Venom - Fallen Angels - guest review
Venom - Fallen Angels - guest review
Tracklist
01. Hammerhead02. Nemesis
03. Pedal To The Metal
04. Lap Of The Gods
05. Damnation Of Souls
06. Beggerman
07. Hail Satanas
08. Sin
09. Punk's Not Dead
10. Death Be Thy Name
11. Lest We Forget
12. Valley Of The Kings
13. Fallen Angels
14. Annunaki Legacy [limited edition bonus]
15. Blackened Blues [limited edition bonus]
Guest review by
Mattybu April 15, 2012
To be up front about it, this album is a mess. Venom put out such a basic album this time around. The guitar riffs are the definition of serviceable, bland, and free of the sharp impact which can make them hit so hard when structured in a more interesting manner. None of them really stuck with me. There weren't any of those "damn, that was so awesome I have to listen to it again" moments that happen every 5 seconds when I'm listening to Warbringer.
So that facet of the performance wasn't impressive, now on to the others: the drums were again nothing more than serviceable, often just a simple backdrop for the rest of the music. Last and certainly least, the vocal performance was bad to the point of being embarrassing. The lyrics being spewed out are inane and have very little substance to them, and the vocal delivery is a dull and uninspired. If this album was a meal, it would be a piece of bread, crackers on the side, and water that somehow had less taste than water. Not very tasty.
So it's musically boring. Does it get worse? You bet! You have to wonder why Venom thinks it's acceptable to release a sorry album like this. It seems like even after 30 years, they haven't figured out how to come close to what other bands have accomplished. Without being incredibly talented musicians, you can still write a good album if the song structure is there. This album didn't build up any tension the whole time I listened to it, the songs didn't grab me and pull me in. The songwriting just didn't cut it.
It's also too long. 15 songs clocking in at over an hour is a recipe for boredom. Top this off with some thin and sparse-sounding production and this album does not hit very hard at all.
All in all, Fallen Angels is bad. It doesn't get much simpler than that for me. It was boring, unoriginal (see "Hammerhead" for stupid lyrics 101), and failed to invoke any sort of worthwhile emotion for me. I wouldn't even recommend this to a Venom fan. You might as well just give your old copy of Welcome to Hell another spin and use the money you saved to pick up the latest issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. It's got 100 sex tips you can't live without!
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 6 |
| Songwriting: | 4 |
| Originality: | 5 |
| Production: | 6 |
Written by Mattybu | April 15, 2012
Guest review disclaimer:
This is a guest review, which means it does not necessarily represent the point of view of the MS Staff.
This is a guest review, which means it does not necessarily represent the point of view of the MS Staff.
Comments
Comments:
4
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Posts: 21306
How did you manage to write over 450 words for this? This album is literally the exact same pile of crap they've been releasing since ever. If you combined every good moment in their history you'd have about 50 seconds of decent music.
---- "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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Posts: 2589  |
Posts: 2589 Written by Troy Killjoy on 16.04.2012 at 05:57 I guess it's wordy, but hopefully it gets the job done, wanted to explain why exactly it was as bad as I thought it was  And I think Welcome to Hell was pretty good, if not at least fun. The band could at least be excused for inexperience back then, but now?... This is garbage.
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Posts: 21306 Written by Mattybu on 16.04.2012 at 22:45 Not wordy or verbose by any means. I was just surprised someone was able to constructively critique a Venom album so... thoroughly. Their music leaves me with an empty feeling and I don't think I could ever muster up more than 100 words to describe their sound. I'd just spend 90% of the review making references and analogies and making sex-related jokes.
---- "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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Posts: 2589 |
Posts: 2589 Written by Troy Killjoy on 17.04.2012 at 05:10 Haha, well even I could not resist a little sex joke at the end there You're right though, it's easy to just give the album a stamp of "crap" and move on. It doesn't need much more, but I felt it was appropriate to give it a thorough review. 
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