[youtube]sLs7xoX_vX4[/youtube]

-Mod edit: You don't need the solidus on the first "[ quote]"-


Involvement of Decon, or not. I'd watch a feature film of that. lol

>Talking about an album with fart noises and diarrhea

Blah blah, I know the meaning behind it, yeah yeah. It just made me chuckle.

haha Part of maturing is embracing 4th grade humor, right?... oh, and props to my poor quoting skills!

Maturity is knowing when to be immature.

Decon was (is) a MASSIVE SUCCESS. So floored by this album.
Pretty much everything I ever wanted in a metal album!

My thoughts below on Deconstruction and I’d like to start with the negatives.

I think the biggest flaw of the album is it’s indigestibility. It’s like a four course meal of meats and initial listens gave me headaches and nausea - and I mean that literally. It may’ve been the low quality mp3, although I’ve never experienced it before and it has since passed. Besides the complexity, the length of the album doesn’t help - there’s a reason why Slayer’s Reign In Blood is 25 minutes long and most extreme metal albums rarely go beyond 40 minutes. Although I can’t quite figure out the various things Devin says about the reason and concept of this album, if one of them was to overload people with crushing metal to prove he can still do it if he wishes (I think he’s been alluding to this on here) I’m not sure the album was made with the right sentiments and I’m expecting it may backfire in a number of ways, especially if this album is too successful - a ‘when is the new SYL album’ being replaced with a ‘when is a second Deconstruction coming’. I saw recently from FB that the label are already trying to market the album as a ‘what Devin has always wanted to do with SYL’ - I’d say that was annoying for him although I do believe he has been inadvertently courting the sentiments. Regardless, I think his sentiments are important because I find much of the album to be very consciously over-the-top and a bit too forced notably in the longer tracks. For once much of the humour seems quite laboured, notably that cheeseburger/brain stuff and the farts are quite childish and cringey. I think the idea was that ‘serious-types’ are meant to be bothered by these things to prove that very point but the reality is they’re just not funny and definitely have zero resonance. Now, the ‘saving-the-world boots’, having a death metal vocalist scream, ‘we praise satan, he lives inside of our hearts’, and ending The Mighty Masturbator with a choir singing ‘Amen’ - now that’s funny stuff maybe because the irony of it rises the humour to something a bit more sophisticated. Anyway, back to the indigestibility of the album - as I think someone mentioned before I think some choruses could’ve anchored the listener a bit rather than getting lost within songs that at times sound all over the place and complex for the sake of complexity rather than serving some central idea. I find the album good for shopping to or listening to half of it at a time, but giving it a concentrated listen from start to finish is unlikely to happen often with me.


Onto the positives, and there are many but I’ll just highlight a few.

- The mix and production sound incredible - even on shitty mp3s.

- I love the way the choir and orchestra are imbedded in the music. What I mean is most metal albums that use such things like showing them off (Cradle of Filth’s Damnation and a Day or Dimmu Borgir’s Abrahadabra come to mind) but Deconstruction treats them with no more importance than any of the other instruments.

- I think the guest vocalists work great and I love the way (at least initially) you don’t really notice the change from Devin to them - the Ihsahn one is incredible in this way. At first, I’d be half-way through Ihsahn’s vocal before saying to myself, ‘oh, that’s not Devin, it’s Ihsahn!’. This implies he used them at the correct times in the tracks rather than what you usually get which is ‘I’ll randomly pick some verse or chorus for the guest spot as I’m really only interested in using their name to promote the album’.

- The songs Praise The Lowered, Stand and Juular are consistently excellent and although to me, things get a little patchier from there, most songs are peppered with moments of genius. The beautiful bits in Planets (especially the Mew-type bit), the Vengaboys and waltz sections in Masturbator, the musical start and end of Deconstruction and the final minute of Poltergeist. I think the only weak track is Pandemic as maybe it’s too SYL for me - however it is the shortest track - 3.5 minutes of a 70 minute album, so not too much harm done.

- The album definitely grows on you and I don’t think I’ve ever listened to a new album so much with increasing liking of it - I feel I’ll still be getting into it in a year’s time. It’s one of them metal albums that simply must be experienced, a bit like everyone should see 2001 A Space Odyssey just to experience it - it doesn’t matter if you hate it, just experience it at least once. I think this album will be a Devin Townsend cornerstone album for decades to come even though I have some reservations about the consistency of it's overall creative quality.

In general I was extremely surprised by this album as it's much better and far less like SYL than I believed it would. It's weird because I was more looking forward to Ghost and was kinda disappointed by that. I've written a review in the Ghost section.

So I had committed to not downloading Decon or Ghost until I had the physical CDs in my hands, ready to rip to my computer. I do download of course, but not before an album is out usually-- I dunno, some form of mixed up principles. And then the having the physical copy in my hands to go with the music is another factor. But I'm leaving for Chicago next week and this plane ride offers a perfect chance to listen to the new albums, and the complete four album suite, in all their glory with no other distractions whatsoever save flight attendants giving me peanuts. So I ask, oh fellow board members and especially those who like me are waiting for the albums before listening.... should I betray sticking to my guns for the perfect place to listen to the albums? The decision is tearing me up... and I'm the most indecisive bastard you could ever meet.

So I had committed to not downloading Decon or Ghost until I had the physical CDs in my hands, ready to rip to my computer. I do download of course, but not before an album is out usually-- I dunno, some form of mixed up principles. And then the having the physical copy in my hands to go with the music is another factor. But I'm leaving for Chicago next week and this plane ride offers a perfect chance to listen to the new albums, and the complete four album suite, in all their glory with no other distractions whatsoever save flight attendants giving me peanuts. So I ask, oh fellow board members and especially those who like me are waiting for the albums before listening.... should I betray sticking to my guns for the perfect place to listen to the albums? The decision is tearing me up... and I'm the most indecisive bastard you could ever meet.

You clearly want to download them.
Why would you need our approval?

So I had committed to not downloading Decon or Ghost until I had the physical CDs in my hands, ready to rip to my computer. I do download of course, but not before an album is out usually-- I dunno, some form of mixed up principles. And then the having the physical copy in my hands to go with the music is another factor. But I'm leaving for Chicago next week and this plane ride offers a perfect chance to listen to the new albums, and the complete four album suite, in all their glory with no other distractions whatsoever save flight attendants giving me peanuts. So I ask, oh fellow board members and especially those who like me are waiting for the albums before listening.... should I betray sticking to my guns for the perfect place to listen to the albums? The decision is tearing me up... and I'm the most indecisive bastard you could ever meet.

You clearly want to download them.
Why would you need our approval?

I'd say more that I want to hear them moreso then download them. And I'm not asking for approval, more like asking for opinions. I'm a big boy, I can make my own decisions as hard as they may be, I'm just more asking for opinions. To me, that'd be the definition of a forum.

Oh look, it's Deconstruction done right!

UneXpect are wicked indeed, but that album doesn't even come close to touching Deconstruction for me .

[Octillus]

UneXpect are wicked indeed, but that album doesn't even come close to touching Deconstruction for me .

This.

Oh look, it's Deconstruction done right!

That's a dumb thing to say.

I will check the new Unexpect album though, cause they're cool.

Y-you're a dumb thing to say!


baka

You called?

Also yeah, Unexpect are great and all, but the two don't really compare.

At some point, I'll post an overly verbose and meandering account of why I think Deconstruction is so great, but for now, I will just say: holy shit, Devin, this album is amazing. That word has been devalued from overuse, but I mean it: this album literally amazes me.

Brilliant Dev, just brilliant...

I know this may sound weird, but my favorite part of the album is the split second the album ends. The album builds up and builds up and the chaos grows and then...silence.

Listening to Deconstruction at heroic levels and just to have it end the way he did, really opens your eyes(or ears) to the all of the layers of sounds that you normally tune out.

Again, brilliant.

Alien is the only other album that I have had in my rotation of listening to Deconstruction and I must say evolution is a good thing.