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Roadrunner United: The all-star sessions

21/07/08  ||  theProphet

Roadrunner Records. Saviour of modern metal. Guardian of artistic integrity. Opponent of devious marketing schemes. Creator of spectacular review intros.

Yeah…

Fuck this intro shit, I can’t believe it’s so fucking excruciating every single fucking time I sit down to write a fucking review. This is the deal: In this review (of Roadrunner United’s “The All-Star Sessions”, duh) I will actually take the time to write a little about each song, as they all differ a bit more than on ordinary albums.

Also, if you happen to not know what Roadrunner United is, I can reveal to you that when Roadrunner United celebrated its 25th anniversary, somebody got the fantastic idea of teaming up the label’s different artist (present as well as former) and make their combined efforts manifest on an album. Thus, “The All-Star Sessions” were born. The project was organized so that songwriting duties were placed upon the shoulders of four “team captains”, namely Robert Flynn of Machine Head, Joey Jordison of Slipknot, Dino Cazares, formerly in Fear Factory and last, least and faggiest: Matt Heafy of Trivium. Hell, this made for quite a good intro after all…you may skip the preceding paragraph.

First off is “The Dagger”, written by Machine Head “mastermind” Robert Flynn, and kind of a nice start to the album; a good ol’ pickslide followed by a meaty riff and surprisingly vicious scream. Apparently the guy doing vocals is the guy from Killswitch Engage, and while I am in no way a prolific listener of that music of theirs, he sounds way more ballsy here than in any of the songs I’ve ever heard with his main band. Not as bad as I was expecting, by far. Still, not really sonic Viagra either…

Following this up is “The Enemy” written by ex-Fear Factory meatball Dino Cazares and apparently also drumming “phenomenon” Roy Mayorga. This song opens and closes with some acoustic guitarwork, courtesy of Andreas Kisser (Sepultura). Not bad, certainly not great and by no means fitting with the rest of the song. This is a semi-brutal metalcore-ish piece featuring the vocalist from Chimaira, a band which I personally kinda likes, and his performance certainly manages to give the song some nerve. Still it’s a step down from the opener.

Next up is Roadrunner’s take on death metal, “Annihilation By the Hands of God”, written by Joey Jordison and Rob Barrett of Cannibal Corpse, and this is where the songwriting-troubles become really apparent for the first time. This is a real problem for the album as a whole, that while the songs may contain one or two cool riffs, these are all stitched together in such a lousy fashion that the songs end up sounding completely unmotivated. There are some exceptions though, this song for example, as it does not feature any cool riffs. To top it off, Glen Benton delivers a seriously crappy vocal performance.

Matt Heafy’s turn, and whaddya fucking know since this is the first good song on the album, and when I say that “In the Fire” is good, what I mean is that it’s fucking awesome. The main reason? King fucking Diamond, bitch. Delivering a stunning vocal performance as well as awesome lyrics about witch persecutions, he’s definitely one of the highpoints of the entire album. As much as I hate to admit it though, Heafy manages to come up with the first real song as well, and the riffs in this one is just plain fucking amazing, as are the solos. Impressive shit.

Next is what became the only single these guys released, “The End”, and now we’re back in familiar Heafy-country. He hasn’t written this, it’s Dino again, but he manages to out-suck Glenda himself when it comes to vocals. This songs reek of pussy a mile away and I guess it’s understandable that they made this the single.

Track six, “Tired n’ Lonely” by Jordison manages to only live up to the first part of its name. Forgettable, bland bullshit.

Number seven, “Independent (parenthesis)”, is written by Flynn, featuring Max Cavalera on vocals and sounds about as independent as a wheelchair-bound soccer mom. You can see how my paragraphs become less and less interesting with each song, much like this album itself.

Next, Matt Heafy makes black metal! Featuring awesome vocalist Dani Filth, this could be nothing less than an absolute success. Yep, you guessed it, “Dawn of the Golden Age” fellates the masterstaff to a colossal extent, though it receives a small plus for the speaking part in the middle.

We are halfway through an I am seriously considering abandoning the track by track “analysis” right here. Well, “The Rich Man” deserves mentioning as well, since it’s the second good song on the album, written by Flynn with Corey Taylor doing vocals. The song starts with a raspy bassline and a sampled voice dropping statistics about the war in Iraq. After a while Taylor takes over with great, clean vocals with an unmistakable morbid touch, before breaking into his trademark, awesome roar in the chorus. Fucking great. The song ends with the same voice reading statistics, but before that, we get to hear a stick that is slightly worse than the rest of the song.

“No Way Out” is the first decent song accomplished by Joey Jordison, and probably the softest song yet on the album, save perhaps for “Tired n’ Lonely”. Not much else to say, certainly not worth picking up the album for.

The same goes for “Baptized In the Redemption”, though it’s not very soft, at least not by this album’s standards. It’s written by mr. Cazares and I’ve forgotten about it as soon as my media player changes to…

…“Roads”, whoah, how’s that for a fucking transition, people? This song’s kinda special since it’s not written by any of the “team captains”, but instead by Type O Negative’s keyboardist. It features Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt doing his boring clean vocals over an array of incredibly FX sounding strings. However, after the two preceding shit-fests and the ones that will follow, this actually manages to stand out as one of the better songs on the album, which I guess says alot about the quality we’re dealing with here…

“Blood & Flames” is written by Heafy and sounds like an attempt at classic heavy metal. Fuck this is awful, here’s a fucking music lesson for you; if you want your shit to sound old-school, DO NOT make the production as modernly streamlined as possible and DO NOT include metalcore screams.

I have never heard of the vocalist on “Constitution Down” but he’s not particularly good, and not the song, by Jordison, either.

Näste man till rakning, “I Don’t Wanna Be (A Superhero)” sounds like a Greenday single, and unsurprisingly it’s written by Heafy. The lyrics are completely asinine and this is easily the most non-metal song on the album (save for “Roads”).

“Army of the Sun”, probably the worst song on the entire album, facing stiff competition from “Blood & Flames”, “The End” and “Tired and Lonely”. Writing credits go to Robert Flynn and Dave McClain, Machine Head’s drummer.

Next in line is “No Mas Control”, written by Cazares and featuring the muchacho from Ill Nino on vocals. I remember thinking that this song was pretty cool when I first heard it, but today I honestly can’t understand why. I guess it has something to do with it being a comparatively good track here…

FINALLY (is anybody still reading this shit?) we have “Enemy of the State”, and I really don’t know what to say about this. It’s written by Joey Jordison and Matt Sepanic, who seems to be some random guy from Iowa with vocal duties handled by Peter Steele of Type O. As a song, it’s pretty fucked up, and at times I’m really digging this shit. Other times though, this shit annoys me to the extent that I feel it would have stood out as a real stinker on a Xasthur album. It features mostly keyboards and Peter Steele muttering incomprehensible lyrics as well as a chanting fucking choir.

All in all, this album consists mostly of terrible to bad songs and some songs that suffer from having sort of a copy+paste feel to them. We have two diamonds in the dirt though, and I suggest you check these out in a free, if need be illegal, way. Rob Flynn is the only one whose songwriting skills get a passing grade on this.

Definitely one of the worst birthday parties I’ve ever been to.

2 good songs out of 10 + 8.

A sincere thanks to anyone who managed to bear with me and read the entire review. For those of you who got bored and just scrolled down to read the score, know that reading this is nothing compared to listening through this album a couple of times.

  • Tracklist
  • 01. The Dagger
  • 02. The Enemy
  • 03. Annihilation By the Hands of God
  • 04. In the Fire
  • 05. The End
  • 06. Tired n’ Lonely
  • 07. Independent (Voice of the Voiceless)
  • 08. Dawn of a Golden Age
  • 09. The Rich Man
  • 10. No Way Out
  • 11. Baptized In the Redemption
  • 12. Roads
  • 13. Blood & Flames
  • 14. Constitution Down
  • 15. I Don’t Wanna Be (A Superhero)
  • 16. Army of the Sun
  • 17. No Mas Control
  • 18. Enemy of the State

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