Customer Reviews

Machine Fish

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

 

 

This album has no weak spots - the 3rd lp released by GALACTIC COWBOYS and a slight departure in style from their first two, in part due to new guitarist Wally Farkas, the material is laced with fabulous 4-part harmonies and heavy guitars, thought-provoking and playful lyrics with a distinct spiritual flavor. I saw this band perform in Charlotte, NC in their final show on the tour promoting this album, and even though they had to cancel some pryor dates due to Ben Huggins' vocal problems, they absolutely kicked! I talked a while with Monty Colvin (bass/vocals), and he is just as approachable and real as the music suggests. These guys demonstrate everything that's good about rock music and this album is a can't miss at any price. - Brad Farha

This CD is superior! The songwriting and musicianship are excellent! Not a bad song on the disk. A must have for all! BUY THIS DISK!

I give all Galactic Cowboys album 5 stars. They are awesome. Especially for any lover of Megadethtallica floyd music with beatles/king's x harmony vocals. some songs may be similar (they apparently wrote a lot in drop D locrian/minor on this album) but the slower ones gave it just enough variancy. A great comeback after a temporary breakup.

galactic cowboys is awesome. too bad that ugly (....) dog mtv doesn't cater to metalheads anymore because if they did, this album would light up request lines. my favorite song is psychotic companion, which is also featured on metalmeister 1. i cannot emphasize enough on the quality of this band and their labelmates king's x.

I like every song on here but two. This is a straight-ahead melodic/power metal disc that is REALLY catchy. You can hum to this stuff and the three or four part vocal harmonies are great a la King's X. If you only get one cd by these guys, make it this one.

This is a great album and a fine example of the Galactic Cowboys' musical skills. Almost all of the tracks are great examples of essentially how to rock. Only "Easy to Love" and "Arrow" disappoint, the former because of it's rather sappy lyrics and weak music, the latter if only because of the incredibly grating ticking noise throughout the whole song (did someone leave a metronome on?).

The lyrics in general tend to be the crisp clever output that exists on most of the Cowboys' albums, with "Psychotic Companion" providing the prototypical clever, cute, catchy song that would become a semi-staple later with "Evil Twin" off of _The Horse That Bud Bought_ and "Where Do I Sign?" off of _At the End of the Day_.

The biggest problem I have with this album is that it has a tendency to run together without enough variance in songs. The previously mentioned Psychotic Companion tends to stand out, as does "Pattin' Yourself on the Back" for its pace that's amazingly more frenetic than the rest of the album. The rest of the album, the first 4 tracks in particular, just don't provide enough distinction between each other. This isn't to say that they aren't distinguishable, but simply that the album really needed something more to provide better pacing.

I do like this album... I do. But, it's not my favorite of theirs. Although their show was a ton of fun on this tour, the album as a whole didn't totally do it for me like "Galactic Cowboys" and "Space In Your Face". The superior playing and vocals were still there, and I often find myself humming some of the songs from "Machine Fish", but unlike the previous 2 albums, there are songs I don't mind hitting the skip button on.

Top Tracks: Feel The Rage, The Struggle, Fear Not, Psychotic Companion

This is not their best cd by far,but it is good.It is great guitar playing and good songwritting.My favorites are feel the rage and stress.On this cd the cowboys continue to rock.Buy it you will not be dissapointed.

For me, Galactic Cowboys has three periods: The first: excellent melodic metal heavily influenced by Sam Taylor and the "King's X" sound, which includes the album recorded as The Awful Truth, as well as the first two GC albums. The third: the final three albums from Horse to Let it Go, which I consider to be relatively weak and inconsistent, but still good. And the second: Machine Fish. On this cd they really nailed it. They had stopped trying to clone King's X and abandoned much of the slower, moodier songs for flat-out riff-based metal. Other reviewers had said many of the songs on this cd sound the same -- this is not true at all, unless you think that when every song rocks your face off that they all sound the same. Within that, there is great diversity here: fast songs that rock hard, slower songs that rock hard, quirky songs that rock hard. In short, this album just rocks. I know that their signature sound is all based in the harmonies, blah, blah, blah. Fact is, though, they are a rock band, and they are at their best when they are kicking a**, not sounding lovely. This is THE cd to hear that side of this band. If you like metal, get this disc. You will not be disappointed.

This certainly is not a bad album, but 5 stars is way too many. Actually it deserves 3,35 stars but it just wasn't an option! There are some really good songs on it, but, like almost al CD's, there are some weak songs on it.