Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
If, May 11, 2008
This is easily amongst the worst albums I've ever heard in my life. I've been an MSI fan since Tight came out and I've noticed a sharp decline in quality from release to release, though each album was still held together by enough strong and interesting qualities (as opposed to being held together by strong songwriting -- but I'll get to that in a second). MSI have always been about being fast, frenetic, and ridiculous and combining it into little one and a half-minute to two-minute bursts of offensiveness. However, they've start to lose their edge as they've grown to "mature" and to be taken seriously (though why they'd want to be taken seriously by the same Hot Topic crowd they had previously made fun of on past albums, I'll never know). And this album proves that they never knew how to write a song to begin with.
On past albums, the songs were quick, catchy, and to the point, so your mind never had time to wander, because the songs never did. However, as they've bumped the track times up to 3 minutes, you'll be hit with boring repetition of obnoxious verses and unclever rhymes. MSI apparently doesn't even care about being offensive anymore, which is a nice change of pace, though the vague political and drug rants on here are tired and not in the least bit interesting. The production is lazier than usual, and the vocals are just awful -- again, Little Jimmy's crazy performance in the short ADD-inspired tracks of before was fine, but here he has to actually attempt to "sing" a bit, and the results are terrible. Add to the fact that his voice is mixed louder than any of the instruments, and you've got trouble.
Sadly, this is just a really long and boring album with only a few okay tracks: "Bomb This Track", "Revenge", and "Animal" are all decent, though oddly they are all the oldest tracks on here. Coincedence? I think not: The older MSI gets, the more they want to create "mature" and "refined" music, and they've lost what made them special to begin with. I'm all about musical growth, and I think You'll Rebel to Anything was mostly in the right direction -- this direction, however, is just a parody of what MSI used to stand for. Just an embarassment.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Reviewer who has watched the saga of MSI unfold for the last 10 years.., June 3, 2008
Let's be honest here...
As a long time M.S.I. fan, this is their first album that gives me an uneasy feeling. The older albums had a lot of lyrics that were inside jokes within the band and wouldn't make sense to your average listener (e.g. Planet of the Apes), which was actually very random and entertaining. Now, these songs seem to be easy to understand and made for the new young generation of M.S.I. fans. I think M.S.I. has forgotten that many of their fans from the Tight and F.G.W.S.S.S. era are now nearly 10 years older.
I think one of the fun things with the old albums was slowly figuring out what Jimmy Urine's lyrics were. Now, apparently somebody came up with the idea for him to make a good portion of his lyrics very easy to understand. (which turns out to be a bad thing) Also, there are some very obvious attempts at songs that are made with the hopes that the younger fans will eat it up. Jimmy Urine is probably around his mid/late-30s. I wish he wouldn't feel the need to make music that caters to 16-18 year olds. The original thing M.S.I. would do at their shows is try to piss off people, but now they are trying to satisfy them.
Don't get me wrong there are some elements of old MSI in here and there are many good songs. However, I'm not used to them having more than 1 bad song on an album, but there is a disgusting run of horrid songs on this CD (especially from track 4 until track 6) that are just the worst songs M.S.I. have ever made. Urine's production has improved, but his lyrics and his delivery of them have suffered greatly. Production = up Lyrics = down Delivery = down
As one of the other reviewers said..I also noticed the over-abundance of hand-claps..which probably have hopes to be used during the live set with the fans. I don't want to see MSI go out with a whimper. I don't want them leaving the music world on this note. I would have been happy with them leaving the industry on the last album, especially if this is what was going to follow. I hope they take a good turn and stop trying to satisfy the little kids at the shows and satisfy themselves (not meaning their pocket-book). This is Mindless Self Indulgence....not Mindless Teenage Fan Indulgence.
I rate this a 3.5, but I won't round up because you have the kiddies who just throw 5s out there without a real review. This is still way better than your average CD coming out lately.
Quick rundown of my opinion of the tracklist:
1.) Never Wanted to Dance - This is actually a pretty good song. Decent chorus.
2.) Evening Wear - The chorus is the what saves this song.
3.) Lights Out - Nothing really wrong with this.
4.) Prescription - Like Adam Cooley said on his review..this song is just horrid. The lyrics are not something that should be written by an intelligent grown man (which Urine is)
5.) Issues - Another song that will probably appeal the young immature kids, but should not have been written and released by a human being with dignity.
6.) Get it Up - Another immature horrible song. The type of lyrics that will appeal to juggalos probably. Not to say MSI is mature, but even on the old albums when they were writing fun songs, they weren't so obviously stupid. There was actually some wittiness behind it.
7.) Revenge - This is M.S.I. This is why we love them. His best delivery on the entire album.
8.) Animal - A very good song. Great delivery...great fun lyrics.
9.) Mastermind - This is such an obvious attempt at making an accessible song. Sadly, it's one of the worst songs MSI have ever made. The music itself is pretty good, but the lyrics and delivery are cringe worthy.
10.) On It - decent song.
11.) Pay For It - Pretty good song as well
12.) Due - Very good catchy song.
13.) Money - Pretty amusing song..the lyrics are pretty entertaining..especially if you've seen Swingers.
14.) Bomb this Track - Jimmy doin' his rap thang....not bad.
15.) Mark David Chapman - Another good song.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
bummer, August 21, 2008
It's more like 2.5. It's not really bad by any means, just completely mediocre and forgettable (and MSI's the sort of band I would rather see release a horrible album than a bland one). All of their previous output has been sneeringly sarcastic, antagonistic, hedonistic, manic, ballistic- whereas everything about this album, from the title and packaging to the lyrics, structute and music itself, is completely ignorable. Songs are repetitive and overlong, Jimmy's vocals are lazy and supressed, and the lyrics are uninspired filler. I'm honestly usually the last person to make the assumption that I'm about to, but no album by any other band has seemed so obviously guilty. This is a cash-in.
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