Megadeth - Super Collider
I promised myself that I wouldn't review this album. I swore that I would never even think about it again, but I can't stay quiet for much longer... I need to vent.
As a teenager I was probably the biggest Megadeth fanboy you could come across, and I enjoy pretty much every album the band did up to Endgame. When Th1rt3en was released a few years ago I wasn't so sure about it - the album can be summed up as "Youthanasia without any of the good songs' and the three re-recorded tracks (two of which were written around the time Youthanasia was released, oddly enough) were completely inferior to their original renditions. After the blistering speed metal of 2009's Endgame, it was disappointing. But this... this is hard to even rate.
Super Collider is yet another attempt to recapture Megadeth's success with more commercial rock-based music in the ninties, and unfortunately that's all I have to say about it aside from the fact that they've failed spectacularly. The band has finally had to tune down an entire step (from E to D) to accomodate Dave Mustaine's ever-tiring vocal chords and while they've experimented with different tunings in the past, this time around it's immediately obvious that they've done it as a necessity as opposed to such a move being the result of artistic decision. Dave is sounding worse than ever, he was never spectacular vocalist to begin with but he always got the job done - here he just sounds tired, almost as if he'd recorded his vocals hungover after a night of heavy drinking. The album's musicianship is still pretty good as everyone plays heir instruments well but it can't cover up poor songwriting, and sadly the album is rife with it. I think the only standout on the entire record is the chorus to 'Dance In the Rain', which still gets marred by Dave's poor vocal performance and the fact that the rest of the song simply isn't very good. Whatever magic was happening within the Megadeth camp during the writing and recording of Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings just isn't there anymore, and I doubt it will be again if this is anything to go by. This is all topped off by the album closer, a rather painful cover of Thin Lizzy's 'Cold Sweat', that serves as the final nail in the coffin for me. If you want to hear a good cover of Thin Lizzy, check out Sodom's version of that very song on 1990's Better Off Dead - hell, even my band Vindicator UK did a Thin Lizzy cover better than this.
If I type much more then I'm going to have an aneurysm. This isn't a preference of Megadeth's thrashier material over their softer stuff, this is just bad music - many have compared Super Collider to 1999's critically-panned Risk album, which I find very unfair. Risk, for all of it's flaws, was a great album with some fantastic songwriting on it that just happened to be released under the Megadeth name. Sadly, Super Collider has no such excuses as any band who released something this terrible would get a rating just as bad as this one. If I could give this 0.2/5 then I would, but I can't. Even some of the Mustaine Scotum-Licker fans will be repulsed by this... but unfortunately, many Megadeth fans will willingly take any load of shite the band throws their way.
Super Collider is bad. It's so bad that you shouldn't even be reading this, not even out of curiosity. It's so bad that it makes St. Anger look like Annihilator's magnum opus. It's so bad that I think I'm going to punch a dolphin once I'm done writing this, then punch myself FOR writing this. Avoid this album like the cancerous tumour on music that it is.
Seriously... fuck this album.
As a teenager I was probably the biggest Megadeth fanboy you could come across, and I enjoy pretty much every album the band did up to Endgame. When Th1rt3en was released a few years ago I wasn't so sure about it - the album can be summed up as "Youthanasia without any of the good songs' and the three re-recorded tracks (two of which were written around the time Youthanasia was released, oddly enough) were completely inferior to their original renditions. After the blistering speed metal of 2009's Endgame, it was disappointing. But this... this is hard to even rate.
Super Collider is yet another attempt to recapture Megadeth's success with more commercial rock-based music in the ninties, and unfortunately that's all I have to say about it aside from the fact that they've failed spectacularly. The band has finally had to tune down an entire step (from E to D) to accomodate Dave Mustaine's ever-tiring vocal chords and while they've experimented with different tunings in the past, this time around it's immediately obvious that they've done it as a necessity as opposed to such a move being the result of artistic decision. Dave is sounding worse than ever, he was never spectacular vocalist to begin with but he always got the job done - here he just sounds tired, almost as if he'd recorded his vocals hungover after a night of heavy drinking. The album's musicianship is still pretty good as everyone plays heir instruments well but it can't cover up poor songwriting, and sadly the album is rife with it. I think the only standout on the entire record is the chorus to 'Dance In the Rain', which still gets marred by Dave's poor vocal performance and the fact that the rest of the song simply isn't very good. Whatever magic was happening within the Megadeth camp during the writing and recording of Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings just isn't there anymore, and I doubt it will be again if this is anything to go by. This is all topped off by the album closer, a rather painful cover of Thin Lizzy's 'Cold Sweat', that serves as the final nail in the coffin for me. If you want to hear a good cover of Thin Lizzy, check out Sodom's version of that very song on 1990's Better Off Dead - hell, even my band Vindicator UK did a Thin Lizzy cover better than this.
If I type much more then I'm going to have an aneurysm. This isn't a preference of Megadeth's thrashier material over their softer stuff, this is just bad music - many have compared Super Collider to 1999's critically-panned Risk album, which I find very unfair. Risk, for all of it's flaws, was a great album with some fantastic songwriting on it that just happened to be released under the Megadeth name. Sadly, Super Collider has no such excuses as any band who released something this terrible would get a rating just as bad as this one. If I could give this 0.2/5 then I would, but I can't. Even some of the Mustaine Scotum-Licker fans will be repulsed by this... but unfortunately, many Megadeth fans will willingly take any load of shite the band throws their way.
Super Collider is bad. It's so bad that you shouldn't even be reading this, not even out of curiosity. It's so bad that it makes St. Anger look like Annihilator's magnum opus. It's so bad that I think I'm going to punch a dolphin once I'm done writing this, then punch myself FOR writing this. Avoid this album like the cancerous tumour on music that it is.
Seriously... fuck this album.
1. Kingmaker
2. Super Collider
3. Burn!
4. Built For War
5. Off The Edge
6. Dance In The Rain
7. Beginning Of Sorrow
8. The Blackest Crow
9. Forget To Remember
10. Don't Turn Your Back...
11. Cold Sweat (cover Thin Lizzy)
2. Super Collider
3. Burn!
4. Built For War
5. Off The Edge
6. Dance In The Rain
7. Beginning Of Sorrow
8. The Blackest Crow
9. Forget To Remember
10. Don't Turn Your Back...
11. Cold Sweat (cover Thin Lizzy)
Tradecraft
Reviewer: Dave Ingram Jr.
Aug 31, 2013
Aug 31, 2013
Next review:
These Hearts - Yours To Take
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