first five songs, whilst all good, don't really give an idea of the band's diversity.

...System Of A Down have been around for a few years now, first appearing on the international scene with their self-titled 1998 debut. That album was an explosion of different styles with an almost punk anger, like Mr Bungle jamming with the Dead Kennedys. On this, their second album, they have continued very much in this mould, mixing Jazz, Rock, Punk and Middle-Eastern Folk music into an innovative and unique style. The album is a little short, at just over 41 minutes for 14 tracks, but the quality and intensity within is blinding. The track listing is as follows: 1. Prison Song 2. Needles 3. Deer Dance 4. Jet Pilot 5. X 6. Chop Suey! 7. Bounce 8. Forest 9. ATWA 10. Science 11. Shimmy 12. Toxicity 13. Psycho 14. Aerials “Prison Song” opens up with a stop-start guitar riff and whispered vocals, before kicking... Read review

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Advantages: Available in Cassette too. A "must have"
Disadvantages: NONE!!

...Picked up in Tesco in a fate defying "treat to self" frame of mind, this double album is more than it could ever promise to be. The clincher was that it was available in cassette. I have yet to enter the "CD age" and do not feel, at the grand age of 42, there is any reason why I should. I fell blindly in love with Techno last year. I say blindly because I really don't have a clue about it. Terms such as "Goan Trance" and "Epic Trance" don't mean a thing to me except as a useful tool for blinding the even more elderly with science. I don't even know the names of the artists involved. However, thanks to something that trickles erratically through from Ulster on 106.6 fm (almost clear after midnight in the right weather conditions) and a wonderful Swiss Guy called Christophe who used to compile the best of it from wherever "Ex's Car... Read review

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Advantages: If you're need of a disco fix, here it is.
Disadvantages: Too Elton Johny for my tastes

...band name. The band proudly wears their fashionable boas and capes in the album’s insert Hearing the album, I was unaware of their New York origins but they are homegrown, they just built their followings overseas first. But that makes sense since their main influences are of English decent, and all the great artists don’t even usually cross the ocean. Tracks like “Take Your Mama,” “Mary,” and especially “Music is the Victim.” might as well be off Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road with Shears doing his best Pinball Wizard impersonation as if he were trying out for a Vegas. “Lovers in the Backseat” has the musical tint of Thomas Dolby’s new wave classic “She Blinded Me With Science” but with lyrics on the more scandalous, nasty variety added to an affinity for voyeurism “(There’s lovers in the backseat / Jealous glances now I... Read review

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