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  2. Originally posted by germcevoy:[..]

    on my 9th run through and thought 'what the bloody fuck is with all the ohh ohhs'. Ceaders is the only one I can remember without a ohh ohh


    Try to get over it...might be perfect for the gigs, 80.000 people singing 'oh-oh-oh' is breathtaking.
  3. Originally posted by MWSAH:[..]

    Try to get over it...might be perfect for the gigs, 80.000 people singing 'oh-oh-oh' is breathtaking.


    no doubt but there is just too many for one album. Only a minor issue though but it can get annoying


  4. Its not aleak, you're paying for the material. If you are waiting for physical edition though, it could be considered a leak. wait.
  5. 5/5 starts in Rolling Stone is not insignificant. The only other U2 album to receive 5 stars is The Joshua Tree. Boy, War and Achtung Baby get 4.5. Pop, All That You Can't Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb get 4. Look for No Line On The Horizon to be at or near the top of many critics "Best of" lists for 2009. Hope they release another album later in the year!!!
  6. The more I listen to this album, the better and better it gets, the more I think it might be their "third masterpiece." My rating of the songs, at the moment:

    No Line on the Horizon 9/10
    Magnificent 10/10
    Moment of Surrender 10/10
    Unknown Caller 10/10
    Crazy Tonight 8/10
    Get On Your Boots 8/10
    Stand Up Comedy 9/10
    Fez -- Being Born 9/10
    White As Snow 10/10
    Breathe 10/10
    Cedars of Lebanon 9/10

    Total: 9.27/10

    My rating of songs on Joshua Tree, for comparison:

    WTSHNN 10/10
    ISHFWIALF 10/10
    With or Without You 10/10
    Bullet The Blue Sky 9/10
    Running To Stand Still 10/10
    Red Hill MIning Town 9/10
    In God's Country 9/10
    Trip Through Your Wires 8/10
    One Tree Hill 10/10
    Exit 9/10
    Mothers of Disappeared 9/10

    Total: 9.36/10

    And Achtung Baby:

    Zoo Station 10/10
    EBTTRT 9/10
    One 10/10
    UTEOTW 10/10
    WGRYWH 8/10
    So Cruel 8/10
    The Fly 10/10
    Mysterious Ways 10/10
    TTTYAATW 9/10
    Ultraviolet 9/10
    Acrobat 9/10
    Love Is Blindness 9/10

    Total: 9.25/10

    Slightly better than Achtung Baby but not quite as good as The Joshua Tree? Yes, I think this album may well be that good. If you think I've overrated "Stand Up Comedy," remember the cause that Bono is singing about. If you think I've overrated"White As Snow," put on some headphones and imagine the last four minutes before you die are looking back on your life and preparing to meet your Maker. Man, I love this album.


  7. The stream on myspace has amazing quality, better than the leak, or so it seems.


  8. U2.COM stream is also very good. Can't wait to have it in lossless
  9. I've listed to the album 3-4 times now. Here's my impression and rating of each song so far. I'm a rare poster here, but hopefully no one minds hearing my opinion too. I just want to talk to SOMEONE about it, but no one I know quite "gets" U2 the way I do, hence why I'm posting here. (To elaborate, I believe my wife's description of my listening to the album over and over the past two days was that it was "obsessive". Oh well... )

    NLOTH:
    On first listen, I liked version 2 better, purely for the groove and "NO! LINE!" shouts. But I think I'll get tired of version 2 in time, mainly because it's just a take-off of Lady with the Spinning Head and really isn't all that layered, etc.. The album version of this song definitely has a little more depth and I think it will eventually wear well. Until that point, though: 7/10.

    Magnificent:
    I like the droning beginning, like something from Jack White. I like the swelling guitars toward the end of the droning that remind me almost of something from October. Then, it suddenly turns into "Walk on." Sigh. Okay, right, this song's pretty, it's majestic, but it reminds me way too much of "Walk On", so a loss of points there for referencing their back-catalog too obviously. Bonus points come later, though, when the song references a much older tune (by centuries, no less), that being Bach's "Magnificat". How many rock bands can say they've done THAT? Much props for pulling this off. The solo's not bad, but too much like "Real Thing", I think. Deduction of points again for lack of originality. Funky bass line, though, that makes me to want to play "air bass" along with it (as opposed to air guitar, lol). Points get added for that. Oh, and I like the little synth embellishments in the chorus too. Reminds me of the Killers, which is ironic, considering how much the Killers in turn have taken from U2. So, after all these additions and deductions, the final rating comes out to something like a 7.5 out of 10. Could improve with time, provided I get over all my aforementioned hang-ups. If you hadn't noticed already, I'm big on the U2 experimental-thing as opposed to the classicist things, so take these reviews with that bias in mind from here onward.

    Moment of Surrender:
    Big expectations for this one, which I think accounts for the odd mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I simultaneously feel when listening to it. It's very good as is, but there are parts where I feel like they could've taken this piece to even another level. Sorry, it ain't going to touch "One", but still, the level it's at is pretty darn good. 8.5/10 for this one.

    Unknown Caller:
    Best song since Kite. Holy crap, this song rocks. Holy crap, I repeat. And what a concept: a cell-phone sending the narrator transcendent messages about life and existence. Mainstream pop acts simply don't DO something this avant-garde. That kind of daring is why I loved U2 so much in the past (and why I so disliked HTDAAB, but that's for another post entirely). The best description I could give of this track is it almost seems like an Albert Camus short story written for the 21st century. And the solo at the end is the best on the album, in my opinion. Reminds me of the extended outro solo for Kite at the end of the Vertigo tour, which I thought was a bit of a departure for Edge. Nice to see him still expanding his boundaries after all these years. And yes, I realize the chord structure in this song at times also blatantly cops from "Walk On", just like Magnificent, but I'm willing to overlook it here simply because the rest of the song is so damned good. So, yeah, I'm a hypocrite. At least I can admit it, lol. Anyway: 10 out of 10. So damned good. "Reboot yourself. Start again..."

    Crazy Tonight:
    Pretty song that grows on me a little more each time I hear it. I really like the melody in "It's not a hiiiiilll, it's a mountain" at the beginning of the chorus, and as I type this, I still can't get it out of my head. My only complaint about this song is that the opening chords remind me too much of Journey's "Faithfully". I apologize now to anyone who hadn't noticed this before, because from now on you will. My other small complaint is that technically, a song about going crazy, even if meant figuratively, should not have accompanying music quite this gentle-sounding and merry. Just a thought -- maybe I'm being too picky. Still, I'd give this tune a 7.5 out of 10 just because that chorus melody is SO catchy....

    GOYB:
    Funky bass (Adam really played well this album, maybe his best playing ever?). Nice idea, women being the new revelation and all that. Like the "hip-hop" breakdown. Like the video, too. Lyrics are mostly alright. Guitar is way too Vertigo-ish, though (see earlier HTDAAB comment for why that's a bad thing). So, that's three pluses, one push, and one negative. Mathematically, this should have a good rating, then. But this is art, not math, so I don't need to explain: this is the second worst song on the album. Only 6.5 out of 10.

    SUC:
    This one's growing on me. I didn't like it at all the first time I heard it, but now I kinda dig it. I definitely hear the Led Zep thing, but even more than that, I'm hearing Bullet the Blue Sky from PopMart. Not necessarily a bad thing, probably more positive than negative since Bullet has had about 150 incarnations over the years, so it'd probably be impossible for a song to NOT sound like it in one way or another, lol. I like the "God" and "little old lady" line. I'm thinking that this is a 7 out of 10, because I like it better than GOYB but not as much as "Crazy Tonight".

    Fez-Being Born:
    More experimentation. Nice. Maybe a bit too out there, though, even for my taste (I liked Achtung through Pop a lot, but disliked Passengers. I have my limits, you see.) But I like the unpredictability of the melody and rhymes, and the rhythm guitar is pretty cool, as well as the background chimes. It's too experimental, though, like I said, to really resonate with me. I don't get the emotional reaction I get from Unknown Caller or other great U2 songs from this tune. It sounds too much from the head rather than the heart. Still, it's not bad: 8 out of 10.

    White as Snow:
    I don't like it. Boring melody. Boring music. The lyrics don't hit home for some reason. Maybe it'll grow on me years from now. It took me years to finally like "The First Time" and "Peace on Earth", but even still they're in my lowest tier of good U2 songs now, which I think is the best place this will ever hope to be. 4 out of 10 for this one, only getting that high of a score because of the people performing it.

    Breathe:
    I didn't like the opening guitar riff at first; it reminded me too much of Vertigo (I know: you get it, you get it...) But I LOVE the fact that he worked "cockatoo" into the lyrics, and the drum intro is very cool too, along with the cello before the solo (a nice unexpected touch -- the kind of thing this album has a lot of that makes me enjoy it). If the lyrics to this piece sink in a bit more, this could be a potential favorite, I thnk. If they don't, it still should end up if my top half of favorites from the album, though. Originally a 7.5 rating out of 10, but the "cockatoo" reference alone is worth a full point because it makes me smile every time. Final score: 8.5 out of 10.

    Cedars of Lebanon:
    Nice low-key song. I like the lyrics. I like the way Bono songs. I like the Lou Reed vibe the song has, the way it swells up and down. I like the soft Mitch Mitchell-style drumming. My only complaint, if you could even call it a complaint, is that it doesn't really strive for much. It's good for what it is, but it doesn't try to make any great overreaching leaps musically. It's like "Grace" from ATYCLB in that regard, but much, much better. Don't get me wrong: I LOVE ATYCLB (it's my favorite U2 album), but Grace is not one of its highlights, IMO. Anyway, that's off subject -- sorry for the ADHD-ness. The rating for this one: 7 out of 10.

    Overall impression of album:
    I like the fact that a LOT of the chord progressions and rhymes seem unpredictable to me on this album (not the case with Bomb -- I could spot where every song was going 5 seconds before it'd get there). I like the dense layering and all the different sounds. I like the fact that Edge may arguably have a couple of his best solos here, and that Larry and Adam are both playing way funkier than they have since Pop. And Bono sounds really good. I don't think he's quite back to Achtung voice-quality, but you could argue it's better than any period after 1996. The only thing I don't like about the album is that other than Unknown Caller and, to a lesser degree, Moment of Surrender, none of the songs really grab me emotionally. I don't know if that's just because it'll take me some time to get into them, or it's just because I can't relate to them. Time will tell, I guess. As of now, though, my overall impression of the album would be an 8 out of 10. If it's anything like Achtung Baby or ATYCLB, that rating will go up in time. If it's anything like the others, it'll either stay the same or lower a bit. We shall see...

    Anyhow, thanks for listening to an "obsessive" fan. It was nice to get this review off my chest, lol... Have a good day!
  10. Hey, Apoed, what part of Magnificent references the Magnificat directly? (I've listened to the Magnificat, but everything's in Latin!). I agree with you about Unknown Caller, but disagree about White as Snow. I thought White as Snow was dull at first, too, but its a slow, haunting song that grows on you with each listen. It gives me chills, lke Gorecki's 3rd Symphony or Beethoven's "Hymn of Thanksgiving" (Quartet No. 132), both slow but absolutely beautiful. White as Snow is beautiful too, the melody taken from a Lutheran carol.



  11. I have a buddy that is a sound engineer and mixed slot of artists and he says that he can't believe that this
    Is the final mix. He thought it was mixed very poorly for u2 standards
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Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.