Author: 2loud2oldmusic

You Picked It! – The Poodles – ‘Metal Will Stand Tall’ – Album Review

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Alright…You Picked It! This one was never really close. A couple made some last minute moves to catch the leader, but there was no catching this dog as it ended up not even close. The winner this month was The Poodles’ ‘Metal Will Stand Tall’.

  1. The Poodles – ‘Metal Will Stand Tall – 7 votes
  2. Gotthard – ‘Lipservice’ – 3 votes
  3. Jorn – ‘Worldchanger’ – 2 votes
  4. Passion – ‘Passion’ – 2 votes
  5. Reach – ‘The Promise of Life – 1 vote

Thanks to all for participating. The April choices will be up on Saturday! And the choices are all from my collection and the next one will all be focused all on Rock Candy Re-issues. Hopefully you can help me decide which one I should review. And to note, it will be the very last You Pick It! we do hear as there isn’t enough participation to make this worth doing anymore, I’m just going to start pulling from my collection and reviewing on my own going forward. Thanks all for playing along.

THE POODLES – ‘METAL WILL STAND TALL’ (2006):

The Poodles are a Swedish glam/metal band and how I came across them is thanks to two things. First was Melodicrock.com as Andrew McNeice talked about them a lot. The second was the fact that The Poodles had a strong connection to Jeff Scott Soto. Both the lead singer, Jakob Samuel and guitarists Pontus Norgren were in Jeff Scott Soto’s band Talisman. The funny thing is that Jakob was a drummer back then, now he is front and center as a lead singer. Now, what I find interesting is how the Poodles came to being. Jakob was asked to sing the song “Night of Passion” for the Swedish music contest Melodifestivalen in 2006. The winner of this contest goes on to compete in the major contest called Eurovision. Well, Jakob compiled a band together including Pontus Nogren as well as Pontus Egberg on bass and Christian Lundqvist on drums. The band didn’t win, but they did come in fourth which is pretty darn respectable. From there, they went and did an album and here we are.

When you hear The Poodles, you are immediately transferred back to a time when the Glam and Melodic rock scene was at its peak around the world with acts like Bon Jovi and that ilk…well in Sweden that genre never has seemed to die out as they are putting out some great bands with The Poodles leading the charge. The opening track, “Echoes From The Past” comes roaring out of the gate with its pounding drums and gritty guitar riffs. Jakob’s vocals have a grit to them and yet sound so silky smooth and his vocals can soar to the heaven’s. It is full of hooks and harmonies and everything you want in a great rock song.

Continue reading “You Picked It! – The Poodles – ‘Metal Will Stand Tall’ – Album Review” →

My Sunday Song – “Modern World” by Aldo Nova

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For My Sunday Song #351, we are starting a 10 song set of songs by Aldo Nova. You know him from the early 80’s with his massive hit “Fantasy”. But he is way more than that song and we will walk through a bunch for you over the next 10 weeks (including “Fantasy” because why not). First up is the song “Modern World” off his 1991 album ‘Blood on the Bricks’. The song was written by Aldo and his pal Jon Bon Jovi. You might not know that Aldo worked with Jon on a bunch of demos back way before there was a Bon Jovi and was John Bongiovi. But that is another story for another day.

The song is a dark commentary on the world that was the late 80’s and early 90’s. The sleaze, the drugs, the crime were all up and the world seemed to be a dark place and they lyrics captured it beautifully. He even takes a big dig at Donald Trump for his womanizing and awful business tactics long before he was President. Marion Barry, mayor of Washington D.C. also wasn’t safe from his wrath as he bashed him for his drug addictions. No one was safe in this song. It is a really dark take on the world and we are happier for it as we got this song.

Musically, the song is as dark as the lyrics. The song opens with a nasty, dirty guitar riff and an angry sadistic sounding drum beat. Aldo sings it with a lot of attitude and anger to match the despair in the music. But like any song Jon is involved in, it has the hooks to draw you in as that chorus filled with harmonies and great background singers adding more effect to the song. It is a solid rocker and shows that Aldo was more than keyboards and that sometimes the guitar riff was king.

Continue reading “My Sunday Song – “Modern World” by Aldo Nova” →

Friday New Releases – March 10, 2023

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Happy Friday and welcome to another Friday New Release post. Not a ton for you, we do have over 30, but not as many as in weeks past. I have one I will try and that is Miley Cyrus. Her last album was really great and even had a Billy Idol duet. Hoping for some great stuff on this one as well. There might be more, but for now those are it for me. Let me know what you want to here first this week and what we have omitted from the list so everyone knows what is out there. Thanks for stopping by and hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

  • 31iDAcJi6VL._UX716_FMwebp_QL85_  Miley Cyrus – Endless Summer Vacation – (Smiley Miley / Columbia Records / Sony Music)

And then all the rest…

  • A1dl8j2ElKL._AC_UY436_FMwebp_QL65_  Story of the Year – Tear Me To Pieces – (Sharptone)
Continue reading “Friday New Releases – March 10, 2023” →

Scorpions – ‘Sting in the Tail’ (2010) – Album Review (The Scorpions Collection Series)

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‘Sting in the Tail’ is Scorpions 17th Studio album. Dang! Not many artist can say they’ve done that many albums. The band was still the usual crew of late with Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker, Mathis Jabs, James Kottak and Pawel Maciwoda. They had some new producers this time around with Mikael Nord Andersson and Martin Hansen. They hit the studio in May 2009 and wrapped things up in December 2009. They started with 18 songs and narrowed it down the 12 you see here. Out of the original 18, 5 were actually from their ‘Unbreakable’ Session from a couple albums earlier. Since last album was a concept album, they didn’t fit on that one, but they re-worked them and they ended up on this one. The rest were written strictly for this album. And no covers!!

The album was finally released on March 14, 2010 and it landed at #23 in the U.S. and #2 in their home country of Germany. It saw the band go back to their 80’s sound, but with a modern twist on it so it sounds fresh and not dated. I would say they succeeded with that. At this point, this was suppose to be their last album as they announced their retirement and were doing a farewell tour, I guess you could say. Well, we all know how that turned out as they are still going strong today in 2023.

The biggest problem with this album is that there is too much ROCK! No, No!! Not the music…but the word “ROCK”. That word is in four different song titles on the album. 1/3 of the album. That is a little nuts. To make matters worse, if you look at the back cover, the letters in red spell out “It Rocks”. We get it, we get it…Scorpions rock so you have to use the word rock so people know you are rock & roll…rock, rock, rock…ugh!! Outside of that, there isn’t anything wrong with this record…well, not much anyway. So, let us get to it, shall we.

Continue reading “Scorpions – ‘Sting in the Tail’ (2010) – Album Review (The Scorpions Collection Series)” →

Kiss – ‘Creatures of the Night: 40th Anniversary 3-LP Deluxe Edition (Color Vinyl)’ – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)

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As I said a few weeks back when I reviewed the 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition Box Set, 1982 was a pivotal year for Kiss. After the disaster of their last album, ‘Music from the Elder’, Kiss were in a do or die situation. They needed to get back to their hard rock roots and show the world that Kiss was still Kiss. Producer Michael James Jackson was brought in to produce the album and Kiss new they needed to rock. Heck, Eric Carr was telling them that all the time…and he was right. To celebrate this pivotal album, Kiss delivered the 40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition Box Set, but that set was only CDs (and a lot of goodies). They also released a 3-LP Deluxe Edition Vinyl set to commemorate the album as well. And that is what we will review this time around.

The 3-LP set has the original album remastered, a set of Demos, Rarities and Outtakes and the 3rd LP is a live set with songs taken from various shows. It doesn’t have any where near as much as the box set, but if you have the Super Deluxe, you don’t need that stuff again. This set does have a 20 page booklet as well.

The album is packaged in a tri-fold album jacket with some stunning pictures included. The first two spaces have a large group photo, then on the 3rd tri-fold, you get individual shots of the members on both the front and pack of that section. Although the cover has Ace, these pictures all include Vinnie, who is actually on the album…not all songs, but most.

Continue reading “Kiss – ‘Creatures of the Night: 40th Anniversary 3-LP Deluxe Edition (Color Vinyl)’ – Album Review (The Kiss Review Series)” →

Jeff Scott Soto – ‘LA Rocks Demo / Vinnie Vincent Demo 1988’ Bootleg (2008) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

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I was scouring eBay for a few of the remaining Soto albums I don’t have, and sadly, none were for sale at the time. However, I cam across something I had never seen before. It was a bootleg of Jeff Scott Soto demos. And to top it off, it was actually signed by Jeff Scott Soto. The person I bought it from lives in Germany and his name was Stefan. It turns out, Stefan is the lead singer of the band Speed Limit (check them out, they are pretty cool) and he had opened for Soto on a tour and actually met Jeff and got him to sign the CD. I thought all that was pretty cool and I love having a story behind my purchase.

LA ROCKS DEMOS:

So, what is this CD? It is a bootleg, mostly of demos from Jeff’s early years with LA Rocks and with Vinnie Vincent. We never got any albums out of those two projects, but at least we have some demos. The first set of songs say they are from his band LA Rocks. Back in 1986, Aldy Damian approached Jeff about joining the band. Jeff was busy with his own band called L’amour at the time and so he wasn’t really interested in joining LA Rocks. However, he did agree to do a couple demos for them and they paid him, so how could he say no. After Jeff, turned it down, they went after James Christian and he agreed. James became known for his other band House of Lords later.

The project didn’t end up going anywhere and the band later on became known as something you are more familiar with as we have discussed them in this series and that is the band Eyes of which Jeff sang on a couple of their albums. It all comes around full circle in the end. These set of songs here under the LA Rock Demos section, are a mixture of LA Rocks and Eyes demos and some aren’t even either band. The tracks “Hands of Time” and “Heart of the Fire” were demos for songs used on the movie ‘Rich Girl’. The songs “For You”, “Till the End of Time” and “Nobody Said it was Easy” are all demos for the band Eyes. And the song “Hold On”, not really sure where that is from but maybe it is from LA Rocks.

Continue reading “Jeff Scott Soto – ‘LA Rocks Demo / Vinnie Vincent Demo 1988’ Bootleg (2008) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)” →

My Sunday Song – “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden

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For the last My Sunday Song #350 for the Chris Cornell 10 song set is “Black Hole Sun” by his band Soundgarden. The song is off their 1994 album Superunknown and went to #1 on the Mainstream Rock Chart in the U.S. The song has so many accolades including one of the Top 500 Songs of all time landing at #368. It didn’t go Gold in the U.S., but did in the UK, Australia and Italy. It is one of their most recognizable and amazing songs and was written by Chris Cornell.

The song was written by Chris mostly on a drive from the studio in Woodinville to Seattle which was about a 34-40 minute drive. Once he got home, he whistled it in to a dictaphone. The next more he got and wallah, a new song. The song was inspired by a story on the news, Chris doesn’t remember the story itself just the words Black Hole Sun which he thought would be a great title to the song. When he wrote the lyrics in about 15 minutes, there was no meaning, per se, behind them, basically it was him putting words together that painted this dark picture. From reading the lyrics, it sort of looks like a song about disillusionment and how the world has grown so dark and mean that no more honest men exist as everyone is eventually turned to the dark side.

Musically, the song is just as dark sounding at times with a grunge sound, but also a little psychedelic with a slight Beatles vibe to it. The chorus feels a little upbeat and a little sunnier, but when that chorus comes in it feels like a menacing dark sludge. Kim Thayil’s guitar tone on this is perfect for the song as it has some really cool moments with that solo lying under the grungy riff really plays nicely off each other. Cornell’s vocals on the chorus seem monotonous at times as they are trudging through the sludge of the music. His backing vocals are higher pitched and really give the song something a little extra. I was immediately engrossed in this song the first time I heard as there is so much going on. It is simply wonderful.

Continue reading “My Sunday Song – “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden” →

Friday New Releases – March 3, 2023

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We are in to March already. Another year flying by, but not without leaving us some new music to hear each and every week. This week we have over 40 choices to choose from and hopefully there is something for you. I actually have a Country artist I’m eager to hear as my daughters (both of them) have introduced me to Morgan Wallen and his music and you know what, I like it!! So, he has another double album coming out today and it is on order and arriving, but it is actually a birthday present for my daughter, but I know I’ll get to borrow it when I want. But otherwise that is it for me. Now, something else exciting this week is De La Soul’s catalog is finally getting released on streaming services and digitally this week, so all you fans, go nuts. What do you want to hear this week? Let me know and let us know what we missed as well. Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful weeekend!

  • 91zQ1fGh7nL._AC_UL640_FMwebp_QL65_  Morgan Wallen – One Thing at a Time – (Big Loud Records / Mercury Records)

And then all the rest…

  • 91MxexmhZzL._AC_UY218_  Macklemore – Ben – (Bendo, LLC)
Continue reading “Friday New Releases – March 3, 2023” →

Scorpions – ‘Humanity: Hour 1’ (2007) – Album Review (The Scorpions Collection Series)

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For their 16th Studio album, Scorpions wanted to shake things up a bit. But before they could do that they needed to get a producer and that seemed like a daunting task. They had hoped to work with Dieter Dierks yet again, but that didn’t work out yet again due to contract issues. They brought a ton of producers to Germany to interview including Roy Thomas Baker, but the band wasn’t exactly pleased with those results. In the end they settled on two producers. They chose James Michael (lead singer of the band Sixx A.M.) and famed songwriter/producer Desmond Child. They each had their own specific expertise that was utilized on the production. James worked on the guitars, drums and bass while Desmond concentrated on the vocals.

So, Rudolf Schenker, Mathias Jabs, Pawel Maciwoda and James Kottak were in one studio with James while Klaus Meine was in another with Desmond. Desmond believes that if a singers vocals are in great shape, you will get a great performance so Desmond had Klaus basically take vocal lessons every day for an hour before they recorded the vocals. They brought in vocal coach to help Klaus warm up his vocals each and every day. The album is full of songwriters from outside the band as well, but the band still is on every song. You get Eric Bazilian (Hooters), Marty Frederiksen, Jason Paige, Russ Irwin, James Michael, Desmond Child and there are even more.

The band started recording in October 2006 and had about 30 songs and by the second recording process they had another 20 songs. The album was going to be a concept album that was developed by Desmond Child and futurist Liam Carl. It was based on a civil war between humans and robot, it is very apocalyptic in nature and at times very dark. Which is why a number of songs were thrown out because they were too dark. The album needed some more upbeat style songs and those were added, but they were all based around this concept and all tied together because the songs were about humanity. The album was called ‘Humanity: Hour 1′ and was released on May 14, 2007 in Europe and August 28, 2007 in the U.S. We were introduced to a very modern sounding Scorpions album, but at the same time, it still sounded like the Scorpions. All I know is that when I heard this album, I was back on board the Scorpions’ train and been riding it since. Sit back and get ready for the best Scorpions album in decades!!

A woman robot welcomes us to Humanity: Hour 1 as “Hour 1” is the start of the war. The earth-shattering drum beats, the Sabbathy guitar riffs and then Klaus comes in and sounds amazing as he introduces the reasons behind our downfall and that humans tried to play God with their machines causing all the problems we are now facing. It is a heavy, intense and rocking opening track. Very modern and very brutal and a solo that will rip your face off as the battle rages on. A killer opening track and one of their most aggressive tracks…ever!! And what is even cooler about this one is that the guest guitarist is none other than the mighty John 5.

Continue reading “Scorpions – ‘Humanity: Hour 1’ (2007) – Album Review (The Scorpions Collection Series)” →

1,000,000 Views and Counting

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On Sunday, February 26, 2023, 2 Loud 2 Old Music reached a milestone for the site. We finally reached 1,000,00 views on the site. It all started April 17, 2016 and only took just shy of 7 years to hit that mark. Now, at the pace we are going now, it should take less than 4 years for the next million.

What did we do to get to this point, well, we have written a lot of post. We are at 2,141 posts since we started and I am not sure why I keep saying we, because it is just me. Maybe the we is me, myself and I. We have done over 350 post of My Sunday Songs and Friday New Release posts which I have been doing since almost the beginning. We have done I think close to 1,000 album/single reviews, a bunch of The Original Vs The Cover posts and even a lot of Album Rankings. I never thought I would write this much and still have stuff to write about, but we’ve barely scratched the service at what is in the collection so there will be more to come.

The 10 most popular posts are as follows:

  1. New Release Page – over 25,700 views
  2. Maroon 5 – The Albums Ranked Worst to First – over 10,200 views
  3. Apple Music vs. Amazon Music Unlimited – over 9,400 views
  4. The Original vs The Cover: “The Sound of Silence” – over 9,100 views
  5. Whitesnake – The Albums Ranked Worst to First – over 8,200 views
  6. Ratt – The Albums Ranked Worst to First – over 8,200 views
  7. Poison – The Albums Ranked Worst to First – over 6,700 views
  8. Tuesday’s Memes – Christmas Music – over 6,200 views
  9. The Top 20 Ratt Songs – over 6,000 views
  10. Tuesday’s Memes – Rock & Roll – over 5,700 views

And if you wonder why I have done a lot of Album Rankings, well, they do make up 40% of the list so there is that reason. I stopped doing the Memes collections, but maybe I should bring that back…nah!

What I have really enjoyed doing over the last few years are artist series where I cover every album either in my collection or in their catalog. Definitely I’ve done all the studio albums for these bands so there are a lot of reviews up for these artists. I’ve done quite a few.

  • Ratt
  • Billy Idol
  • David Coverdale/Whitesnake
  • Kiss
  • Queen
  • Judas Priest
  • Aerosmith
  • Cheap Trick
  • Scorpions (only 3 more left to write)
  • Jeff Scott Soto (only 18 more to write) – And will be the most comprehensive reviews of Soto’s career anywhere on the web and I can almost guarantee that.

And the next one lined up is Bon Jovi which will start sometime either late Spring or early Summer.  Not sure where I will be going after that series.  

I think I am going to stop the You Pick It series as that doesn’t get a whole lot of participation. I think I have one more lined up to post for April’s selection and that will be it. I’m working on March’s right now.

Let me know if there is something you’d like to see me do on the site and maybe I’ll do it. I am planning to continue to show off things in the collection and write reviews on them and if I ever catch up and do it all, maybe I’ll stop at that time, but I think I still have a few more years left in me.  When we hit the 10 year mark, I’ll re-evaluate and see what is next, but for now, I am going to keep on doing what I’m doing.

Thank you to everyone that has come and stopped by the site and to those regular readers, thank you most of all. You are my motivation and reason to keep on going.  You know who you are.

Here’s to the next 1,000,000 views!!