Customer Reviews

To the Bottom of the Sea

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have eagerly awaited this release for over a year and it has recently arrived at my doorstep. Voltaire is a master at painting pictures with words, and while I enjoy his catchy melodies and infectious rhythms, it's his lyrics (and even the plethora of groan-inducing puns) that truly speak to me. For a self-produced disc, the production is quite good and voltaire's voice sounds better than ever, as does his guitar playing, which has matured since his simple chord strumming on The Devil's Bris.

I enjoyed the story immensely and was particularly touched by simple lines about the injured whale in The Beast of Pirate's Bay. I've always enjoyed his humor, but Voltaire has an uncanny ability to cause emotions to well up with the vividness of his verbal imagery (Feathery Wings and Goodnight Demonslayer being prime examples of his past work in this area).

Songs that stand our to me are:

the Industrial Revolution for it's social commentary on the commoditization of modern society

The Robber Baron for the obvious parallels to sweatshops in the modern manufacturing.

Coin Operated Goi for the hysterical yiddish accent and amusing, if somewhat childish homosexual humor.

The Beast of Pirates Bay for the great storytelling and the aforementioned imagery about the injured whale. I teared up at this one.

This ship's going down solely for the hysterical image of knocking someone overboard so everyone goes down with the ship as promised.

The Death, death, devil, devil, evil, evil song because of the existential overtones and it's just damn funny.

The addition of the accordion and the female vocalist is welcomed.

Great stuff!

Morbidly gleeful, is the only way I can describe the music of Voltaire.
The lyrics are clever and cheeky (if not a bit morbid), and the tunes have a fun energy to them. While he is mostly popular in the Goth subculture, you don't have to be a part of it to enjoy it.

[...]

The first three songs are from this album as of February 12 2009

What's not pointed out is this is a limited edition CD.

Broken up into two pressings, each with only 2,000 copies made (4,000 total).

If your board and want to know what pressing look on the back of the packaging for the copy right information underneath "Voltaire 2008". First pressing will not say anything under it, while the second pressing will say "2 nd Pressing"

The two pressings are exactly alike.

If Amazon is out you can try to buy one at the artist web site, Voltaire (dot) net,
or at CDBaby (dot) com

The ones from the artist site come signed.

Voltaire has some good songs on here, such as Coin operated Goi, Happy Birthday (My Olde Friend) and the Death Death (Devil, Devil et cetera), and some o.k. songs (the rest of them). If you are a Voltaire fan I would recommend it. If you are new to Voltaire, I would recommend getting his Voltaire Live album instead, and picking this one up later.

This CD is....strange. It's almost like something I'd have pictured Weird Al putting together. It even has quite a few songs that prominently feature an accordion. This album is quite the departure from Voltaire's previous work, which tended to be dark and prominently feature death, and generally has a very up-beat attitude. Although I think that was an ironic twist, since many of the songs in their merry way mock life or do address death, just in a happier light. It's certainly enjoyable, and it certainly made me laugh out loud more than once - and indeed still does.

I recieved this in a short amount of time and in excelent condition. There was no hassle what-so-ever and after finding it in my mailbox it felt like my birthday! Great service, I would definatly order from these guys again.

Songs from this album were featured in an MMO called AQ worlds. On March Friday 13th 2009 at 8pm EST. AQWorlds hosted a live event called an unlive event, which is currently available for replay. The event started late, crashed the server a few time and was glitchy. The event featured many firsts for the game including a "talking" NPC. Voltaire was also on line at the time and chatted with the players via the moderator system (which meant we couldn't reply). The NPC verson of Voldtaire used his actual voice which was pretty cool.

songs used in the MMO include

This Ship's Going Down

he Beast of Pirate's Bay (Captain Rubarb if he's mentioned in your version is an AQ and DF NPC and captain blackberry is a DF NPC
Also Moglins are a race in DF, AQ and AQW

This CD stands up to Voltaire's previous works of musical talent and left me feeling satisfied in the purchase