Wall of Mouths

Loving it. *sneaks back into the shadows*

The Buzzing is still my favourite so far. Also loving Plague Bell and Ecclesiastes… but to be honest, it’s all really good :-)

Yet another person saying The Buzzing is their favourite song on the album, and I just can’t get into it at all!! :(
Absolutely love the rest of the album tho!! Ecclesiastes is a great song to end with, in much the same way that The Boy’s Asleep was the perfect end to Semi Detached.

@Chr1s My only issue with The Buzzing is that every time I hear it, I also hear Eddie Izzard going “I’m covered in beeeeeeeeeeeeees!” which kinda ruins the vibe. It’s definitely grown on me though, I wasn’t sure of it at first but now I think it really fits into the album well.

Oops. I shouldn’t have shared. :-s

hoochalobster wrote:

@Chr1s My only issue with The Buzzing is that every time I hear it, I also hear Eddie Izzard going “I’m covered in beeeeeeeeeeeeees!” which kinda ruins the vibe. It’s definitely grown on me though, I wasn’t sure of it at first but now I think it really fits into the album well.

I love that Izzard quote. To his day, whenever anyone mentions bees, I shout that at them. I probably shouldn’t really. I haven’t had it pop into my head when listening to The Buzzing, but now I’m worried I’m going to be thinking about that next time I listen to it…

In other news - I absolutely love love love the album.

Finally got a chance listen - love Before You, Ghost Trio & Ecclesiastes. Alot of the album reminds me of the really early T? stuff :-). Nice to hear the guys keeping things fresh!

First review I have read from Germany:

http://www.plattentests.de/rezi.php?show=9094

Usual negative comments and basically saying that the band is a wanna be Helmet clone that never got there. Gave it 5/10 - what a negative cunt…

Why don’t the Germans love this band anymore???

thanks HOOCH you and your damn bees ,im hearing it now!!!!!!!

Artimus wrote:

Have to disagree with most of you here. Got the album on the day of release and it’s another disappointment for me I’m afraid. I really disliked Crooked Timber, unfortunately ABCOL mines the same territory. In a nutshell, sparse production, lack of any spark, Mr Cairns sounds disinterested (His performances from track to track are largely interchangable), little or no memorable hooks (And yeah, that’s a valid point, Therapy? are largely a band you associate with writing a good hook)

Admittedly, things get off to a great start with Living in the Shadow of The Terrible Thing, but it’s largely downhill from there. Plague Bell is passable, then we have the bizarre Marlow whichever way you look at doesn’t sound at home on this record. I listen to a lot of instrumental/post-rock bands and Marlow is well short of the mark for an instrumental piece. Sounds like something the lads were fucking around with at a jam and only half finished.

Before You With You After you picks up things briefly, kinda reminds me of something from the Semi-Detached era. Nice.

The Buzzing is the worst song Therapy? have ever commited to tape.

Of the latter half of the album, for me, only Get Your Dead Hand off My shoulder is worth mentioning, the rest of the tracks are really not very memorable at all - I’m looking at you Why Turbulence?

Ecclesiastes deserves a mention for being especially uneventful too, meandering along and allowing the album to limp off into the atmosphere.

I think Therapy are capable of much better, they’ve proven that time and time again but this album is a 4/10 for me. If the fans got to vote for a Therapy? Setlist I don’t think there’d be too many counts for tracks from this record.

I agree with almost everything you say here. I was initially very really disappointed with the whole thing, but to be fair a couple of tracks are working for me now, in particular ‘Before You…’, but the last track is such a weak ending, Stark Raving Sane and The Buzzing are hateful to me, and if I hear the lyric “Big black hooded perambulator” one more time I might cry. You can’t please everyone though, it just wouldn’t be fun that way. I love it’s getting great reviews everywhere though, they deserve the credit.

KJC Dublin wrote:

First review I have read from Germany:

http://www.plattentests.de/rezi.php?show=9094

Usual negative comments and basically saying that the band is a wanna be Helmet clone that never got there. Gave it 5/10 - what a negative cunt…

Why don’t the Germans love this band anymore???

The reviews in Germany are indeed bad, as far as I read. The same as it was with Crooked Timber. The last time I read a really really euphoric and good review was for Suicide Pact in a 1999 Visions magazine. There it was even “Record of the month”. Maybe the reviewers here need some label money to write good reviews:-s

As for me, this record is really great, maybe the best of the after-Suicidepact-releases. It’s the only one since then on which I really like all songs. Have really to control myself to not listening to it all day long.

alright, i had few listens now … and as most of you said, i feel like this record is very much a grower …

i have a lot of respect for them as songwriters and performers and i really enjoy their way of evolving their sound from album to album. i really like their attitude and it’s a big influence on my own approach at writing and playing music.

production is great once again, very cool to listen to this record with headphones. there’s so much going on. i also can’t help but think about how great OCFA would sound with a production like this (not that it was sounding that bad, but it wasn’t that good either).

favourite tracks so far: LITSOTTT; Marlow; GYDHOMS
wasn’t quite sure what do make out of the buzzing at first, it’s grown on me now though. i think it’s cool as an experiement and it’s a cool way to end side one of the vinyl, but i don’t know about a live performance of this. i’m really into experimenting with sound and song structures but i don’t know, this one is quite challenging. in a good way … but still, live? … i don’t know …

all in all, i love the record! one or two more tracks would have been nice, on the other hand … it’s good to leave your audience wanting more … :-)
and i would love a mini-album of the “left-overs” … :-)

MisterHoppy wrote:

You’re confusing Dub and Dubstep mate, and despite the name Dubstep didn’t evolve from dub, it’s (well was back in 98 when the term first came about) a sort of combination of the darker elements of drum and bass and 2-step (a form of garage (not garage rock though) which is even shitter than most garage) before it evolved into what you hear today, DUB on the other hand is the forerunner to remixes (in fact a lot of the early dub pioneers were soundsystem engineers, King Tubby was an electrician and soundsystem operator), it’s a subset of reggae and often involves just the rhythm section of a track (sometimes cut up and re-dubbed) with loops of other instruments and sometimes snippets of vocals dropped in and out with a heavy use of reverb , echo and delay. It quickly became very popular within reggae so you got bands and producers making dub albums without using a vocal track as the starting point (the fact Jamaica didn’t have any copyright laws at the time helped a lot initially).
Basically Reggae has always had very very deep and heavy bass, dub took this a bit further and that’s why dubstep with it’s heavy heavy basslines got dub in its name.

I’m not so much the one confused, I did see people use the term dubstep in relation to T? (so maybe they’re the ones confused?), which is why I specifically asked him about any dubstep influences he heard (I’m pretty sure he knew about the difference as well and would’ve told me if I screwed up using those terms). It’s true I assumed dub and dubstep were related but the dubstep remarks were the ones that really bothered me ‘cos I was sure what it was, and I think it is shit =)

In the end, let’s just be happy T? doesn’t sound like Korn?

I wouldn’t mind an instrumental album either. Magic Mountain and Marlowe show they could do it. Course, I do love Andy’s vocals though, so if we got an instrumental album one day, I’d want it to be followed not too long after by a more traditional vocal-filled album :-P