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Shanghai'd - Unscrupulous Means
by Jack at 3:47AM, May 10th, 2011
1. George A. Romero
2. Therapy 3. Connections 4. Toy Surprise |
There are punk rock albums and then there are real punk rock albums. This one really caught my attention when I listened to it for the first time. The artwork on the record is black and white, looking punk rock without all the fancy colors, however, the music within paints vivid colors of harmonies when played in a stereo turntable. When I first played this record on my turntable and recorded it into my homemade digitalization machine, it sounded amazing. That is, until I played it back through my computer. At that moment I came to the realization that I've been digitizing all my records into mono instead of stereo. It turns out the sound quality of the recording was so amazing that it made my equipment sound like crap until I fixed the stereo. Seems like I've been recording records in mono for years and would have continued doing so if I would have never came across this record. If there were such a word as super stereo, this would be it. Skipping the technical mumbo jumbo, the overall sound of the record is simply amazing. It's one of those records where you will never get tired of playing it over and over and over and over and over again.
Talking a bit more about the music, the way the vocals and music mix, it gives it a special blend of punk and metal. The guitar work is quite complex and is in perfect synchronization with that of the drumming and vocals. The singer has quite a large vocal range which make every song have feeling and life. Going a little deeper in to the vocals, the transitions from shouting to singing really give the song a life of it's own. Overall, the record is probably one of the best albums I've heard from considering when they started. The one song that sounded a bit weird was George A. Romero. The song itself was killer, but the backup vocals didn't quite blend as well as I think it should have. Other than that, a must grab album.
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