The Last Hero will stand as a snapshot of our world in 2016. With all the hope we feel, there is a sense of disillusionment.
Our leaders are voted in by the people, but all they do is serve the corporations. Musicians always have a power to correct these wrongs and to fight for themselves and for us. And some still do, while others have taken a self-preservation route because standing up for what’s right, doesn’t bring in the dollars.
It starts off with a clean tone finger picked intro. That same intro is then beefed up with drums and guitars. Then from 1.20 minutes, the real song begins.
And the lyrics reference disillusionment with the political regime and religion, and the words give the song power, but not as much as the playing. Intertwine the two and you’ve got magic.
The Pirate Party in Iceland is growing on the ideal of free access to information for all and decentralizing power from corporations. Each country has a similar party with similar views. And people are gravitating to these parties because it’s rare to see a leader from the main parties these days who does not have ties to big sponsors/lobby groups.
I have no idea what the song is about, maybe global warming or something personal. One thing is clear; it addresses a common problem about owning our mistakes.
From about 2.45, it’s got this wicked major key lick which builds into a Bridge section and then a lead break. Love that section. And that major key lick comes back in for the last 20 seconds of the song.
Musically, the song is heavy metal to a tee. That verse riff is just demonic.
The whole IS campaign is about their view being the only view and no one else can have a different view. You can take this narrow-minded view and apply to society. I know there are a lot of people in my life with narrow-minded views.
The beauty of Alter Bridge is that it doesn’t matter how heavy they get, Myles vocal chops always adds a bluesy pop rock sensibility to proceedings.
It’s got a cool 70’s vibe to it.
How cool is that Chorus?
I have failed or lost many times before, but I never stopped trying and I kept on building my experiences. Some failures are hard to cop especially when I knew I tried my best and still lost.
This song is chock full of influences and a joy to listen to.
The title doesn’t give the impression that the song is about breaking the chains around you (release the poison in your veins) and spreading your wings to fly high.
The truth is, life is tough and to succeed is even tougher, especially if you don’t know what success means to you.
We want to take the world on, but we cannot have what we want all the time.
It’s another solid rocker, a throwback to an era when guitars ruled the rock and roll world.
Time is our biggest enemy, not each other. As much as humans like to control things, time is one thing we cannot control.
As we get older, we lose so many memories of our youth.
The recording business is proof.
Another addictive chorus in a similar style to “My Champion”.
Things change, time marches on. When I was young, I thought I had freedom. But I never really did have freedom. I was conditioned to be a father’s son first, then an obedient student during primary and high school. Doing anything that could have affected my education was frowned upon and quickly put to rest. We only have one shot, and we’d better make the most of it.
It’s an interesting song, mellow and then it goes to overdrive about the 3 minute mark with a very Muse influenced section.
On each album, Alter Bridge has a song like this.
Will we ever choose to see?
The biggest crime in the world is “Keeping up with the Joneses.” We live outside of our means, with no back up fund. There is a general financial rule that you must have an emergency fund of at least eight months. I don’t have two weeks’ worth of emergency funds. But our governments want us to spend and the banks want us in debt. And what we have is a society who cannot manage their money.
No one is to blame except ourselves. If we are low on cash reserves and just lost our jobs, how can we pay off the house mortgage or the credit card bill. But a lot of people don’t do the right thing, because their image is more important than their financial responsibilities.
My dad used to say that as long as your house is paid off, you can do what you want. We never went on a family vacation and we never ate out. We just had a house. Nothing fancy at all. Others in the street left and built larger houses, but Dad wouldn’t even think of it.
It’s a song for the soldiers.
Everybody has losses and regrets. Don’t let nobody tell you any different.
Facebook and social media has created a culture wherein everything is on show. Instead of waiting for the memoirs, it’s all on show via Facebook. But the truth is most of us don’t like to air our minutes, because of the negative judgments.
It could be the internet trolls or the paparazzi.
Love the major key intro. It feels good and happy.
When you reach a certain age, you realise it’s too late to start over. Suddenly, we are what we’ve become. Although the song could be about race relations, it is written in a way that it can be about anything.
So many good things happen in this song from the 3 minute mark.
Can you hear the marching, beating of the drums?
Time and nature is our biggest enemy, not each other. But, humans like to control things, so we would rather go to war to control others. History is littered with war stories. Meanwhile, nature is fighting back and destroying a lot of cities that humans built unleashing, earthquakes, cyclones, hurricanes, flooding, fires and in the worst cases, tsunamis.
Have we lost our last hero?
We are always looking for a voice of reason in an unreasonable world.
Funny how a few bad seeds can affect the whole world. In the end, they make our Governments more suspicious. We give up more of our liberties and privacy, but how secure are we?
All of the laws passed in the name of terror hasn’t stopped any terror attacks. Australia is a ticking time bomb. They are trying to hit us, but for the time being, our Police forces are stopping them.
We live in a world that is all about the NOW. Music quickly comes and it quickly goes. Look at all the Top 10 Lists or the Charts for each week and you will see that it is a different list each week. There is just so much new music coming out at the moment and people are just churning it up.
For example, I didn’t get a chance to get into the new Trivium album because a week later, I had the new Protest The Hero album and that has taken all of my attention.
However, there are always songs that sit on the outside. Songs that the artist or the band didn’t believe could be a “hit” (I use that term lightly) or a song that should be used as a promotion tool.
But they didn’t count on the fan choices. The fan that today has the power. The fan that could pick and choose what track they could listen too.
Killswitch Engage released “As Daylight Dies” in 2006 and it is there cover of “Holy Diver” that proved to be the sleeper hit. Don’t believe me, check out Spotify. it has 6,136,523 streams. Still don’t believe me, go on YouTube and you will see it has 9,013,222 views.
Alter Bridge released “One Day Remains” in 2004. “Open Your Eyes”, “Find the Real” and “Broken Wings” followed as promotional singles. However it was the metal heavy “Metalingus” and the moving ballad “In Loving Memory” that the fans selected as the hits. Don’t believe me, check out Spotify. “Metalingus” has 3,362,193 streams and “In Loving Memory” has 2,690,909 streams. Still don’t believe me, go on YouTube and you will see that “Metalingus” has over 5,500,000 views from all the combined channels and “In Loving Memory” has over 6,000,000 combined views.
In 2011 Trivium got blasted for the “In Waves” album, however the title track is their biggest so far. On Spotify “In Waves” the song has 3,038,061 streams. On YouTube, the Official Video on the Roadrunner Records channel has 3,423,215 views and a live version of the song on the Trivium Official channel has 2,767,455 views.
Volbeat broke through in the U.S on the back of “Still Counting”. The song was released in 2008 on the “Guitar Gangsters and Cadillac Blood” album and on 21 July 2012 “Still Counting” was the number-one song on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks US chart. Go on Spotify and it has been streamed 19,779,202 times. Go on YouTube and count the views from all the various channels. They add up.
Bullet For My Valentine led the promotional campaign for their “Temper Temper” album with the song “Riot”, however the fans didn’t care about that song as much as they cared about “Breaking Point” and “Tears Don’t Fall (Part 2)”.
As much as Dream Theater is trying to promote the current version of the band, they can’t escape their past. The Spotify Top 10 of Dream Theater has the 9 songs from the new self titled album (that proved to be a dud), plus “On The Backs Of Angels” from the previous album. However if you go on YouTube the fans don’t care about the new album currently. “Wither”, “Pull Me Under” and “Another Day” still get the attention.
This is very different to Avenged Sevenfold, who have people very interested in their new album. In addition, all the other media outlets and bands that are talking about the album, all they are doing is adding to the legend of it. Hail To The King I say. “Shepherd Of Fire” is doing the rounds on my iPod.
Protest The Hero have led the promotional campaign of their new album “Volition” with “Clarity”, “Drumhead Trail” and “Underbite” however, it is “Mist” and “Skies” that is getting the conversation.
The market place today isn’t about the hit song now. It is about new songs vs old songs. Metal and rock songs are always late bloomers. There is no formula as to why certain songs resonate more than others with fans.
I like the story about how Dave Mustaine assisted Stryper in selecting their lead off single from the “No More Hell To Pay” album. They had a different song choice for the lead single and changed their minds after they had a chat with the Megadeth front man. Dave told them that his favourite track is “Sympathy”. This made Michael Sweet change his mind for the lead off single. That track is listed as Number 11 on the album and to be honest it is a kick arse song.
Sure, back in the day when the record labels ruled, they would employ a scorched earth policy to market a band and the lead off single and naturally we would bite as we had the time to invest and there was nothing really else out there.
YouTube and Spotify play a big part today in transforming a song into a phenomenon. Television also plays it’s part. Look at all the hit shows and they all have a section where a certain song plays and it conveys the emotion of the scene that no other music can.
Sons Of Anarchy comes to mind here, especially at the end of Season 2, when the song “Hands In The Sky (Big Shot)” from Straylight Run played in the epic last 5 minutes of the final episode.
Look at what Breaking Bad did for “Baby Blue” by Badfinger.
My wife was a fan of Grey’s Anatomy and because of that show she got into Snow Patrol (“Chasing Cars”) and The Fray (“How to Save a Life”).
In the end all artists need to do is create great music. The fans will latch onto it eventually.