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Machine World
1. Welcome to the Machine
2. Be More Than Just a Number
3. Two Souls, One Mind
4. Tale of the Cave
5. Temple of Rust
6. Rule the World
7. Wonder
8. Invisible
9. When the Machine Stops
Newly finished yesterday, this is the sixth song on the "Machine World" album. It follows on directly from Temple of Rust, which should transition into this one if the two are played back to back (it works on WinAmp and iTunes, not sure about anything else).
It's another song that was discarded for a while before suddenly coming together. It actually grew out of the chorus of Heavenly's "The Dark Memories" (which I never continued with), and uses a similar chiptune-like theme running through it, first appearing in the chorus. And unfortunately I did have to use some rather Heavenly-style stretched syllables to get my lyrics to fit the melody on this one.
This is another power song, but with a much happier tone than the one before it. And it's not about godlike power like the title might suggest. In online communities like this where you can share your creations, what you post will affect other people's lives. In however small a way, if you use your power to create things instead of wasting your time looking down on others, the entire world will be different because you're alive.
[Lyrics]
You think you know who runs the world
The figureheads that you depend upon
You never think behind your sight
The ones who made the system you live on
Now we look down from the sky
The whole world run by this machine
Illusions of power we grant to them all
For us this is real, our silicon dream
We are the writers of this world
We're never seen but always heard
We are the legion of hearts that bore your hate
The future in our hands, for you it's too late
We're leaving our signal all over the earth
Tomorrow we will rule the world
We're the ones who were alone
The heart of creation is strong in us
Your selfish life has left you cold
And you can never learn to think like us
As we're watching you here from the sky
The whole world run by this machine
Illusions of power we grant to you all
It's coming to life, our silicon dream
We are the writers of this world
We're never seen but always heard
We are the legion of hearts that bore your hate
The future in our hands, for you it's too late
We're leaving our signal all over the earth
Tomorrow we will rule the world
The chance to imagine outside your poisoned mind
This is the power that you will never hold
And your hate will be remembered, the suffering you made
You chose to harm when you could have done so much for the world
You made all our lives misery
The past scars will not disappear
But we'll rise above you in the end
Because we know you cannot touch us here
We are the writers of this world
We're never seen but always heard
We are the legion of hearts that bore your hate
The future in our hands, for you it's too late
We're leaving our signal all over the earth
Tomorrow we'll be hidden
But forever we will live
Together we will rule the world
1. Welcome to the Machine
2. Be More Than Just a Number
3. Two Souls, One Mind
4. Tale of the Cave
5. Temple of Rust
6. Rule the World
7. Wonder
8. Invisible
9. When the Machine Stops
Newly finished yesterday, this is the sixth song on the "Machine World" album. It follows on directly from Temple of Rust, which should transition into this one if the two are played back to back (it works on WinAmp and iTunes, not sure about anything else).
It's another song that was discarded for a while before suddenly coming together. It actually grew out of the chorus of Heavenly's "The Dark Memories" (which I never continued with), and uses a similar chiptune-like theme running through it, first appearing in the chorus. And unfortunately I did have to use some rather Heavenly-style stretched syllables to get my lyrics to fit the melody on this one.
This is another power song, but with a much happier tone than the one before it. And it's not about godlike power like the title might suggest. In online communities like this where you can share your creations, what you post will affect other people's lives. In however small a way, if you use your power to create things instead of wasting your time looking down on others, the entire world will be different because you're alive.
[Lyrics]
You think you know who runs the world
The figureheads that you depend upon
You never think behind your sight
The ones who made the system you live on
Now we look down from the sky
The whole world run by this machine
Illusions of power we grant to them all
For us this is real, our silicon dream
We are the writers of this world
We're never seen but always heard
We are the legion of hearts that bore your hate
The future in our hands, for you it's too late
We're leaving our signal all over the earth
Tomorrow we will rule the world
We're the ones who were alone
The heart of creation is strong in us
Your selfish life has left you cold
And you can never learn to think like us
As we're watching you here from the sky
The whole world run by this machine
Illusions of power we grant to you all
It's coming to life, our silicon dream
We are the writers of this world
We're never seen but always heard
We are the legion of hearts that bore your hate
The future in our hands, for you it's too late
We're leaving our signal all over the earth
Tomorrow we will rule the world
The chance to imagine outside your poisoned mind
This is the power that you will never hold
And your hate will be remembered, the suffering you made
You chose to harm when you could have done so much for the world
You made all our lives misery
The past scars will not disappear
But we'll rise above you in the end
Because we know you cannot touch us here
We are the writers of this world
We're never seen but always heard
We are the legion of hearts that bore your hate
The future in our hands, for you it's too late
We're leaving our signal all over the earth
Tomorrow we'll be hidden
But forever we will live
Together we will rule the world
Category Music / Rock
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 4.36 MB
I can't look at the title for this song without thinking about the -other- Rule the World. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KriNwnJsK7s ) And this one is even a direct seamless-from-the-last-song deal too! At least Temple of Rust isn't a 60-second instrumental intro entitled "Solitaire."
I'm definitely feeling the happier tone here. Even before considering the actual lyrics, just the song itself has an incredibly uplifting feel.
I'm definitely feeling the happier tone here. Even before considering the actual lyrics, just the song itself has an incredibly uplifting feel.
Oh, I don't believe it... I have an unfortunate habit of stealing other people's song titles without even realizing it. (I'm still to get that album - Kamelot have been evolving away from their Karma style and I'd almost say evolving away from power metal itself.)
By the way, I should say that quite a lot of the mid-section lyrics on this were written because I happened to have it open while reading Fuzzy Outcome... your bad memories made me think of my own experiences, and that definitely provided the inspiration I needed to finish this off.
By the way, I should say that quite a lot of the mid-section lyrics on this were written because I happened to have it open while reading Fuzzy Outcome... your bad memories made me think of my own experiences, and that definitely provided the inspiration I needed to finish this off.
Wow, really? This song is awesome, so I'm amazingly flattered to hear that I provided even a little inspiration for it. Goodness. Now I -really- need to make an actual update one of these days. :(
I'd say Ghost Opera is still within the Karma style, but maybe a little more ambient. Not paying attention to the actual lyrics, songs like "Forever" and "Karma" were straight-out rockers--very fast, kind of more action-oriented than anything else. "Solitaire/Rule the World," much like "March of Mephisto" from The Black Halo, slows down just enough that it's more of a setting piece--establishing a presence rather than action.
It's a little...weightier. I don't want to say "heavier" because that implies the actual sound, like crunchier guitars or louder drums or something, which isn't the case. Musically, everything is unchanged. But it's...deeper, I guess? However, despite that, it's still unmistakably Kamelot, and it's nowhere near as much of a departure from their earlier work as Unia was to Sonata Arctica. (And even that just took a tremendous deal of getting used to, and recognizing that, for the first time since Ecliptica, there are one or two actual honest-to-God throwaway songs on an otherwise decent album, rather than their usual "every single album we make sounds like a Greatest Hits collection" thing. Anyway, if I can come to terms with that one, then Ghost Opera is easy.)
Really, I think my biggest complaint about Ghost Opera isn't that it fails in any way to capture the Kamelot sound we all know and love, but that it only does so for a measly 43:59. Maybe I'm spoiled enough by most power metal albums that I consider 60 minutes average, but come on. :(
I'd say Ghost Opera is still within the Karma style, but maybe a little more ambient. Not paying attention to the actual lyrics, songs like "Forever" and "Karma" were straight-out rockers--very fast, kind of more action-oriented than anything else. "Solitaire/Rule the World," much like "March of Mephisto" from The Black Halo, slows down just enough that it's more of a setting piece--establishing a presence rather than action.
It's a little...weightier. I don't want to say "heavier" because that implies the actual sound, like crunchier guitars or louder drums or something, which isn't the case. Musically, everything is unchanged. But it's...deeper, I guess? However, despite that, it's still unmistakably Kamelot, and it's nowhere near as much of a departure from their earlier work as Unia was to Sonata Arctica. (And even that just took a tremendous deal of getting used to, and recognizing that, for the first time since Ecliptica, there are one or two actual honest-to-God throwaway songs on an otherwise decent album, rather than their usual "every single album we make sounds like a Greatest Hits collection" thing. Anyway, if I can come to terms with that one, then Ghost Opera is easy.)
Really, I think my biggest complaint about Ghost Opera isn't that it fails in any way to capture the Kamelot sound we all know and love, but that it only does so for a measly 43:59. Maybe I'm spoiled enough by most power metal albums that I consider 60 minutes average, but come on. :(
Now, I'll tell you which one I still can't wrap my head around: Paradise Lost, the new one from Symphony X.
Symphony X had an extremely melodic style, which made even their fast and epic pieces beautiful and their slower pieces stunningly beautiful. Songs like "Through the Looking Glass (Part I, II, III)" (why did they feel the need to mention their being three parts if it's still actually one track?), "The Divine Wings of Tragedy," "Candlelight Fantasia," and "Communion and the Oracle" are, simply put, some of the prettiest songs I've heard in the entire genre, let alone by Symphony X. V (The New Mythology Suite) is one of my favorite albums.
But V was -two- albums ago. They followed that up with The Odyssey, which had an amazing 24-minute title track, but for almost the entire rest of the album, they seem to have forgotten that their strength lies in their beauty and decided to churn out hard, aggressive, crunchy stuff that quite frankly makes me sad. Paradise Lost seems to continue that trend. There are moments where the Symphony X I know and love is back--once again, the title track is amazing, and the chorus to Set the World on Fire is smooth enough to be nice, for example. However, as a whole, it's like Symphony X wants to experiment with thrash or death or something now, and that's just tragic. It's like listening to Blind Guardian albums in reverse chronological order, and quite frankly, I disapprove.
Symphony X had an extremely melodic style, which made even their fast and epic pieces beautiful and their slower pieces stunningly beautiful. Songs like "Through the Looking Glass (Part I, II, III)" (why did they feel the need to mention their being three parts if it's still actually one track?), "The Divine Wings of Tragedy," "Candlelight Fantasia," and "Communion and the Oracle" are, simply put, some of the prettiest songs I've heard in the entire genre, let alone by Symphony X. V (The New Mythology Suite) is one of my favorite albums.
But V was -two- albums ago. They followed that up with The Odyssey, which had an amazing 24-minute title track, but for almost the entire rest of the album, they seem to have forgotten that their strength lies in their beauty and decided to churn out hard, aggressive, crunchy stuff that quite frankly makes me sad. Paradise Lost seems to continue that trend. There are moments where the Symphony X I know and love is back--once again, the title track is amazing, and the chorus to Set the World on Fire is smooth enough to be nice, for example. However, as a whole, it's like Symphony X wants to experiment with thrash or death or something now, and that's just tragic. It's like listening to Blind Guardian albums in reverse chronological order, and quite frankly, I disapprove.
I'm still to listen to any of Symphony X, actually, although I've been hearing a lot of good things about them. I'll have to browse around Youtube, because it's getting better and better for this sort of thing.
It seems from your description that they're headed in the opposite direction from Stratovarius - Timo Tolkki was good at writing fast-paced power metal (and I'm including the obscenely happy Eagleheart among the songs I really like, even though he's said he absolutely hates it), but what he prefers to write are floaty, operatic or "progressive" pieces that are always several minutes longer than they have any right to be (3:25 of repeating the chorus on Gotterdammerung, and the same amount of time being dedicated to what's essentially a fadeout during Mother Gaia's 8-minute running time). However, after taking none of it in at first I do like some of Elements Part 1 a lot now. You get the feeling that a lot of it is artificially extended, though.
"Back to Madness" is one of the more comically dreadful examples. Starting off nicely, it picks up a terribly dull riff, goes through an appalling-sounding chorus, drops to a minute-long operatic warble, back to the chorus again, fades to what can best be described as a mess, then has a laughable philosopho-narrative bit to finish it off.
It seems from your description that they're headed in the opposite direction from Stratovarius - Timo Tolkki was good at writing fast-paced power metal (and I'm including the obscenely happy Eagleheart among the songs I really like, even though he's said he absolutely hates it), but what he prefers to write are floaty, operatic or "progressive" pieces that are always several minutes longer than they have any right to be (3:25 of repeating the chorus on Gotterdammerung, and the same amount of time being dedicated to what's essentially a fadeout during Mother Gaia's 8-minute running time). However, after taking none of it in at first I do like some of Elements Part 1 a lot now. You get the feeling that a lot of it is artificially extended, though.
"Back to Madness" is one of the more comically dreadful examples. Starting off nicely, it picks up a terribly dull riff, goes through an appalling-sounding chorus, drops to a minute-long operatic warble, back to the chorus again, fades to what can best be described as a mess, then has a laughable philosopho-narrative bit to finish it off.
Well, yeah, I'm not saying that floaty, bombastic opera melodies and such are automatically good, because some people try but just suck at them. The thing is that Symphony X are the absolute masters when they actually try. They've made some of the most beautiful power/progressive metal songs I've ever heard. They've made some of the most pretentious attempts at bombastic songwriting I've ever seen, and it's worked perfectly. The title track to The Divine Wings of Tragedy weighs in at 20:41 and has seven movements and three sub-movements according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Di.....ngs_of_Tragedy (though I wouldn't have guessed that by just listening to it,) and it's non-stop beginning-to-end awesome. Simply put, Symphony X has this whole epic progressive thing down.
My lament is that rather than accepting that and continuing to make beautiful melodic pieces, they seem to have have given up on that after V in favor of trying to be Slayer or something.
Some of my old favorites, if you're looking for a place to start with them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWqJ0kA1kqw
The Edge of Forever (The Damnation Game)
* I'll admit this one's a little slow to get started. Good payoff, though. Gets especially awesome starting at about 5:30.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqAapv36q1E
The Accolade (The Divine Wings of Tragedy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhtWJGmrpgc
Candlelight Fantasia (The Divine Wings of Tragedy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfzuXnBuV70
Communion and the Oracle (V - The New Mythology Suite)
My lament is that rather than accepting that and continuing to make beautiful melodic pieces, they seem to have have given up on that after V in favor of trying to be Slayer or something.
Some of my old favorites, if you're looking for a place to start with them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWqJ0kA1kqw
The Edge of Forever (The Damnation Game)
* I'll admit this one's a little slow to get started. Good payoff, though. Gets especially awesome starting at about 5:30.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqAapv36q1E
The Accolade (The Divine Wings of Tragedy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhtWJGmrpgc
Candlelight Fantasia (The Divine Wings of Tragedy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfzuXnBuV70
Communion and the Oracle (V - The New Mythology Suite)
I'm rather used to shorter albums as I started off in metal with Iron Maiden, who wrote albums for records rather than CDs - even most of those, though, are longer than 44 minutes. So when I started off writing music I aimed for the "eight songs, 45 minutes" standard that I'd grown used to, but then gradually moved up to closer to an hour - usually accidentally. I think this one is heading for about 1:10.
I've just been going through my albums trying to find the longest ones, now you mentioned that - "Dust to Dust" is deceptively long because all the songs are about eight minutes, and Iron Savior's "Unification" is a respectable 73 minutes or so too just because of the three bonus tracks (similarly to Gamma Ray's extended versions of all their albums). The extended "Somewhere Out in Space" is actually very close to 79 minutes, which is just about the biggest that could fit on one CD. (And "The Legacy" by Helloween was 77 minutes and split over two discs.) I'm not sure what the shortest album I have is, unless you count Battleheart's online releases that don't reach 20 minutes.
I did like March of Mephisto, even though it was so different from anything that they'd ever done before - the video looked like they were trying to become Metallica, and the start is wonderfully reminiscent of Hell March from Command and Conquer.
Regarding throwaway songs, I still don't know what you have against Picturing the Past! Perhaps it just jumps out at me for being an impossibly perfect description of Zasalamel from Soul Calibur 3. It first made me think that they were both based on some other character/myth, but I can't find any hint that the SC3 character is based on anyone else.
I've just been going through my albums trying to find the longest ones, now you mentioned that - "Dust to Dust" is deceptively long because all the songs are about eight minutes, and Iron Savior's "Unification" is a respectable 73 minutes or so too just because of the three bonus tracks (similarly to Gamma Ray's extended versions of all their albums). The extended "Somewhere Out in Space" is actually very close to 79 minutes, which is just about the biggest that could fit on one CD. (And "The Legacy" by Helloween was 77 minutes and split over two discs.) I'm not sure what the shortest album I have is, unless you count Battleheart's online releases that don't reach 20 minutes.
I did like March of Mephisto, even though it was so different from anything that they'd ever done before - the video looked like they were trying to become Metallica, and the start is wonderfully reminiscent of Hell March from Command and Conquer.
Regarding throwaway songs, I still don't know what you have against Picturing the Past! Perhaps it just jumps out at me for being an impossibly perfect description of Zasalamel from Soul Calibur 3. It first made me think that they were both based on some other character/myth, but I can't find any hint that the SC3 character is based on anyone else.
Speaking purely in terms of the actual song and not the lyrics, yes, Picturing the Past is probably the weakest track on Ecliptica. It's listenable, but compared to everything else on the album, I got the impression that they basically used all their good ideas for riffs and chorus melodies and such everywhere else, and threw whatever they could think of to squeeze out Picturing the Past to round out the track. The opening intro riff is especially poor when you consider that this is the same album that has UnOpened and 8th Commandment on it. The verse structure seems to try to be a heavy rocker but have some prettiness to it at the same time, and the end result is okay, but the verses in Blank File (also on that album) have it beat in both aspects. It wouldn't be until their next album until they had a chorus whose catchiness really put Picturing the Past to shame (Silence's Weballergy just completely obliterates it,) but even if it's not by as big a margin, several Ecliptica songs still have it beat there, too, including Replica, Fullmoon, and UnOpened again.
Weballergy's definitely something special - it was the song that got me into them, after having had a load of MP3s from a university friend sitting on my hard drive for ages and never listening to them. I remember that WinAmp had ordered the songs alphabetically, so after working out that Weballergy connected from "...Of Silence" and dragging it to the top, that coincidentally gave me a pretty large onslaught of their 'speed' songs. They sounded like Stratovarius being better than Stratovarius was at the time =)
I've also just noticed that Tony Kakko pronounced "visions" correctly the first time in Picturing the Past, then reverts to "wisions" for the rest of it. More creative use of English...
I've also just noticed that Tony Kakko pronounced "visions" correctly the first time in Picturing the Past, then reverts to "wisions" for the rest of it. More creative use of English...
Weballergy is what confirmed my liking of Sonata Arctica. I first learned of them when a random goth metal station I was listening to played Fullmoon, and it was awesome enough that I wrote it down. (I had a text file for that station, because it takes me like ten times to hear a song before I'll actually remember it by name, and I didn't want to hear something good on that station and have it lost forever when completely unable to recall it later.) I had completely forgotten how Fullmoon went by the time I checked into Sonata Arctica, but this text file said that I had heard it and liked it, so I decided to give the band a chance. Looking at their releases, I saw the greatest hits compilation "The End of This Chapter" and decided what better way to get an idea for a band in general than get the compilation, and it had Fullmoon on it, so I was set.
The thing is, I still didn't remember how Fullmoon actually went until I heard it again, and The End of This Chapter actually starts with ...Of Silence/Weballergy, so that's the one that really confirmed it for me.
And now, these days, I hate The End of This Chapter for its absolutely criminal decision-making on which songs got in and which didn't. (Where's False News Travels Fast? Last Drop Falls? Tallulah? The Misery? How about freaking White Pearl, Black Oceans...!? Good Lord!) Of course, Sonata Arctica has this thing for filling albums with incredibly strong tracks from beginning to end (except Ecliptica and Unia, and I guess I'll admit I'm not particularly fond of "Revontulet" from Silence,) so I won't claim I could have done better on the set list. It's just that, ironically enough considering that it's how I got into them, a greatest hits album is a terrible idea for a band like Sonata Arctica.
The thing is, I still didn't remember how Fullmoon actually went until I heard it again, and The End of This Chapter actually starts with ...Of Silence/Weballergy, so that's the one that really confirmed it for me.
And now, these days, I hate The End of This Chapter for its absolutely criminal decision-making on which songs got in and which didn't. (Where's False News Travels Fast? Last Drop Falls? Tallulah? The Misery? How about freaking White Pearl, Black Oceans...!? Good Lord!) Of course, Sonata Arctica has this thing for filling albums with incredibly strong tracks from beginning to end (except Ecliptica and Unia, and I guess I'll admit I'm not particularly fond of "Revontulet" from Silence,) so I won't claim I could have done better on the set list. It's just that, ironically enough considering that it's how I got into them, a greatest hits album is a terrible idea for a band like Sonata Arctica.
I'm not particularly keen on the idea of "best-of" albums in the first place, myself - of course, they're a good starting point if you're trying to get into a band that you haven't heard before, but if you then get the back catalogue of albums, you're paying for songs that you've already got along with those that they didn't think were good enough to get into the "best of" collection anyway!
Just about the only worthwhile compilation album I have is Gamma Ray's "Blast from the Past", where they re-worked and in most cases completely re-recorded all the songs that were to go on it.
Just about the only worthwhile compilation album I have is Gamma Ray's "Blast from the Past", where they re-worked and in most cases completely re-recorded all the songs that were to go on it.
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