Customer Reviews

Let the Dominoes Fall

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

 

 

This is an excellent cd. Ive been a long time Rancid & Operation Ivy fan. I was lucky enough to see them play this, well, a few songs off this alubmn live in July. Great show but Im still bitter they only played a 20 minute set, ripoff for $45 tickets, but thats a different subject.

It is a great CD. If youre an old school Rancid fan, be sure to listen to it before you but it. Its slower, and a LOT less hardcore than their previous alubmns. Musically, this album is superior to their previous alblums. Much like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rancid is now maturing as a band and this alubm shows it.

Great catchy songs. Slower and more melodic than much of their previous stuff. Acoustic album included is interesting, but definately a dramatic change from the Rancid you are used to. In case you didnt read the info above, yes, 1 of the 2 CD's is all acoustic. Very interesting, but some songs have a goofball country feel.

Overall, if youre a Rancid fan you will like this album and its well worth the money. If youre a hardcore punk looking for a good punk rock cd, this might not be for you.

The first cd in many years since the solid Indestructible. This cd is even better. The songwriting is outstanding. All music genres are covered with solid hooks. Obvious it is not straight ahead punk like the earlier cd's. Just keep an open mind, listen and enjoy!

Rancid's new album Let The Dominoes Fall cannot be fully appreciated without the expanded acoustic disc. Growing up as a Rancid fan, they have never disappointed. I can always trust them to put out something good. For those who are looking for Rancid to sound like they did in '95 or earlier, keep moving on. Rancid is an ever growing bottomless pit of creativity. And as a fan, I've grown with them. While I admit, they should've been writing this stuff when Indestructible came out, obviously Tim needed that album to vent about Brodi. While holding true to their beliefs, they've managed to produce a patriotic album full of hope and loss and grief. "Civilian ways" is about Tim's brother coming home from Iraq. There's a love song for the forgotten "New Orleans", (which I highly recommend listening to the acoustic version. It does the song more justice giving a feel of a dark haunted love for the city). And one of my favorites is "Lulu" which is the family left behind. Rancid is back with the more poetic lyrics that I love so much. We can welcome back the likes of Vic Ruggiero who has graced past Rancid albums, as well as Matt Hensley of Flogging Molly (on the acoustic version).

Rancid is one of those epic groups that has been around so long, and written so many good songs, that you just assume that any product that comes out with their name on it is automatically good.

Well this CD isn't.

This disc isn't an extension or evolution of their punk legacy, but a more produced, less intense, more main-stream selection of mediocre songs. It seems as if Rancid focused on making more rhythmic/melodic songs, but none of them ended up being very original or interesting. This isn't to say that change isn't good, but improvement is based on comparison. If you compare this disc with their earlier work, the music that Rancid makes now is a shallower and less energetic version of what came before.

Rancid is great at making very fast, very intense, punk songs - but when they stray from that formula (like they did on this disc) they don't make very good music.

Rancid is still a very solid Punk band. Since their first records we have seen how they have experimented with reggae and ska, without losing their punk spirit and roots. They even explored a more difficult style in Rancid (2000) resulting in a very good hardcore effort. They got back to their more characteristic style with Indestructible in 2003. But we had to wait six years to listen to a new Rancid album. "Let the Dominoes Fall" is another triumph for the bay area band.

Lyrics are strong, solid, smart and sometimes beautiful. Tunes are melodic and fun. Remember Tim Armstrong is a 43 year old dude. His mind is not focused in street riots, but in a wider spectrum of themes that inspire diverse feelings.

If you are a 30+ yrs old fan, who have been following their career since "Let's Go" or "And Out Come the Wolves" I assure you will love this album. If you are younger and love the energy of a more hardcore oriented album, perhaps you may think this album is not for you, but you can give it a try, and perhaps in a few years more you will end appreciating it.

I, as many others have stated have been a Rancid fan for years, and have experienced their power and presence live. I feel that a band will evolve as time goes on, hopefully staying true to where they cam from. Let's Go & ...And Out Come The Wolves can never be topped in my opinion. I just feel that This album, and Indestructible have been overproduced. I feel like this album has some excellent ideas (ie. Let the dominoes fall, east bay night, civilian ways, and last one to die) but the lack of real, sensible, powerful and passionate lyrics was there, and the overproduction really left them sounding too polished and clean. If these songs had the rawness of many of their previous albums excluding Indestructible, this could have been an amazing album. I've been listening to this album since it came out. I find it catchy, but I guess its not really what I would expect from Rancid. I was hoping that Indestructible was just a bump in the road. Hopefully they keep the faith.

Rancid proves that they are still relevant and this album has a lot to offer. So far my favorite track is LA River, although there are several tracks that stand out on their own. Lars steps up to the mic more on this album than he has in the past, contributing to Tim Armstrong's unique singing voice.

I'd buy it again.

Rancid is one of the best punk bands in the business, no question. That said, this album is most certainly their weakest. They try too hard to be political, and while that works for some bands, (i.e. Bad Religion & Anti-Flag) it does not work for Rancid. 'Dominoes' starts out promising, 'East Bay Night' is a melodic, well written, punk infused homage to their hometown. 'Up To No Good' has the ska-core groove that clearly pays tribute to the Op Ivy days & 'Last One To Die' is classic Rancid Punk. The rest of the album, however, disappoints. At times it seems the songs and lyrics just don't go together & the album doesn't flow. Rancid's greatest talent in their past albums has been their ability to relate and connect with their fans. Their songs reached out and hit us, they made us feel like old friends. 'Dominoes', for the most part, is missing that. For hardcore Rancid fans, yeah, buy the album and support the band but for those just discovering Rancid, pick up 'And Out Come the Wolves' or 'Let's Go' instead.

I just got this the other day and it sucked. Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Rancid and have some of their lyrics tattooed on my body, but unlike all their other albums where tim and lars switch off vocals respectively, lars doesn't take up the lead until track 5, where its a split with tim, and then not again til side c or d. Matt has a part on this album which is cool. Unlike creating an awesome, unique, intelligent sound which Indestructible(2003) is known for, this record sounds like they're trying to emulate the later Clash. If you heard a song off this album and loved it, get it. Very nice packaging and beautiful vinyl. But if your a new fan, this is NOT the legendary punk band you're looking for. Check out Lets Go(1994), ...And Out Come the Wolves(1995), or their self titled albums(1993 and 2000) and don't ruin it for yourself early.

I honestly don't get what happened to Rancid. "And Out Come the Wolves" was probably the best 3rd wave ska album and one of the best streetpunk albums of all time. Their albums before that (S/T, Let's Go) were equally excellent, too.

Then we get "Life Won't Wait", which wasn't particularly bad (it has some great songs) but it wasn't a punk album, which is what Rancid did best. Then, seemingly in response to criticisms that they weren't a punk band anymore, they release an absolutely dreadful and completely tuneless eponymous hardcore album in 2000 sans Hammond organ (and any sense of melody).

Then comes "Indestructible", which like "Life Won't Wait" wasn't bad and had some memorable tracks - but wasn't great either mainly because while Tim's marble mouthed warblings were fine (and in most cases, worked well) for punk music, but they don't work very well on rocksteady and reggae tracks. He can't sing, at all. It hurts the music on that album. Also, like "Life Won't Wait", but to a greater extent, at some point you have to get sick of rocksteady 1-4-5 progressions and the hammond. Some of the tracks were repetitive and not terribly original.

Then all of a sudden Rancid listened to The Clash's "Sandanistas" and their own "And Out Come the Wolves" one too many times and we received this abomination. There are borrowed riffs aplenty on this album. It's probably the least original Rancid album besides Rancid (2000). There's even the riff from Roots Radical in the intro of one of the songs. I spit out my coffee when I was driving when I heard that.

Insipid lyrics about losing faith in America are on about half the songs (Disconnected, Liberty and Freedom, Locomotive), insipid lyrics that were probably written the day of the song on others ("Up to No Good" is particularly terrible). This album's lyric sheet reads reads like generic hardcore from the Reagan/Dubya administration - so the whole thing feels a bit dated. How the folks who wrote "The Ballad of Jimmy and Johnny", "Dope Sick Girl" and "Rats in the Hallway", "Warsaw" and "Arrested in Shanghai" wrote the lyrics to this album defies all logic. Lulu's not that bad, if a tad morally sententious, but that's about it.

Oh, and then there's my biggest problem with the album - you can't hear the bass. Matt's a great basist (he's honestly one of the best rock bassists playing today) and you can't hear him. Considering he's generally playing the melody line and the guitars are playing rhythm, it's ridiculous to mix the guitars up so high in the mix. This album is mixed like a heavy metal album. Whoever mixed it (Gurewitz, I think) must've been out of his mind at the time. It makes an already monotonous album even more so when you can't hear the melody. Really, how interesting is a 1-4-5 otherwise?

The Rancid side projects like the Transplants and The Silencers are still worth a look, but I think this is the last album from the band I'm buying (I own all of them and I was looking forward to this one too). They honestly sound like they're phoning it in at this point. Nothing about the album is terrible and it sounds like "Indestructible" for the most part, but it's so consistently mediocre (lyrically, songwriting, mixing) that I felt like I was listening to the audio equivalent of a bad Xerox copy of "Indestructible".

If you're new to Rancid, buy "And out Come the Wolves" if you're interested in ska/punk and "Let's Go" or "Rancid" (1993) if you're interested in their streetpunk period. Those are 3 of the greatest albums I own. If you like their world music oriented phase, get "Life Won't Wait" or "Indestructible". Also consider checking out one of the Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros albums, and of course if you haven't already, the Clash.

This album is somthing I can really only suggest in good faith to Rancid completists.