Your blades are sharpened with precision

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

22/11/24 : From Zero - Linkin Park

Hmmm - this isn't one I'd have chosen to seek out, but I've not minded some of the noises they've made in the past, so it might be OK I guess.

Well, I didn't mind some of the noises on it - but most of it was just too noisy and screamy for me. I do think it's a classy move for them to have a hired a female vocalist after losing Chester Bennington to suicide and in some places her voice works really well with their overall sound. But mostly, for me, it's a "no", I'm afraid - although I did like "Good Things Go".

We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week and the rest of the top five are Sabrina Carpenter, Flo (a new entry), Ateez (another new entry) and Chappell Roan - the ladies and the new entries are owning it this week. But are the new entries any good?

Flo (#3)
This is very much in a Destiny's Child kinda vein - and, from a position of limited knowledge on the genre, I'd say it's really well done. It's certainly way more listenable than Linkin Park.

Ateez (#4)
Whereas this is just rubbish vocoder rap - the only good thing about it is that it's only 21 minutes long.

Shawn Mendes (#23)
He'd got to have been expecting a better chart position than this, hadn't he? There's nothing wrong with it, but maybe people have just had enough of this kinda thing.

MF Doom (#64)
This is an odd one because I knew Mr Doom was no longer with us (he died in '20) so I just assumed this was some posthumous/unreleased track nonsense - but things are stranger than that. The album in question (MM..Food) was released in '04, but it counts as a new entry because it's never charted before - I assume there's been there's a 20th anniversary re-release. I really quite liked this on first listen - it's like DJ Shadow with added rapping and is sonically inventive, managing to sound old school and current at the same time. I knew he was highly regarded but had only heard some of the Madvillain stuff he did with Madlib - I think this is worth checking out if you don't know it.

In a similar vein to MF Doom, we've also got a couple of interesting re-entries this week - Iron Maiden (#34) have a 40th anniversary version of Powerslave and George Harrison (#46) has a 50th anniversary of Living In The Material World.

Last week I said that Massive Wagons would drop out of the chart and, I'm sorry to say I was, for a change, 100% correct - but there is some good news!  The Wagons liked my tweet which linked to the review and so they are now the proud possessors of my most read post award - I had a brief chat with them and they seemed perfectly charming, which is pretty much how social media should be done, kids. I'm not expecting Linkin Park to get back to me (although they'd definitely overtake Massive Wagons if they did) but I am expecting them to hang around the charts for slightly longer - but not a lot, so I'm going for #45. And this week's Taylor stats are five in the top forty and eight in the entire chart - she's not going away quietly!

Wikipedia has way more than I was expecting (156 milliPeppers) and it says amazingly little on anything. It's their eighth album, their first since '17 and the title references their new beginning and their original name, Xero. The critics were pretty nice about it, although some weren't convinced it was consistent enough in its quality - but it probably won't surprise you to hear it's done pretty well commercially, although it "only" got to #2 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" The Sonic Hijackers, Dead Sara (Emily Armstrong's original band), Poppy and Dead By Sunrise - funnily enough, I can't tell you anything about any of that lot. I'm sure fans of them will love this and. whilst I didn't hate this, as far as I'm concerned they're welcome to it. The albums from Flo and MF Doom were both, for me, considerably more interesting and well worth checking out if you think you might like them (or maybe even if you think you won't).

15/11/24 - Something slightly different
29/11/24 - Another perplexing album