Mad at the World - Seasons of Love
1990, Alarma
1. The Narrow Road
2. Seasons of Love
3. City of Anger
4. When the Wind Blows
5. Marshmallow Land
6. Summer's Gone
7. Promised Land (The Deception of Drugs)
8. So Insane
9. It's Not a Joke
10. The Love That Never Fades
11. Seasons of Love (Reprise)
Seasons of Love sees the band finally excise the rest of their europop past and fully embrace hard rock. I think that was a good move because this is some pretty good stuff - simple hard rock, really. Vocalist Roger Rose has a slight feminine quality to his voice but sometimes he sounds a little like Alice Cooper. I think it's unique. Brother and drummer Randy Rose sings too but he hadn't really defined his vocal style yet on this record. My only problem is that a couple of songs are a little cheesy, specifically "Promised Land" and "So Insane" which are diatribes against drug use. That's okay but having lyrics like "Doing drugs is so insane!" is kind of cliche. I also think that they should have used the "Seasons of Love (Reprise)" as the second track instead of the original acoustic one. Having that ballad after the hard rocking "Narrow Road" is kind of a gear shift. Still a great rock record though.
Useless Fact: The reason why the band switch styles was because they thought it was just easier to do live shows with the hard rock style.
The first two albums were the best by far!
ReplyDeleteThis is probably my fave MATW album. Great songs (notwithstanding the occasional cheesy lyric). And I love the sound they get out of their acoustic guitars. I like most of their albums, but this is by far the one I play the most.
ReplyDeleteTheir sound seemed to change with every album, and I think that kind of hurt them. I think Roger Rose had very diverse tastes, and he enjoyed trying knew styles with each album. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people seemed willing to just go along for the ride (wanting, instead, for Roger to cater to their preconceived notions of what pigeon-hole MATW should fit in and stay in).
I actually liked the progression from album to album. It's just "Dreamland Cafe" that I never dug. I just didn't think the songs were as strong except for one or two.
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