Ian Anderson - Thick As A Brick 2 (Album Review)

What a wonderful, clear , pure and nostalgic little masterpiece Ian Anderson has decided to release this year. What we have right here is nothing more and nothing less than the official sequel of Jethro Tull's epic masterpiece Thick As A Brick. If you haven't heard this album (well this song) and you're a fan of prog rock, then you still have a long path to travel.

I have to admit that I didn't expect this album, to be honest I wasn't even aware of its existence until a few months ago I just went to progarchives and I read "Thick As A Brick 2" and I was like "naaah it can't be, it must be some compilation album, or an homage from another band" or something like that, then I read Ian Anderson, and I was like "Oh my god, I think this is serious" and it was.

An entire new album created as the sequel of an influential and epic masterpiece is here, the sequel of Thick As A Brick, after 40 years, we have the sequel of this masterpiece, a real sequel in this year made by Ian Anderson, the brain and heart of Jethro Tull. What we have here is Thick As A Brick 2: What Ever Happened To Gerald Bostock? (not to confuse with Thick As A Brick Pt.2)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240"] A web-blog, GENIUS![/caption]

For those who are not familiar with Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson, Thick As A Brick or Gerald Bostock, I think I shall give a little background about this.



Thick As A Brick is a conceptual album that was released in 1972 by Jethro Tull. At 1972-1973 Progressive Rock was at the pick of its life, almost all of the greatest masterpiece of Prog-rock started to emerge these two years. Progressive Rock was in a wild state of evolution and one of the key characteristics of this evolution was the implementation of conceptual albums. Albums that in a way, told a story or dealt about a particular theme. A lot of conceptual albums started to emerge around that period during the Prog rock scene and Thick As A Brick emerge as a response or better yet, a parody of all the other conceptual albums that were around at the time.

Originally the concept of Thick As A Brick started as a joke, but the album quickly became a masterpiece and ironically one of the finest conceptual albums ever (despite being a joke or a parody of them).

The story of Thick As A Brick revolves around a little poet boy named Gerald Bostock, also known as "Little Milton". He enters in a poetry competition and he writes an enormous controversial epic poem called "Thick As A Brick". Of course he wins the competition, but at the last minute the judges decide to disqualify him, because of the controversial and offensive nature of the poem, plus when he attended to BBC-TV he "uttered a profanity". You can read the whole article about this in the cover of the album.

The album consists of only one epic song, lasting 43 minutes divided in two parts, and the lyrics that we hear in the song are the actual poem written by Bostock.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="380"] Of course all of this is fiction and the true mastermind behind the story, the album and the poem is this man right over here[/caption]

Of course the album it's a complete epic masterpiece but we are not here to talk about it, we are here to talk about its sequel.

And what can I say about it?

It's an extremely strong, solid and powerful album. I consider it a masterpiece but I guess the correct term it's actually an "Elitist Masterpiece". Why? Because this album it's only for lovers of Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson and 70's Progressive Rock and Folk Rock.

There's something special about this album, of course what he have here is not modern progressive rock, it's 70's Progressive Rock. A lot of modern bands try to create a 70's Progressive Rock album but in most cases there's something missing. In this case, of course, everything is right there and everything is right, but of course we are dealing with an elder veteran here.

Unlike it's predecessor, TAAB2 it's not only one song, the album consists in 17 short songs, but of course this album was meant to listen to it completely every time and not by song. If you do this you can start to visualize that the album it's pretty much just one big song as it's predecessor, and those 17 short songs are actually the 17 movements that this epic has.



The style and lyrics of this album are what you would expect from Ian Anderson, satirical, poetic, clever, highly romanticized (in a good way), dealing about trivial but also with deep meaningful aspects of life.



Ian Anderson in the flute it's magnificent as always and its voice hasn't changed a lot.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="312"] Now let's get inside the album and the new story it tells:[/caption]

The album starts with a slow version of the ending of Thick As A Brick Pt.1, setting right away that cool 70's feel, I'm not from that era, but I'm sure that if you were a Prog fan in the 70's and if you listen to this, you're going to feel nostalgic as crap. Then the album opens with a nice prog rock beat that transforms into an Electric/Acoustic hard song, really nice but now we get into the first progressive passage of this album, folkloric, bold, bad ass and beautiful at the same time.

In Might-Have-Beens the whole concept of the album it's explain. The album deals about the modern life of Gerald Bostock, now as a 48 old. The album talks about the 5 paths of life that he could have taken. In one life he is a greedy millionaire banker hated by many, in other life he is a veteran soldier of the Afghan War who is still traumatized by the experiences he lived over there, in another life he is a homosexual homeless bum, in another life he is an arrogant evangelist priests and in another one he is a simple common man, married who works in a store.

The album as a whole, flows in a magnificent rhythm, almost as the same rhythm of the original TAAB with beautiful acoustic passages, hard prog moments, permanent folksih atmosphere and even a little it of punk in some songs, the last five songs of the album are truly magnificent in every way.

The album it's an excellent piece of prog music. Of course, people don't consider it better than the original, but it's not meant to be. This album it's a phenomenal album on its own and despite that I know that it's not a masterpiece I consider it to be, because it remind me of all of the old masterpieces that it's predecessor made fun of.

This are some of my favorites songs (or shall I say movements) of the album.





Thanks for reading :)

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Arjen Anthony Lucassen - Lost In the New Real (Album Review)

Arjen is one of the most active musician and composers that I know today, he's always working in different projects and with a lot of different people. Something that I admire from him is his ability for composing and writing  entire albums or better yet Rock Operas almost completely alone and in a really fast time. I don't know any other musician who's able to do that, he's usually the mastermind behind all of the projects that he is part of. He is not only the definition of an multi-instrumentalist artist but also an multi-dynamic creator. If his albums were films he would be  Director, Writer, Actor, Producer, Editor, etc, etc.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="270"] Saint Arjen, Omnipotent and omnipresent[/caption]

His most famous bands or projects are: Star One, Stream Of Passion and of course Ayreon.

Of course is impossible to talk about Arjen without talking about Ayreon which is his greatest project, Ayreon is basically a Meta Rock Opera, all of the albums in a way tell a single collective story and within it you can really find Arjen's true musical style and influences.

However it seems that Arjen has finally left Ayreon because a lot of people called his last Ayreon album 01011001 "more of the same" (which they aren't lying). So since then, he has decided to put Ayreon to sleep, beginning to work in other  projects like Star One: Victims Of the Modern Age.

And know we get his first solo album since 1994's Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy.

And what we have is Lost In The New Real 

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="504"] Just look at this cover![/caption]

And I'm going to be honest with you people, I don't know what to think about this album, I guess I'll find out at the end of this review.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="280"] Glad you're happy Arjen, because right here is when things start to get a little ugly[/caption]

The first thing that I have to say is that I like the music from Arjen but I'm not a fan on his, of all of his albums with Ayreon, the only one that I consider a true masterpiece (and I agree in calling it The Wall of our time) is The Human Equation, all the others are just OK for me. The thing that I hate about Arjen's albums is that they try to be extremely pretentious with the stories of the albums, I like the Sci-Fi atmosphere that he always manages to create but the stories are cliché ,completely exaggerated and really pretentious. But you maybe asking:

What does it matter if the story of a conceptual album is good or not?, it's a music album! not a film!

It matters because that pretentious story defines the overall structure of the album and in Ayreon's case, it makes the album tedious, with bad lyrics and extremely long. If you want to create a conceptual album that is going to last almost 2 hours you have to make an effort in writing a good clever story and not another cliché Sci-Fi flick.

I don't like Ayreon very much and I blame the stories for that, I mean just look at Victims Of the Modern Age, it wasn't a conceptual album is not a pretentious Sci-Fi Rock Opera, it's a solid progressive metal album that everybody loved.

But that's enough for rants, now let's get into this album, and the first question that I ask is: Does this new album has the same flaws as Ayreon's previous album? I don't know right now but let's find out.

So the first thing that I realize of this album is that it has 20 songs and a length of 1 hour and a half, not my favorite album structure but whatever, let's give it a chance.

Lost In The New Real is also a conceptual album, but it doesn't quite follow a clear story-line, something that it's a little bit confusing. The concept is that Mr. L (the famous hippie character from the Ayreon saga) it's resuscitated in a virtual futuristic dystopian reality and the album deals with Mr. L exploration of this reality or something like that.

And the first amazing thing of this album is that the narrator of the story is a character name Voight Kampff who is none other than Rutger Hauer. The narrations that he gives are perfect for the mood of the album and one of the albums highlights.

Now, I'm not going to make a song by song review of the album, the album has a lot of them .  But I'll talk about the album in general.

And what I want to say is that almost all of the songs of this album are OK, there's no song that I consider bad. All of them have the same arjen-folkish-opera-scifi style that you already know really well, and a most of them are short songs and have the same structure, all of them are fine but sadly that's it. The only one that is more than fine is the title track but that's it. There are no great or excellent songs, perhaps the worst song is Our Imperfect Race which seems that this is the point where the album starts to get tedious but it doesn't.

The two songs that I don't actually consider them great but I liked them really much are Parental Procreation Permit and E-Police.

But now let's talk about the other aspect of the album, the cover songs.

The cover songs are excellent :) he couldn't have chosen better song to cover, all of them are amazing. The only that it's a little weird is Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine, that guitar riff is just an intruder in the song.

Besides of that, Zeppelin's Battle of Evermore completely amazing, and I loved the ending.

Alan Parson Project's Some Other Time as excellent as the original.

Zappa's I'm the Slime weird, crazy and scary, how it should be.

And finally Blue Oyster Cult's Veteran of the Psychic Wars, PERFECT. Fuck Metallica, this is the greatest cover of this song ever, hell I think is ever better than the original!

So that's pretty much all that I have to say about the album. All the songs are OK and decent, thanks to the amazing covers the album doesn't get tedious as previous Ayreon albums did.

So I guess this is a good balanced album. OK songs and excellent covers. If you're not a fan of Arjen check it out, it's a nice introduction of his genre and if you're a fan, you are going to either love it or hate it.

Besides the title track, these are my two favorite songs of the album:

E-Police



Veteran Of The Psychic Wars



Thanks for reading :)

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If You're an Atheist, Please Never Become This

I have never considered myself an atheist, but I had always sympathized with them, we were almost usually in the same point of view when it came to religious or even philosophical debates. I considered them a great group of people full of logic, comprehension and I respected them. But now that I discover more and more, now than I learn more and more, and now that I watch the modern atheism of nowadays I have to admit that I'm kinda disgusted with it. The new atheism that a lot of people now practice it's the so-called: Militant Atheism, which (and maybe I'm completely exaggerating here, but I don't know) it might become the fall of atheism or at least the fall of smart, believable and respectable atheism.

A key characteristic of this type of atheism is that; they're not only that, they're not just atheist, they have also become (and some of them might don't even realize it yet) anti-theist and misotheist. Let's get down to business, an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God or any kind of deity and that's it, nothing more and nothing less. But when you start proclaiming hate, hostility, anger, discomfort, etc, etc. You're not just an atheist, you're an anti-theist too.

And to be honest, I have no objection at all of people hating or bashing on something, they're in their complete free will, and I completely understand why people would hate religion so much, is something that deserves a lot of criticism and in their point of view: hate or even destruction.

Is not an attitude that I admire but it is an attitude that I respect (well I guess now is "respected") until I saw some strange things that started happening. I guess that for most of these atheist/anti-theist, hating or bashing religion was just a simple hobby, you know, something that they did in their free time or when they were bored. But something started to change, when a lot of these atheists started to get more and more incredibly hostile, I was still OK with this, although it was something that bothered me a little bit, I was still OK with it.

But it all fell down, and I completely lose all respect that I had for them, when a lot of these atheists started to join in this incredibly stupid and not saying impossible quest for destroying religion and preaching the atheist word. With the stupid and pathetic idea , or better yet, the stupid and pathetic believe that if they manage to destroy religion all of the problems of humanity or most of the problems of humanity will disappear. That's the reason why I have lost so much respect for them, for that stupid and ignorant believe that they have; a lot them really think that religion is the greatest problem of humanity right now, that is the root of all evil in this world and that if we manage to bring it down, everything is going to be perfect and we will grow so much as species.



For a group that claims to be realistic and to be lovers and followers of logic I'm afraid that for reaching this point of stupidity you have completely deviated from such principles.

Yes I know that this video contains a lot of satire, but the overall message that he's giving it's alarming.

Now let's get realistic here people.

The fight that you're fighting is completely stupid and a waste of time. That's why it's a great hobby! But if you're actually taking this seriously, if you actually believe that you could manage to bring down religion and everything will be just pure happiness after that, I'm afraid that I'll have to slap you with the royal hand of realism.

I will not try to stop all of you atheist folks in your sacred crusade, because you're as exaggerate and hostile as your fanatics counterparts. But I'm just going to tell you 3 things that you should have in mind while doing this:

1.- Religion is something that would probably never EVER disappear from humanity.

Religion nowadays is something that has become so integrated in our global society, in our lives, in our history, in our traditions, in our way of seeing life (even if you're a believer or not), in our psychology and overall in our world that is hardly ever going to disappear because it has become a part of us. It's a part from human psychology, people will be always willing to believe in a higher power, people will be always willing to believe in a metaphysical or even supernatural force, they do that for means of escapism or/and comfort. A lot of people find the true meaning of their lives within religion. Religion gives to a lot of people a meaning, a purpose or even a reason to live. And that's just an incredibly enormous power, I'm not saying is good or evil, but I'm just saying that it's an incredibly monstrosus power that goes so deep inside the human mind, feelings and strength that is hardly ever going to disappear, it doesn't matter how "smart" we get. And EVEN if religion falls, someone (or a lot of people) would probably create a cult that would work similar or even identical as a religion and I bet my ass that a lot of people will follow it.

And another thing, religion is not the single worst enemy of mankind!, do you really believe that religion is the root of all the violence or most of the violence that it's happening around the world? Let me tell you something folks, we are humans, we kill each other, for whatever reason: money, power, love, respect, believes, politics, survival, revenge, safety, anger, food, order, drugs, etc, etc. And we have been doing that for a lot of years. And let me tell you something, religion is just one of them, just one in an enormous list of reasons why we would kill each other, and sadly enough, a lot of  violence coming from religion, wasn't just for religion but also almost with political, economical, expansive and imperialistic agendas. Religion was just a way to transport all of these agendas, in this context; religion is not actually a reason but more like a way, and if you only get rid of the way, the reasons will find another way for bringing their agendas to fruition. My point is that we will always find a reason to kill each other, ALWAYS, we're really creative in that department. Just look at this, the two greatest world-wide massacres that humanity has suffer in all its history have not come from religion or a religious background. It came from governments and a desire for power.

[caption id="attachment_292" align="alignnone" width="300"] Religion didn't cause that tragedy, humans did[/caption]

And just be honest and realistic to yourselves, close your eyes for a moment and imagine a world in which we're all atheist. Do you really see an improvement in humanity? do you really see less violence in the world? Do you really see an improvement in human behavior?. To be honest, I see that world even more violent that this one, because not all people will be able to handle their atheism as you do guys, a lot of people will go nuts. A lot people need something that tells them: this is right, this is wrong, period. And if they don't have that, they'll start to get confuse and things might not end well.

If you mange to bring religion down (which you'll not) there's going to be zero improvement in this world and in your lives.

2.- You're incredibly outnumbered!

Sure!, here on the internet it seems like there's an army of you, if you only live in the internet you would think that the vast majority of people are atheist/anti-theist. Sadly if you live in the real world, you can't say the same.

[caption id="attachment_275" align="alignnone" width="224"] Sorry, but I present you Misses Truth[/caption]

3.- Careful in what you're becoming

If you're an atheist/anti-theist, please tell me that you just hated every second of the cult of dusty video that I putted on top, please tell me that you completely hated it, because if you did, then I respect you and I have nothing against you, but for all of the other 3000 people who loved it, I just have to tell you something, careful in what you're becoming, you have become so passionate about this, you have select people who are always preaching your word and you have decide to follow them, and now you also have an imaginary utopia that is never going to happen but you're setting yourselves on a stupid crusade hopping to reach it.

I'm Mexican and I have a really ironic sense of humor so I have only this to say to you, remember Nietzsche:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

And another thing that I still have to say to you, and to everyone really, everything in excess is bad, don't live with excesses, they're just going to ruin your life, if you're an excessive christian, that's pretty bad and if you're and excessive atheist, that's pretty bad too.

Let's imagine that here we have a girl who is an excessive christian, a guy who is an excessive atheist, a girls who is a passive christian and a guy who is a passive atheist. And they go out on a date.

First, the excessive christian goes out with the excessive atheist: Now just imagine the complete disaster of a date that is going to become, they're kicked out from the restaurant for causing too much noise and swearing.

Next, the excessive christian goes out with the passive atheist: The christian girl starts attacking the atheist guy  when the atheist guy just wants to have a good time, the atheist guy gets tired of all the fanaticism of this girl and he leaves.

Then, the passive christian goes out with the excessive atheist: The same, the atheist dude starts attacking the christian girl when the christian girl just wants to have a good time, the christian girls gets tired of all the stupid hostility of this guy and she leaves.

Finally, the passive christian goes out with the passive atheist: And they get a long pretty well, they don't try to shove their believes into one another, they have a good time, and at the end of their great date, they go to a hotel.

Now let me ask you: Who were the ones who got laid in this story?

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