The Rising was among the music released, and it served as a new turning point in Bruce Springsteen’s career. The man was deeply affected by the tragedy of 9/11, and recorded this 2002 album with the intent of capturing the emotions that he and others like him had felt after the grisly event. The album goes through numerous emotions, from fury (The quiet, but intense “Nothing Man”) to hope for the future, (The uplifting “Waitin’ On A Sunny Day”) to an overwhelming sense of loss. (The somber “Into The Fire”, which has gone on to be one of the most enduring songs of the aftermath.)

What set The Rising apart from many other albums influenced by the events of 9/11, is despite the tone, it remains unconfrontational. Springsteen thinks nothing of revenge, (I’m looking at you, Toby Keith.) instead encouraging to rise above the animosity felt after the events, and come together. No song best encapsulates this message better than 7th track, “Worlds Apart”, which features Islamic Qawwali music as backing. A symbolic gesture, backed up by Springsteen’s powerful rock sound.

More than being a powerful post-9/11 album, is marked several milestones in Springsteen’s career. Before releasing The Rising, he hadn’t released an album of new material since 1995s The Ghost of Tom Joad, and it had been even longer since his last collaboration with his famous backing group, the E Street Band. (The last album of original material they’d made together was 1992s Human Touch.) The Rising not only brought Springsteen and the E Street Band back together writing material, but it became a widespread success for them, becoming their bestselling album since 1987s Tunnel of Love.

It revitalized Springsteen’s career, and to this day the tracks of The Rising stand as some of Springsteen’s most powerful, and most poignant of all his works.

The Highlights:

The opening track “Lonesome Day”, which serves as a powerful, hard-rocking, yet elegant introduction of things to come. Guitars, violins, and saxophones blare in unison as the Boss declares: “It’ll be okay…if I can just get through this Lonesome Day.”

The album’s mighty closer “My City Of Ruins”, a song originally written about Asbury Park, but now resonates more deeply with New York, largely because of Springsteen’s powerful performance of it which opened the America: A Tribute To Heroes telethon. An extremely sad song, made glorious by Springsteen’s call to rise from the ashes like a phoenix.

The beginning of the entire Visitor album starts out with an almost cliché feedback intro, but it doesn’t feel tacky in the context of the song. The feedback sound reappears throughout the rest it in appropriate parts as it builds up emotionally. I wouldn’t have picked a different song to start out with, though; it’s a great example of what you’ll be hearing in the rest of the album. “Bitte Ein Kuss” picks things up a bit, and introduces the drum machine, known as Are Too for aesthetic reasons. “But It Was Close” has similar instrumentation to the opening track, but with a piano coming in near the end to help build up the ending.

“Smile” almost stands out too much on this album. It’s a great song, but it’s the only blatantly “happy” song on the album. It’s the only thing that notably breaks up the flow of the entire album, but if you have to do that on an album, this is how it’s done. Are Too comes back for drum machine duty on “Perfect Pair” as well, and is accompanied by an interesting lo-fi acoustic guitar track. “Candle Song” is another acoustic track like “But It Was Close” or “Why Are We Fighting”; one of the less notable songs on the album, but not a track to skip.

“Yr Letter” appears to be a fan favorite, and possibly the emotionally strongest song on the album. It’s also one of the few songs on this album that sounds better live (There’s quite a powerful rendition on Jonah’s CD/DVD There’s A Lot In Here), but the studio version isn’t lacking much. “Visitor” is the only track I don’t like much on the album; it’s short, and there are noises in the background that aren’t particularly musical, though they aren’t too distracting. The lyrics are interesting, but short enough to make you wonder if it was added for the sake of a longer track list.

Next comes my personal favorite song from the album, “Softbelly”, which has the most appealing chilled-out guitar playing on the album. The final track, “Sixes”, isn’t too far behind in that category, either. The outtro to this song would have made a great ending to just about any album, but it finishes this album particularly well, like you have reached the end of a journey, and if you listened to Visitor from start to finish, you have.

“Three Chord Valentine” opens the EP, and if you only listened to the first verse, you may mistake them for the most troubled emo band you’ve ever heard. The lyrics get more mentally stable as the song goes on, however, and the chord progression makes for a catchy rock track. It’s the cleanest mix on the EP, too; all the tracks afterwards suffer from that limited-studio-time sound.

“Por Vida” is one of the two tracks that can be considered early versions of the song, as they were recorded again for later albums. The track is less impressive overall in comparison to the first one, but it may be the favorite track of screamo fans as far as this EP goes.

Another track that was recorded again on a later release, “All Cried Out” has riffs that sound similar to “Three Chord Valentine”. It suffers from an almost annoying introduction that consists of only vocals and only a bit of guitar. Luckily, the rest of the song loses the vocal tone and gains instrument layers.

“The White Nightmare” is an unusual track for the band because none of their albums have a fully acoustic track, or even a song that comes close to how this one sounds. The song seems to only have three layers: main vocals, acoustic guitar, and backing/alternate vocals. On top of that, the guitar playing is rather unique. I doubt I’ll ever find anything that sounds like that with the interesting lyrics to go with it.

The problem with Vendetta Red is that their material can be pretty hard to find. Odds are you won’t hear any of these songs unless you ask the right person. Part of the reason why this is the case is that they broke up in 2006, but three of the original members went on to form Sirens Sister, so if you like the music and want to see them live, not all hope is lost… If you can make it to the Seattle area.

When you look at the first song, “Zombies Ate My Neighbors“, before you listen to it, you’d probably think “That’s just one of those dumb song titles that have nothing to do with the song.” and consider giving the record back to the chump that gave it to you. On the contrary, the lyrics in the song are actually about a zombie attack, and they somehow manage to not be too corny. The chorus is quite catchy and there’s a slight story to it.

“Velcro” starts off with about five seconds of studio banter that the band thought would be great to hear every time you listen to it. This song is a lot less impressive than the opening track, but it’s the only other song with a really catchy chorus. The lyrical content of this song makes it hard to connect to unless you’re around the age of 16 and regularly listen to this sort of music. It’s not strictly dedicated to that, but it would really help to fit into that category if you want to fully enjoy the song.

The next song is the softest on the EP. “Melody of You” is one of the better semi-acoustic tunes from this genre, and fits well on this point of the EP. There’s and interesting use of stringed instruments, including a somewhat jazzy stand-up bass. Despite being the slowest song in the set, it also ended up being the shortest.

If all of these songs had the lyrics removed, “September Skyline” probably would have sounded the best. The lyrics and vocals aren’t bad, but they distract from the guitar and drum playing. The ending of this song seems too abrupt to be an and to any set of songs, but they only had four songs to work with, and the order was great as is. The drum playing stood out quite a bit for this band. Not like, say, that of Alex Van Halen, but none of the songs had simple beats that tend plague this genre and a lot of modern rock in general.

Some of their songs were more effect laden, like “Francophile“, which suffered from quality-hindering voice effects and the occasional digital “Wah, wah” voice. I can see this song either being a favorite or least favorite, depending on if this type of music is what you can enjoy frequently. Other songs weren’t composed with a bad synth track, but in songs like “Stately Homes”, the synthesizer in the mix was overpowering.

It wasn’t that they didn’t know how to use electronic sounds in music, though. They mixed “Carly (Goddess of Death)” and “First Base” very well, keeping the synthesizer notable when needed and not dropping the guitar off the mix radar.

Another notable characteristic most of the songs has was a very tinny guitar sound, similar to that of many Franz Ferdinand songs. They did use a variety of guitar tones, but the sound only made the song more catchy and hard to listen to; catchy in the way they played it, annoying in the note progression.

The most notable and pleasing song on the album was the final track, “Sun Roof“, where they didn’t try too hard to be catchy, overwork the synth, or use any fast-paced lyrics which barely caught my attention. It was soothing, slow, and a great way to finish an album. I only wish they had tried that with more of their songs.

The guitar playing was decent, and the vocals didn’t stand out in any way. The Capes aren’t bad musicians, it just didn’t work out on this record.

The songs, starting with “Slow Night, So Long”, were all in that same vibe of Dixie pop-punk, but within the album, there were two acoustic ditties: “Milk” and “Day Old Blues”. A different sound for the band, I was not used to something resembling “MTV Unplugged Featuring Four Brothers from Nashville”, so I breezed through them, trying to find a hook in them but failing to do so. Despite that flaw, Aha Shake Heartbreak makes itself up with a sound that seems more like Lynyrd Skynyrd crashing into a blink-182 concert, complete with Prince’s lyrics about sex. The highlights of the album are “King of the Rodeo”, which serves as a guitar duel between Jared and Caleb Followill, and the swagger-heavy “Taper Jean Girl”, which became the first Kings of Leon song nationally recognized through the 2007 film Disturbia.

The only thing, other than the acoustic ditties, I have to complain about are the repetition of the lyrics. At first, it seems like random mumbling from Caleb, but when taking a look at the lyrics, his mumbling turns into something a little less innocent. Most of the lyrics range from suicide (“The Bucket”) to sex (“Taper Jean Girl”, “Pistol of Fire”, “Velvet Snow”, etc.). Because Caleb Followill is not much of the lyricist type, most of his songs are either amateurish or about what rock music is mostly about. Such familiarity with a topic can make music seem like it is bland lyrically; most songs are about Caleb’s penis (his “PISSTAWL OF FYE-UH”) or having sex with a chick. It can only be compared to the shock that one gets when entering the 18+ fanart section at the Furthia High website. Is constant lyrical human intercourse always a good thing?

I know people are going to get pissed at me because I’m not promoting the Kings of Leon album with “Sex on Fire”, but to be fair, I have not listened to Only by the Night yet. I have listened to the Kings’ first two, yet I don’t know if I want to venture into commercial territory. From my observations I can hear the Kings get progressively more bland every album they do, a result of commercializing and assimilating their sound into the alternative rock mainstream. However, they aren’t the Dixie Coldplay. They’re a throwback to the good old days of Heartland rock and bar bands playing covers horribly. They’re the result of a painful family schism and assimilation into mainstream society. They’re the result of torturing their cousin. The result is quite artistic and original.

I give this album my full approval, as it is a good mixture of songs despite the below-paw acoustic ditties and the constant yiffing of Caleb Followill. This album serves as a blueprint for later albums to come and ultimately led the Kings to gain a minor chart position with “The Bucket”. How “Taper Jean Girl” failed to get on astounds me, but enough of that. The Kings of Leon thank this album for mainstreaming them into the alternative rock scene and I do too. I should have bought this album when I first heard it because it would stay with me due to the hooks. I wouldn’t think too heavily of the sexual entendres, though; I wasn’t too aware of colloquial terms for “penis” back then.

As “Careful”, the opening track to Brand New Eyes played, I braced for another Paramore style album; an album full of young female pop vocals that sell a sub-par pop-rock band’s studio tracks. Throughout their career, their album material has mostly just bored me. Their B-sides and some demos have been the only thing that have kept me coming back when they put some new music out.

The next two songs didn’t improve my opinion of the band’s creativity, but Hayley Williams certainly improved her songwriting and singing. For example, there’s an anger in the vocals that hasn’t been heard from her before, and it’s not just coating the entire song; it comes in at the right points, which tells me she’s writing songs with more emotion now.

“Brick By Boring Brick” and “Turn It Off” actually had more experimenting in the instrumental tracks than I had expected to hear at this point. It was refreshing to hear that, sort of. They were clinging on to their distortion-driven riffs, and that has always plagued their songs. “The Only Exception” was a first as far as songs on Paramore albums go; a fully acoustic track. It sounded very nice and like something they should do with their music more often.

“Feeling Sorry” brought an end to the instrumentally creative cluster of the album. “Looking Up” was another average fan pleaser song, and although “Where the Lines Overlap” had some chimes or some high synthesized notes that accented the song well, it just wasn’t enough to break away from the “average Paramore sound”.

The last two songs on the album, “Misguided Ghosts” and “All I Wanted”, were quite a surprising way to end the album. They are almost what I had been hoping the band would produce for quite a while now. “Misguided Ghosts” has some excellent acoustic guitar playing, and “All I wanted” had some amazing vocals coupled with guitar work that had some nice tone to it, and it steadily grew as the song progressed; something I don’t recall them ever trying out until this song.

Overall, it probably won’t be getting Paramore any new fans that hated them before this album, but it’s a step in the right direction for the band. Their music is starting to mature, and it looks like their fans will have a band to grow up with.

Their B-sides for this album mostly consist of acoustic versions of songs on the album. “Decode”, however, was an original song, and it had a better guitar tone than all the songs on the album; that sort of “hiding the more experimental music” seems to be typical of Paramore. Most of the tracks were more musically diverse when recorded as an acoustic version, and they seem to have much more replay value. The band seemed to have spent more time on this album’s acoustic tracks than on previous albums. They still retained the structure of their originals, and possibly even the tempo and some vocal tracks. They probably could have thrown in a demo or two like they did for the MVI version of Riot!, but five studio acoustic tracks is quite a feat for most bands. It’s a decent set of tracks.

When I first heard this album I was blasted with the speedy power chords of “Chachi”, and before the vocals started I thought I had put on the wrong album, but once Tom started screaming into the microphone I understood what I was in for. Yes kids, much like “Static Prevails”, Tom Linton provides vocals on 10 of the 11 tracks here.

“Patches” is the second track, and it slows things down a bit, not much, but some. It has a nice little melody, slower guitar, and poetic lyrics, but speedy bass and drums to keep their punky edge as obvious as possible.

“Amphibious” is the third track, and the first one so far to really sound like a straight up punk rock song, with half-assed lyrics and very little emotion, but it sounds like a lot of fun to play as a band, so i can’t blame them for putting it on the record.

“Splat out of Luck”, track four, more punk rock. Really fast 4/4 palm mutes and fast drums, but lots of fun nonetheless.

“House Arrest” shows us a self loathing side of Tom, but also shows us that he’s a bad ass guitar player. There are riffs in this song that show a side of this band the album had yet to introduce, begging you to listen on.

“Usery” is Jim Adkins’ first and only song on this record, and sadly it’s easily ignorable. It has the same speed, sound, and drum patterns as previous songs on the record and kinda goes in one ear and out the other.

“Wednesday” here’s a tricky little devil of a song. It starts out as more speedy punk that is fun but unabsorbent to the memory, with a bitchin’ little 1 string solo reminiscent of Leatherface. Then, about a minute or so in, it breaks down into beautiful arpeggios and a violin arrangement that makes you stop and listen, this lasts for only a matter of about 10 seconds and a dash of vocals before it picks right back up to moshing speed, for one big abrupt ending.

“Crooked” features sad lyrics over happy music, slower and poppier than most of the album, with a more indie rock edge, it also has a nice little break down where the drummer stops playing, leaving us with a neat little arpeggio played over a groovy bass line, probably the best part of the song. is it just me or is this album getting slower? Not by much, theres still lots of energy but these last songs seem to be reverse-crescendos if I may invent a term.

“Reason 346″ has a sound that I can’t pin point, it sounds as if they layered an acoustic guitar track over this song but buried it back in the mix a bit. It may be that one guitar player is just playing through a clean channel with an acoustic-esque tone. This song is still full of energy but has a pretty drum and bass break down that leads into more pretty arpeggios and is probably the one song on the album most J.E.W. fans can relate to, it sounds a lot like the style they would become known for.

“Scientific” opens up with a very dirty and diminished chord progression, that leads in to some jazzy drums, very different from anything this album has touched on elsewhere, but its one hell of a song. The band really shows off their skills in this one, the intro being almost three minutes long before the vocals kick in, but then their drummer wants to be a punk again and everything gets fast. They keep up with the slow fast thing for a grand total of seven minutes, making this the longest song on the record, also one of the best guitar solos on the record, if not the best.

“Cars” is a nice little closer reminding you that the band, once again, really wants to be punk. With fun lyrics, probably the catchiest song on the record, I find it stuck in my head a lot, even months after listening to the record. After the song is over we get a fun little bit of studio banter where Jim and Tom play Van Halen riffs and laugh with each other.

All in all it is a very fun record, but there is a lot of nonsense and fun stuffed in it. If i had to rate it, it would be a 6/10, but I feel I enjoy it much more than the rating I give.

I can’t see a real reason why this album was never re-printed, it’s a great listen for fans of the band, but if your only understanding of this band are from records like Bleed American, Futures, or Chase This Light, this is probably not the album for you. You have to have a real deep seeded love of early 90s pop punk to appreciate this one, if not already a fan of the group. I can even be reminded of acts like Squirtgun, Screeching Weasel, and early (Kerplunk era) Green Day when I listen to this album, but it is still obviously Jimmy, just… faster.