So I picked up the new Queen + Paul Rodgers album for the other day, for Chrimis. Actually, in addition to that I also got 4 much older Queen albums on vinyl, plus the aforementioned album also on vinyl. Yeah, it was sort of a box set deal. They are re-releasing all the studio albums on vinyl...16 I believe it is now, if you count The Cosmos Rocks. So I figured, what a great time to start collecting them!
Anyway, as I was saying earlier, I got the new album titled The Cosmos Rocks. It actually came out in October, but I never got around to getting it. I guess you could say I wasn't exactly that excited about it...I was curious, but not enough to warrant me getting it before Christmas. But man, I was wrong about any assumptions I may have made. I am actually quite impressed now that I've given it a good weeks worth of listening time.
Funny thing, I've never been as avid a fan of any other band...and seeing as how I haven't been a fan of Queen long enough to have witnessed the release of a new album, I had never experienced the parts of it I did. Thanks in part to the internet I found out info about the album way in advance to its release. For instance, the title. This was like the first thing we got and I was put off from the get go because I'm tired of Queen using "_______ Rocks" for seemingly everything they release. Ok, now that I look at it, it's only like the "Queen Rocks" compilation album and I guess the Queen Rock Montreal live album...but maybe its just cause it reminds me of Queen Rocks and that was a really shitty release.
Moving on though..After that the song titles were released. And that was kind of weird because you can't really tell what a song is going to be like before you hear it, if you are just looking at the title...but its funny because the mind makes assumptions about it. Needless to say, some of the song titles sounded, well, strange to say the least.
Well, after hearing a couple of singles that were released I wasn't sure what to make of this album...thinking well if that's the best there is on it, it's not going to be good. But like I said, after listening to it, I really enjoy it. There are maybe 3 of the 14 songs that I don't particularly like, all of them ballady type songs...and I don't know, they just aren't really good. I was trying to find some correlation between them to determine why I don't prefer them. Two were written by Brian, one by Paul. Brian used to write great ballads...not sure what happened to him. One thing he didn't lose however was his ability to play the shit out of his guitar. There is some killer guitar work on this album some of which even reminds me of Queen's old stuff. However, on the whole, it's all new sounds. Queen have been so successful in part because they always tried new sounds and this album kept with that trend.
'Course that doesn't mean they didn't delve into old classics. Like this early 60's Del Shannon song they covered as a bonus downloadable track. I think they did quite good! As far as the whole album goes, I'd give it a very high 7/10.
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