Customer Reviews

A-Ha Shake Heartbreak (Bonus CD)

5 star:		(95)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(45)

 

 

First things first.

This is not like the debut album. Aha Shake is much more dynamic record. It stops and starts on a dime and the music has been pushed a bit more in all directions. Now don't get me wrong, it's still the same basic sound found on Youth and Young Manhood, it's just a bit more polished and thought-out in all areas.

You get indie-style radio friendly rockers like King Of The Rodeo and (the first single) The Bucket. But you also get a nice mix of slower numbers like Milk and Day Old Blues. The main difference from the debut is the slow numbers do MUCH more than slow the tempo. Milk is almost experimental in it's sparce arrangement and vocal delivery, while Day Old Blues pushes the idea of what is a chorus.

I found this record just as enjoyable as the first but I feel it has more to offer for the long haul, and that's just one reason why it's been one of my favorite records this year.

I feel pretty strongly that this album is the best album this year. Seriously. Songwriting, musicianship, production are all far outside what anyone else is doing today in modern music. The sound of this album is completely unequaled when compared to most other current recordings.

That being said, the DRM appears to be far worse then everyone here is claiming. There is evidence that Sony is employing rootkit techniques to install hidden files on your PC that cannot be removed. Not being able to easily copy files to an iPod is one thing, installing hidden unremoveable files on your PC is another.

Do a google search for "Sony" and "Rootkit", or check out this site:

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/

Stay away from this CD!!! What good is it if you can't listen to it? Feel like having to reinstall ALL of your software like I had to do? The copy protection on this CD crippled my computer -- don't let it happen to you!!!

BOYCOTT SONY !!!!

It breaks my heart to give this disc 1 star, because it is fantastic. It is awe-inspiring and balls out freakin rock n roll the likes of which this world needs more of. And I love it. The problem is that the Digital Rights Management nonsense that BMG and RCA have forced on their consumers with this disc is insufferable and should not be tolerated. The issue is that you CANNOT play this disc on your iPod. Not only that, but the lable FAILS TO MAKE THIS CLEAR in any of the packaging on this disc, which means that you don't find out you are screwed until AFTER you blow your ten dollars and get this home.

This is seriously a giant middle finger to consumers. Who in thier right minds would release, in this day and age, a product that is unusable on a technology that is embraced by 99% of the potential audience? And it could only be outright greed that would force a company to overlook mentioning this fact to its customers. The album is available for download on iTunes. How hard is to put some kind of notification on the CD packaging that would have enabled me to not waste 10 bucks on the CD and instead download it from iTUnes?

Finally, to play this CD on your computer, you are forced to download a piece of software called MediaMax. I'm sorry but I refuse to put a piece of potential data mining software on my system simply to listen to one band's music. Who knows what kind of security holes are in this piece of software.

All in all, BMG, RCA and the Kings of Leon should be ashamed of this. FIX IT. And I want my ten dollars back.

The Kings of Leon managed to top themselves with this new release. I can't help it, but it still amazes me that Caleb, the vocalist, is in his early twenties, because he sounds like he is 45 with two-pack-a-day habit and a fondness for whiskey. I noticed most of the bad reviews are due to the copyright protection, rather than the band's music. Yea, this sucks, and I will now longer buy albums from this greedy label. Instead, I downloaded all the songs ILLEGALLY so I could put them on my iPod. Sorry, guys, but I won't pay for the same album twice! Anyway, as I said, this is a great southern rock album (especially considering that CCR and Lynyrd Skynyrd aren't releasing any new songs anytime soon) and is a real listening pleasure. Oh, and if you cannot stand Caleb's gravelly voice, maybe you should try something different. I'm sure that there will be some more American Idol CDs for you to buy, suckers.

As many people may know by now, Sony was recently caught with egg on their face when a security specialist found out that a recently purchased CD (Van Zant: Get Right With The Man) from Sony music not only installed DRM software (digital rights management, to limit and outright prevent copying music to certain devices), but it did so in such a sneaky way that it hid itself entirely from Windows, and opened the system up to security issues such as viruses.

This CD has the same copyright protection, called XCP. When installed, Sony hijacks your computer and installs custom software which:

1) Hides itself entirely from Windows by installing as a rootkit
2) Hides itself in such a manner that any files begining with $sys$ are also hidden. For example, if you install the XCP copy protection software on your machine, and rename "document.doc" to "$sys$document.doc" it then becomes invivisble to you forever.
3) Installs its own custom CD-Rom drivers to hijack your system. It also sneakily names these drivers "Plug and Play Device Manager" to seem as if it's a part of Windows. Trying to delete these drivers manually will disable your CD-Rom drive entirely.
4) Offers no uninstall option until you manually contact Sony

As of my writing this review, Sony has "apologized" for this incident, and claims they will "re-evaluate" this copyright protection software on their CDs in the future.

In the meantime, a virus is currently running wild, which names itself begining with $sys$ in an attempt to hide from the user and virus scanners.

Several class action lawsuits are also pending against Sony right now.

In summary, as you can tell from above, Sony's actions here are absolutely horrible. This is your music. You purchased it, and they should not have any right to dictate how you can use it, let alone install software which compromises your system security.

This is one of the CDs with Sony's XCP copyright protection software on it, and as a result, you should not buy it to send a message to Sony that this will NOT be tolerated in the future.

The music is good, but it has some sort of copyright protection that does not allow it to run on computers. I've done a bit of research into this and it appears there is a way around it, but when I PURPOSELY go out of my way to spend $14 on an album because I believe the band deserves every penny it can get for its music, I can't say I much appreciate not being able to listen to it. In other words, don't purchase it here, download it from somebody who has already gotten around this crock of dung.

I find it interesting that most of the reviews for this cd are either 5 stars or 1 star. Ah, those crazy Kings of Leon. You either love em or hate em. Of course, many of the 1 star reviews are attributed to the capabilities (or lack thereof) of burning the cd to IPods and MP3 players, etc. While that may be annoying, I personally can't relate because I simply downloaded the album from the internet and it works just fine on my cd player.

And oh how fine Aha Shake Heartbreak truly is! On my first listen, by the time the opening track Slow Night So Long ended, I was grinning ear to ear. Finally a band that not only knows how to rock, but knows how to have fun! It's like the Beatles and the Stones have been resurrected through these kids. Every damn song on this album is sure to make you want to sing, smile, and... well, shake. Seriously, everytime I hear the drum and jingle bell intro to Taper Jean Girl, I want to get up and jump up and down on my car. If only I could do that while my car drives by itself.

Some people may not like these guys because of Caleb's voice, which is scratchy and pretty unintelligible. But once you get past the fact that you can barely understand anything this guy says, you come to realize it doesn't matter. This is pure rock n' roll, people. Best rock album I've heard in a LONG time. Best of 2005.

Unavoidably catchy and intoxicating in their revamping of good old southern rock, the Kings of Leon shoot for the stars on their second release. With Caleb slurring his way through some of the most interesting bare bones rock in years, "Aha Shake Heartbreak" just misses being a perfect album. Evidence of growth is all over the place, be it the acoustic tease of the sexual "Milk" or the sly party pooper of "Soft," these four hippy rock revivalists are hitting all the right notes.

Maybe it was the experience of being prophets outside their native land (as the Kings are huge in England now), or just their rural woodshedding prior to being discovered, but there is a real humble quality to "Aha Shake Heartbreak." As I listen to the stunning work on "Taper Jean Girl" and "Four Kicks," I am left with the impression that ego has not caught up with this band in the way that so many New York City scenster groups (hyped in much the way KoL have been of late) muddle their music with a sense of false importance.

That is to the betterment of the Followill clan. They rock with a purity that leans towards the Stones, or of a more recent vintage, The Black Crowes. Is it that southern rock genetic thing? Think of the Robinson, Allman or the Van Zandt brothers. And dang it, why can't radio stations that insist on playing Skynyrd ten times a day make room for something as fresh and exciting as Kings of Leon's "The Bucket"? But with the big leap in skill from "Youth and Young Manhood" to the excellent "Aha Shake Heartbreak," Kings Of Leon beat the sophomore slump by a country mile.

Heartbreak indeed...I'm a fan, unfortunately the disc has to go back. It's protected from playing on my iPod. huh? does that sound right?
I don't have time to break out the old Babbage machine to figure out this encryption. a bit surprising coming from the Kings...time for new management and/or record company?