Artist: Apocalyptica
Venue: Nokia Theatre Times Square (New York, NY)
Opener: Dir En Grey, Evaline
Date: 7/28/2010
Label: Jive Records
Apocalyptica was back in NYC once again and this time the master Finnish cellists would be supporting their recently released “7th Symphony” album. The music found on the CD follows a similar premise as we found on “Worlds Collide” from a couple of years ago where the group is accompanied on some tracks by vocal personalities of note.
Evaline: I walked in on this independent group, and didn’t mind much of what they were playing but I had to admit that it was not enough of a dose to formulate a sound opinion on what they were all about. Had I hated the two songs I heard it would be unfair to lambast them and had I loved the two songs I heard it would be equally unfair to toss them roses at the end of the performance. That being said, they did not sound bad and I would check them out again in the future if the circumstances found me being able to do so.
Continue reading Apocalyptica @ Nokia Theatre Times Square (8/24/2010) →
Artist: Apocalyptica
Title: “7th Symphony” (Deluxe)
Label: Jive Music
Release Date: 8/24/2010
Genre: Classical Metal
Rating: 4.75/5
When Apocalyptica released their latest CD “7th Symphony”, I admitted that I was a little surprised to find a special deluxe edition with a bonus DVD being made available on the very same day. Generally we find such an issue coming out months after the standard one as we see done from time to time with artists on both the Roadrunner and Eagle Records labels. Depending on the band featured, it might actually make you go out and purchase something that you avoided the first time around or in some sense be a release that gets a breathe of renewed life into it. Sometimes this is a good idea because perhaps the album might have been overlooked by the general public and then after some regional touring found a massive flood of interest being directed at it. That being said, finding a special edition with the DVD coming out on the same day left me scratching my head. Anyway, I had just reviewed the standard edition and re-present those thoughts for your benefit and then I will examine a little bit more about the differences between that edition and the deluxe being discussed in this review.
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Artist: Apocalyptica
Title: “7th Symphony”
Label: Jive Music
Release Date: 8/24/2010
Genre: Classical Metal
Rating: 4.25/5
Like a breath of fresh, cold Scandinavian air comes the latest release by Finland’s Apocalyptica. While I am thinking that you should know who they are by now, I will indulge the newcomer by saying that they are the band that made playing the cello not only cool but frigging awesome. Many of their original fans came to love them from their renditions of Metallica standards. With this in your memory banks we can now get down to business about their new album “7th Symphony”. The release is the bands seventh recording which makes the title rather kitsch and it follows suit with their previous album “World’s Collide” by making strong use of their instrumental fare and a number of well-known musical guests to provide vocals on the remaining tracks. I have to take a moment and revisit a minor issue that I felt with their “Worlds Apart” release and that was my initial worry about how the guest appearances seemed to take away from the magic that was Apocalyptica music and how I felt these tunes sounded more like the bands that the singers came from than they should have. Looking back on this I have to say that I was wrong because it really ended up working in the bands behalf and brought them to greater heights than had they not chosen to do so. Hearing Eicca, Perttu, Paavo and Mikko with new voices to their compositions was truly interesting from beginning to end. Here is the layout of this musical map.
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