^The density of worse albums in the discography results in people considering them "solid" albums by the band instead of an oddity. I wouldn't get my hopes up and get disappointed for the 4th consecutive time. We can set another New Album thread and brag for years about how it would be cool if they took back the mysterious lake theme and started making atmospheric music again, but they won't listen until some of us writes a gold-selling album.
I never understood what's going on with the Relentless Reckless Forever feedback thing... it's like the interviewers decided fans consider the album "great, and a return to the past/roots"... and the band has been surprised and happy about this - but I have never seen the source of this positive feedback? Of course there is some positive feedback, but the main picture I have seen is different. The more realistic picture lies on the internet, mainly on this forum, as stated by Laiho in a recent interview:
Relentless Reckless Forever has been out now for about 6 months, have you generally been happy with the way the way the fans have responded to the album?
"It’s been really great, like for real. I’ve only heard good feedback but it’s not like people are going to come up to you and tell to your face, dude the album sucks! I mean they do that on the Internet, but I don’t even usually go to our website or check any online stuff as I’m not into that stuff. But all the stuff I have seen, it’s pretty much been positive!"
Of course there's always some negativity on the internet no matter what, but the overall impression I have gathered from fans is this is another on the series of AYDY & BD, and I would consider myself having a more clear view on this than some random interview dude. It's just some sort of cycle going on where the interviewers don't care to study about the band and just google up their recent interviews and state the same questions: "...OK this interviewer says the feedback has been positive, so I'll use that as fact too." I think at least five times an interviewer has asked the band about "the positive feedback of RRF", but it's fucking weird cos I don't see where that positive feedback is honestly. I may be missing something, but I think the point is somewhere someone has exaggerated the fact RRF has a few more melodies in there than the last albums, however it's nothing that makes a fundamental difference.
What I see going on here is pretty much what was going on when Blooddrunk was oven fresh. It got labeled great, more melodic, a return to the roots... the band saying they're extremely happy with it... Just like with RRF. And when it's not hot anymore, the voice in the bell changes. It will be so again.
This is an example of a song composed with passion that's like a flow of heart, an atmospheric, unite idea, climax from start to finish, so full of passion it could create universes out of nothingness. Why do Bodom waste their potential into thrash riffing when they could do this? There was a flash on the new album that proved the passion is still in there, the melody in SKO, but I'd like to see entire songs be created from those moments instead of resorting to thrash riffing.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXv7A88RXTQ&feature=player_embedded[/ame]
And when you compare that to their album opener more than a decade later, you find the energy is still there in the form of the keyboards and the chorus melody, but otherwise there's a lot of regressive energies going on that make you feel on the brink of hyperventilation like all the thrash riffing is preciding a climax that probaby never comes, and are just there to make you impatient for the actual song to start. This is just when talking about the vibe of the music. Maybe it's all about the challenge of trying to make the original Bodom more heavy that causes it to have this diversity, bluntly stated the guitars are more about providing the heaviness while keyboards have taken the important role of melody and atmosphere unlike in the song above when it worked in harmony.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFVJgsAMFMI&feature=related[/ame]
