Customer Reviews

Ghosts in the Machine

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Good
Disc 1: The 11 tracks here are the finished demos, and as soon as I heard the killer guitar tone on "Save Myself," I knew I was going to like this album. The driving riffs are straight out of the 90s metal time capsule. Even though it has the most clichéd title in rock history, "Like Suicide" is actually a cool tune. Vocalist Ben Schigel leans heavily on melody rather than his typical growling, but it works just the same. The intensity returns briefly on "Shattered." It's a nice mix of intensity and emotion. The opening riff of "I'm Falling" is sure to get fists pumping and tempers flaring for a rumble in the pit. "Drowning" keeps the energy flowing with pounding drums and manic guitar rhythms. Schigel delivers like Jekyll and Hyde on "Memories of You."

Disc 2: The demos and live tracks are featured here. "Spread" comes off like a mix of Dope, Alice in Chains, and Deadsy all rolled into one. The faded riffs on "Inside" have a classic seventies rock feel to them. Schigel delivers like a darker more sinister Scott Weiland. "Anymore" is another track that's full of piss-and-vinegar, despite its mellow sections. The band's version of Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Silence" is unique to say the least. Whereas the original version is not exactly something you'd admit to liking (although we all know you do), this version is worth of a heavy metal following. I like how the guitar mimics former vocal parts. The second disc rounds out with four impressive live track that were recorded in Miami back in 2001.

The Bad
The booklet does a lousy job of explaining which songs are demos, which are B-sides, and from what time period the song is from. In fact, it doesn't identify any of that.

The Verdict
Awesome riffs, monstrous beats, melodic and hardcore vocals...what more could hard rock fans ask for? I was instantly hooked by this CD, and I'm sure you'll feel the same way. It's a shame that the band is, for the most part, no more.

Some people attack this band because they're "nu-metal." Meh, they are I guess, but they still have awesome songs. No, it's nothing new, amazingly inspirational, or so hard that you can't imagine how they do it, but they're still good and fun songs. They're songs that you can bang or at least nod your head to. This CD is not as heavy as their debut, but it's still top notch. Stop whining about the genre and actually listen to the CD. These guys are amazing (especially Brad Kochmit), anything but sub-par.

When I first bought their debut album "Subject to Change" i was kind of let down. Not with this one. Ghosts in the Machine is a fantastic cd and even better the 2nd cd is too. It goes to show you how much progress and change the band has made since their first album. I recommend everybody pick up "Ghosts in the Machine".

So I see other reviews talking about "nu metal" this and "nu metal" that.. One sentence someone will say how "nu metal" is it, but then the next line they say Ben sounds like Scott Weiland, or talks about "Inside" being a "70's riff". Bottom line is NU METAL is a stupid term, thrown around by ignorant people trying really hard to lump any and all heavy leaning Rock bands into a single category. Switched is a HARD ROCK band, and the first record they were more of a METAL band. I'm so sick of all this nonsense, because a band is HEAVY, they write SONGS and the singer can ACTUALLY SING, they are "NU-METAL".

Bottom line, you STILL can't go a day without hearing Static-X or Rob Zombie or Mudvayne on the radio, and with good reason, they WRITE HIT SONGS. Personally where I live I can't go a day without hearing Switched on the radio. And that's a great thing.

Bands evolve, music evolves, and Switched has evolved into an amazing Hard Rock Band. If they were circumstantially lumped into the nu-metal category on SUBJECT TO CHANGE that's someone else's problem. And if you are too insecure with making your own musical choices that you have to label everything so it fits neatly into someone else's little package, that is your problem.

But that doesn't change the fact that GITM is an amazing HARD ROCK record, with AMAZING songs. Period.

This is Switched's last album. After the very dark first album, "subject to change", the scene was ripe with rumors that this band would be breaking up. Fourtanuetly they stuck around long enough to record one last album, and it turned out to be a masterpiece.
"Ghosts in the machine" is that album. Once again, extremely dark, Switched go through the motions of what they do best. Brutality mixes with melody, angry lyrics clash with heartbreaking vocals, every thing everyone came to love from this band. Now when i listen to this albuim, i can only think of what could have been for this band. Oh well, i guess we'll never know.

I was a huge fan of Switched's first album, and couldn't wait until this one came out. While I think on the whole it's not quite as good as Subject to Change (they admit that these songs are really just demos) the album has several solid tracks that make it well worth purchasing. Personally I love "Save Myself", "Into Disaster", and "Memories of You". Some of these songs just sound so heavy I don't know how they could tune that low.The 2nd disc has the live songs from their Spread Your EP, plus demos of a bunch of songs from Subject to Change.

First of all im a fan of switched since their earlys demos back then,their first cd was great i loved ,this cd is a bit different thay want to be more melodic and less heavy,its okay they still rock
overall 90/100\buy this cd if you like alternative music or nu metal.

When I heard that Switched was still together and coming out with their new CD, "Ghosts in the Machine", I couldn't wait to hear it.

Back in 2002 I came across this band while walking though the record store and having the cover for "Subject to Change" catch my eye. It was $10 so I figured, why not? I brought it home and poped it into my CD player, I was instantly hooked!

Finally, the debut of "Ghosts in the Machine"... I ran out to the store to buy it. At first I didn't know what to think of the CD, it is much more "Radio Friendly" but had a certain catchiness to it that I couldn't get around. All of the songs are great and I think that the band has grown in their song writing.

Disc two is filled with reprises of their old songs, some of which are the same, others, different... either in the melody or the lyrics. There are some new songs on there too that wern't on "Subject to Change".

The thing that I liked most about this album were the last tracks on CD2... the live versions. I've always wanted to know what Switched sounded like during their concerts and "Ghosts in the Machine" answered that question for me.

Great band and glad they're back and getting stronger. I hope their new band "Rikets" turns out to be just as good! From what I've heard from them, we can expect a lot from the members of Switched, both in their own band and side bands as well!

To me older Slipknot and Mudvayne are in a completely separate niche to stuff like older Staind and Godsmack. The former rock harder and faster, and have more erratic and diverse rhythms, while the latter use a lot of languid mid-tempo strumming with rigid monotonous rhythmmic patterns. The differences apparently seem to be lost on the majority of listeners, with bands from semi-industrial to post-grunge alt-rock all being tagged as "nu-metal", presumably due to their dark aggressive/depressive image or mood taking precedence over the musical compositions as far as most listeners are concerned. It seems the blurring of those lines has been leading bands to lose their identity, drifting from metallic riffing into alt-rock strumming seeminging without even realising it, Slipknot and Taproot being prime examples. Now Switched have followed in those bands' footsteps, and retained even less creativity in the process, although to be fair they had less to begin with. I was into Subject To Change though. I found it to be a surpringly heavy and well-written bunch of songs for a genre that was becoming increasingly unfashionable. This album really might as well not even be the same band. I'm amazed that anyone involved in writing Subject To Change would even be capable of writing a song as dull as Like Suicide. It seems like you could take a bunch of Three Doors Down and Trapt songs and put Switched's name on them and most fans wouldn't know the difference. If you're a sucker for moody modern rock I guess you'll like this album, but for any discerning listener of the genre this album will most likely be a bore.

Nu-metal, today, seems like such an old genre, even though its genesis was only about 15 or so years ago. It's reached the point in its life cycle at which it has had its heyday, fallen out of favor, and now even has a, dare I say it, post-nu-metal genre that is slowly finding its way into circulation. But let's forget about all of this talk about the ebbing and flowing of one of metal's black sheep offspring and think back to when it was all the rage.

Remember when Korn was cool? Or when you couldn't go a day without hearing Drowning Pool, Static-X, Rob Zombie, or Mudvayne on MTV, rock radio, or your newly growing MP3 collection? Or when you weren't a heavy band unless you were playing guitars that were drop-tuned at least one step or a five string bass? Yeah, those were the days, weren't they? Ok, so maybe they weren't all that great.

It's those days of nu-metal yore from which the newest offering from Switched sounds like it belongs in. In a time when rarely a nu-metal band remains standing and those that are still around have either adopted a metalcore edge or experimented themselves to death, Switched confidently offers up a disc of finished demos, b-sides, and rarities-all of which are overloaded with chunky, detuned riffs, friendly screams over melodic vocals, and the standard verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus x2 formula that you haven't probably heard since high school.

Oddly, as hard as it is to fathom, it's almost a breath of fresh air to have a cd like this come across my review desk, but as fresh as that air may be at first, it sure gets stale fast. There's a reason that this style of music isn't all that popular any more-the utter simplicity of it all. The songs all feel so similar and sound so much like other nu-metal bands that have come before. On about half of the songs, it's really hard not to think these guys are actually Skrape in disguise.

Subject to Change, Switched's debut album, was somewhat average (not bad) for its era. It never caught on because it didn't differentiate itself from the pack enough. Neither did their EP, Spread Your EP. This cd, no doubt put together for Switched fans and people still clinging to the nu-metal genre, is like glimpsing a piece of history. It's akin to opening a musical time capsule that shows us what music used to be like back in the day so we can compare and see how far we've come.

I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a bad release, but it's definitely one that will have a quite narrow market to be distributed within. Nu-metal does have its fans still, and for a classically style nu-metal release this isn't terrible, but anyone who has been even moderately savvy when it comes to buying and listening to music during the last few years will find themselves downright disappointed.