Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials

What's this? Two New Music Tuesday entries?!?! Hooray music! About a year ago now, I was just some dummy off the street who had no idea who Florence + The Machine was. And you say, "But B Side, the first album came out in July of 2009!" And I say - I know dear reader. I really dropped the ball on this band. But once I listened to them, I was hooked. My loyal readers will recall I went to a show to see her perform this summer, and she was outstanding. Even as much as I loved her before, the show gave me a whole new respect of what she's capable of doing. The backstory for this record was Florence Welch was approached to do this "American pop music" record out in Los Angeles. At first, she was ecstatic, as she's a self described "sucker" for American pop. But when she read through the initial plan for the album, she couldn't do it. She couldn't just give up on all the principles that made 'Lungs' so amazing and true to her style. So back to London she went, working in the studio. This album was set out to be a better version of 'Lungs' with a "more dark, more heavy, bigger drum sounds, bigger bass, but with more of a whole sound". Pretty big shoes to fill. Listening to this for the first time this morning - wow. I'm honestly shocked. It feels so much like 'Lungs' but the songs have this quality, this depth that is almost like 'Lungs' on steroids. I refuse to say this album is "better" or even "worse" because it's too early for me to judge. But I can say this, her vocals and the heavy, dark drums - wow. It's just simply a style that I personally can't ever get sick of. I adore this. And no, it's not the most manly of albums out there, but so what? It's flat out great music. I'm going to have an initial hard time picking out my three tracks, but maybe I'll revisit this one in a few weeks. It's good enough that I'm gonna run out to buy it. So at the very least, you should check this one out.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Only If For a Night
2. Shake It Out
3. What the Water Gave Me
4. Never Let Me Go
5. Breaking Down
6. Lover To Lover
7. No Light, No Light
8. Seven Devils
9. Heartlines
10. Spectrum
11. All This and Heaven Too
12. Leave My Body
13. Remain Nameless
14. Strangeness and Charm
15. Bedroom Hymns
16. What the Water Gave Me (Demo)

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Seven Devils
2. Never Let Me Go
3. What The Water Gave Me

FINAL RATING:
4 out of 5 stars

Megadeth - TH1RT3EN

New Music Tuesday is in full effect today with a little Halloween style album that dropped today. Megadeth is one of my favorite metal bands of all time, and they put out the 'Thirteen' release today. For the future discussion of the album, I'm not going to spell it out with the clever numbers for letters scheme, because it takes too long and it kind of loses its fun. Anyhow, my first thought this morning was the film 'Thirteen Ghosts' could have played into this somehow, or that the movie will be upset that it sucked, and that this album wasn't out to promote the movie back in 2001 or whatever it was. Perhaps what's more obvious than that convoluted nonsense is that it very well might be their thirteenth album. Guess which one is the case? I'll let you decide. This album has been talked about for a couple years now. I recall reading about Mustaine talking new music in early 2010. This album is supposed to be amazing. I mean, every artist says their next album is going to be phenomenal, but they were hyping this one up pretty good. I think the plan was to somehow go back to the old school Megadeth 'Countdown to Extinction' feel, but also make that modern. I'm not sure this feels a whole lot different from the older Megadeth records, but hey - that's a good thing. There are some crazy stories about odd events that happened during production, and how it could relate to the old unlucky '13', but I don't really care enough to talk about it. I think this album rocks pretty gosh darn hard. It's 13 tracks of pure metal in the way that only Dave Mustaine can spit it. It's hard to imagine a metal fan not falling in love with this, and it's not like Megadeth is dropping albums every year to feed the fans fix. So for me, this one is a home run. If I'm in the mood for metal these next few months, this one is going straight in the player.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Sudden Death
2. Public Enemy No. 1
3. Whose Life (Is It Anyways?)
4. We the People
5. Guns, Drugs & Money
6. Never Dead
7. New World Order
8. Fast Lane
9. Black Swan
10. Wrecker
11. Millennium of the Blind
12. Deadly Nightshade
13. 13

Listen To Samples

Top 3 Tracks:
1. Sudden Death
2. 13
3. Public Enemy No. 1

FINAL RATING:
3.75 out of 5 stars