There's nothing wrong with sticking "ballads" near the first 4 or so songs. That would be a problem in the day and age (no pun intended) of linear cassette playing, but with CD's and digital media, just skip it and come back to it later... the order of an album is not as important, either you dislike the songs or not, but that is an unusual complaint to me.
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Battle Born (new The Killers album) |OT| We're all just runaways
- Thread starter Fry
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I think TK and Kings of Leon are the only band nowadays that I would buy anything they do, no matter what the critical or public response is.
I grew up listening to concept albums and progressive rock, so I've always listened to albums front-to-back. For me, a fantastic record is more than the sum of its parts. Hot Fuss achieves greatness via masterful pacing: the first 5 tracks, progressing into All These Things That I've Done, is flipping legendary.
Sam's Town works as a concept album; it's their most cohesive record. I feel like Sam's Town has it's own little world and each track has its place. This is hard to do. Similarly, Day & Age benefits from a well-defined sound and strong pacing at the start. I think that pacing matters, because I honestly expect bands to put thought into their album as a whole, rather than focusing on individual tracks. BB is iffy as a record. Users on Last.fm are calling it Battle Boring. Kind of agree.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
sounds like the killers for you is Bloc party for me. I keep wanting another Silent alarm, it never happens.
Good question. I like most of the songs on Battle Born, even the slower ones. Actually a lot of the tracks are midtempo, like The Way It Was and Deadlines. These are nice songs, however I listen to The Killers for their big, upbeat hits. Tracks like All The Pretty Faces, Read My Mind, and Midnight Show. More of those, pls.
they've been around for a long time man. you can't expect them to go back to where they started. its always weird to me when people want this from a band.
ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
I'll have to hear the whole thing, but I really didn't care for the preview.
Agreed. Its a mess.
ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
Nah, it is.
I'll have to hear the whole thing, but I really didn't care for the preview.
It's amazing. It was on youtube, but was pulled out :\
RatskyWatsky
Hunky Nostradamus
Same here. The wait is killing me but it'll be worth it I'm sure!
Psychoward
Banned
I was singing The Way it Was in my head all day, it's not my favorite track of the album, but man is it catchy.
PowderedToast
Junior Member
i think the killers have improved with each record, day & age is easily their best but i've just started BB and i love it so far. omgogmgog
ThatObviousUser
ὠαἴÏÏιÏÏÎ¿Ï Ïαá¿Ï εἶ
Oh man, I can't wait to hear that. Huge fan of all his other remixes.
PowderedToast
Junior Member
this tapers off somewhat, songs lack distinction
i'd put it on the level of sam's town, day & age is still my far away favourite
that said i'm looking forward to spending more time with BB
i'd put it on the level of sam's town, day & age is still my far away favourite
that said i'm looking forward to spending more time with BB
After listening to the whole album againl, basically:
Top Tier:
Battle Born
Prize Fighter
From Here on Out
Awesome tier:
Flesh and Bone
A Matter of Time
Miss Atomic Bomb
The Rising Tide
Runaways
Deadlines and Commitments
Okish Tier:
Here With Me
The Way it Was
Awful Tier:
Heart of a Girl
Be Still
Te album feels like a mix between Day & Age and Sam's Town, overall, really good.
Top Tier:
Battle Born
Prize Fighter
From Here on Out
Awesome tier:
Flesh and Bone
A Matter of Time
Miss Atomic Bomb
The Rising Tide
Runaways
Deadlines and Commitments
Okish Tier:
Here With Me
The Way it Was
Awful Tier:
Heart of a Girl
Be Still
Te album feels like a mix between Day & Age and Sam's Town, overall, really good.
RatskyWatsky
Hunky Nostradamus
killertofu
Member
My tiers:
Favorites:
Flesh and Bone
Runaways
Miss Atomic Bomb
Battle Born
Great:
The Way It Was
Here With Me
Good:
Deadlines and Commitments
The Rising Tide
Okay:
Heart of a Girl
From Here On Out
Be Still
Favorites:
Flesh and Bone
Runaways
Miss Atomic Bomb
Battle Born
Great:
The Way It Was
Here With Me
Good:
Deadlines and Commitments
The Rising Tide
Okay:
Heart of a Girl
From Here On Out
Be Still
i_am_ben
running_here_and_there
Hot Fuss >>> Day & Age> Sam's Town >>>>> Battle Born
Great songs:
Flesh and bone
Battle Born
Decent songs:
Miss Atomic Bomb
Deadlines and Commitments
Runaways (although i'm starting to like it more and more despite it being paint by numbers killers)
good enough
The way it was
Mediocre songs
the rest
Great songs:
Flesh and bone
Battle Born
Decent songs:
Miss Atomic Bomb
Deadlines and Commitments
Runaways (although i'm starting to like it more and more despite it being paint by numbers killers)
good enough
The way it was
Mediocre songs
the rest
PowderedToast
Junior Member
wow this really comes alive through speakers, sounds fucking fantastic
Ew, I hope not. I really dislike U2.
killertofu
Member
After a few more listens I like Heart of a Girl a lot more.
Daddy Daddy Daddy
The Telegraph review:
4/5
The Killers are apparently Mitt Romney’s favourite contemporary rock band, or at least the only one it is safe for the presidential candidate to mention. Like Conservative politicians in Britain, Republicans are at a disadvantage when it comes to advertising their music taste, at risk of being denounced by alternative bands unwilling to be associated with right-wing ideologies. The Killers, however, have proved unusually gracious.
“Anyone’s allowed to like us,” bassist Mark Stoermer responded. The association, of course, centres on singer and chief songwriter Brandon Flowers sharing Romney’s Mormon faith, but it may also run deeper. Despite their sinister name and edgy image, the Killers are an intrinsically conservative band.
Like Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol, their keyboard-driven pop rock has just enough modern sheen to flourish in a digital era when listeners are growing bored with guitars. Flush with stirring, singalong melodies, they construct exciting, catchy songs that draw on the dynamics of stadium rock established by classic bands from the Who (whose familiar sequencer-guitar mix is echoed on A Matter of Time) to Springsteen (whose spirit of epic, yearning Americana is evoked on Runaways and The Way it Was) and U2 (on Heart of a Girl, Flowers seems to be channelling Bono’s gospel roar). But it is not just in terms of sound that the Killers hark back to a bygone era.
Flowers’s lyrics centre on memory and loss, family and tradition, with the persistent theme that things were once better than they are now.
The title of their fourth album is taken from the Nevada state motto, and the setting for Flowers’s songs is, as ever, the neon desert of the band’s native Las Vegas, which he rhapsodises with misty-eyed nostalgia. “For a second there we’d won/ We were innocent and young” he sings on Miss Atomic Bomb, recalling a lost love in a metaphor evoking Nevada’s ruinous nuclear testing without even a hint of satire. Yet the song tips thrillingly into a vortex of jealousy and paranoia as Flowers recalls his sweetheart’s betrayal and wails “the future’s like a dagger sticking out of your back”.
It is the intensity with which Flowers sings about dark emotions that, one suspects, will keep the Killers off the campaign trail. There is something deeply weird about his world view that is magnified by the high-strung intensity of his band’s playing. On the strangely lovely Be Still, the father of three sings a lullaby that would keep any child awake, trembling in fear for his/her future (“Life is short to say the least/ We’re in the belly of the beast”. If I were Romney, I’d be wary of getting too close to a band who make pop music so thrillingly odd.
4/5
The Killers are apparently Mitt Romney’s favourite contemporary rock band, or at least the only one it is safe for the presidential candidate to mention. Like Conservative politicians in Britain, Republicans are at a disadvantage when it comes to advertising their music taste, at risk of being denounced by alternative bands unwilling to be associated with right-wing ideologies. The Killers, however, have proved unusually gracious.
“Anyone’s allowed to like us,” bassist Mark Stoermer responded. The association, of course, centres on singer and chief songwriter Brandon Flowers sharing Romney’s Mormon faith, but it may also run deeper. Despite their sinister name and edgy image, the Killers are an intrinsically conservative band.
Like Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol, their keyboard-driven pop rock has just enough modern sheen to flourish in a digital era when listeners are growing bored with guitars. Flush with stirring, singalong melodies, they construct exciting, catchy songs that draw on the dynamics of stadium rock established by classic bands from the Who (whose familiar sequencer-guitar mix is echoed on A Matter of Time) to Springsteen (whose spirit of epic, yearning Americana is evoked on Runaways and The Way it Was) and U2 (on Heart of a Girl, Flowers seems to be channelling Bono’s gospel roar). But it is not just in terms of sound that the Killers hark back to a bygone era.
Flowers’s lyrics centre on memory and loss, family and tradition, with the persistent theme that things were once better than they are now.
The title of their fourth album is taken from the Nevada state motto, and the setting for Flowers’s songs is, as ever, the neon desert of the band’s native Las Vegas, which he rhapsodises with misty-eyed nostalgia. “For a second there we’d won/ We were innocent and young” he sings on Miss Atomic Bomb, recalling a lost love in a metaphor evoking Nevada’s ruinous nuclear testing without even a hint of satire. Yet the song tips thrillingly into a vortex of jealousy and paranoia as Flowers recalls his sweetheart’s betrayal and wails “the future’s like a dagger sticking out of your back”.
It is the intensity with which Flowers sings about dark emotions that, one suspects, will keep the Killers off the campaign trail. There is something deeply weird about his world view that is magnified by the high-strung intensity of his band’s playing. On the strangely lovely Be Still, the father of three sings a lullaby that would keep any child awake, trembling in fear for his/her future (“Life is short to say the least/ We’re in the belly of the beast”
. If I were Romney, I’d be wary of getting too close to a band who make pop music so thrillingly odd.killertofu
Member
Mormon rock, ya'll.
Exterminieren
Banned
So, in summary, Brandon be crazy.
Psychoward
Banned
It's amazing how much Brandon's voice has improved since Hot Fuss.
I'm definitely getting U2 vibes as well. Sort of always had with the Killers but certainly now more completely than just a guitar lick here and there. Love it, U2 is my favorite band ever.
So I've given this album a lot of listens and I'm really loving it. Here's my ranking.
God Tier:
Runaways
Here with me
From Here on Out
Carry Me Home (bonus track)
The Way it Was
Great:
Flesh and Bone
Deadlines and Commitments
Miss Atomic Bomb
Rising Tide
Heart of a Girl
Be Still
Battle Born
Flesh and Bone remix
Very good:
A Matter of Time
Prize Fight (bonus)
I think only time will tell how it ranks against the other albums in the end but right now I would say
Hot Fuss > Saw Dust > Battle Born = Day & Age > Sam's Town
Who knows how that will shake down. And I count Saw Dust because it's just amazing music.
The Killers Battle Born Review
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/x53q
Since 2004s British-flavoured debut Hot Fuss, The Killers have embraced the American landscape with an authenticity UK bands can only dream about. With nothing but horizons in every direction, their immersion in Vegas is now complete: like Springsteen is New Jersey, The Killers are inseparable from Nevada. Hammering this point home, they have taken the name for this fourth album proper from the state flag, and its the distillation of everything they have done before.
It is surprising how patchy The Killers albums have been, a trend bucked by Brandon Flowers solo album Flamingo. Battle Born sits closest to 2006s Sams Town, their album most lacking in great tunes, but lead single Runaways casts fears into the roadside dust. It sounds exactly how you would hope: military drums and epic verses, sparking wanderlust like a complimentary Cadillac. Opener Flesh and Bone sounds nervous, but its red-in-the-face bluster soon settles, and the band finds its stride, Flowers singing of prom queens and lonesome dreams of twists of fate.
Deserts have a tendency to make bands serious, and The Killers are no exception although the slightly formulaic Here With Me actually channels Simple Minds Belfast Child rather than U2. But if The Way It Was sounded any bigger it might be mistaken for Meat Loaf, albeit if hed bundled Foreigner, John Steinbeck and a-ha into four glorious minutes.
Big guitars riff over widescreen escapism, until the synth-driven Deadlines and Commitments takes a break from the manly power chords, and then Miss Atomic Bomb sketches American 60s innocence watching nuclear-testing mushroom clouds while picnicking. The surging Rising Tide struts and flicks its microphone cable like its been around forever, before Heart of a Girl finally succumbs to U2 influences, serving as the albums One. The title track is as triumphant as a song called Battle Born should be.
Flowers recent declaration to NME that everything will work (if) the songs are right applies equally to his band as it does life in general. And Battle Born is a belter, an album made for bedrooms, stadiums and old-school denim jacket patches alike.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/x53q
Since 2004s British-flavoured debut Hot Fuss, The Killers have embraced the American landscape with an authenticity UK bands can only dream about. With nothing but horizons in every direction, their immersion in Vegas is now complete: like Springsteen is New Jersey, The Killers are inseparable from Nevada. Hammering this point home, they have taken the name for this fourth album proper from the state flag, and its the distillation of everything they have done before.
It is surprising how patchy The Killers albums have been, a trend bucked by Brandon Flowers solo album Flamingo. Battle Born sits closest to 2006s Sams Town, their album most lacking in great tunes, but lead single Runaways casts fears into the roadside dust. It sounds exactly how you would hope: military drums and epic verses, sparking wanderlust like a complimentary Cadillac. Opener Flesh and Bone sounds nervous, but its red-in-the-face bluster soon settles, and the band finds its stride, Flowers singing of prom queens and lonesome dreams of twists of fate.
Deserts have a tendency to make bands serious, and The Killers are no exception although the slightly formulaic Here With Me actually channels Simple Minds Belfast Child rather than U2. But if The Way It Was sounded any bigger it might be mistaken for Meat Loaf, albeit if hed bundled Foreigner, John Steinbeck and a-ha into four glorious minutes.
Big guitars riff over widescreen escapism, until the synth-driven Deadlines and Commitments takes a break from the manly power chords, and then Miss Atomic Bomb sketches American 60s innocence watching nuclear-testing mushroom clouds while picnicking. The surging Rising Tide struts and flicks its microphone cable like its been around forever, before Heart of a Girl finally succumbs to U2 influences, serving as the albums One. The title track is as triumphant as a song called Battle Born should be.
Flowers recent declaration to NME that everything will work (if) the songs are right applies equally to his band as it does life in general. And Battle Born is a belter, an album made for bedrooms, stadiums and old-school denim jacket patches alike.
metareferential
Member
Got this in the mail today.
It's beginning to grow on me; the problem is I've listened so many times to songs like Mr. Brightside, Smile Like you Mean it and such, that it's difficult to say whether it's good or not like previous albums.
Good point is that as of now I really like this new album, but I don't think there's a song that's been immediately catchy like Spaceman or Read my Mind or Indie Rock'n Roll.
But I've got plenty of time to get accustomed to the new tunes.
It's beginning to grow on me; the problem is I've listened so many times to songs like Mr. Brightside, Smile Like you Mean it and such, that it's difficult to say whether it's good or not like previous albums.
Good point is that as of now I really like this new album, but I don't think there's a song that's been immediately catchy like Spaceman or Read my Mind or Indie Rock'n Roll.
But I've got plenty of time to get accustomed to the new tunes.
Two more reviews:
NME: 7/10
The Arts Desk: 4/5
Brandon Flowers gets back to his rock roots with his old gang
The showbiz titibit that has intrigued me more than any other in recent weeks is the story that comedian Jimmy Carr helped to inspire one of the tracks on The Killers’ fourth album. The Lloyd Cole lookalike apparently suggested to Brandon Flowers over dinner that the next album to make a breakthrough would be looking at the problems of the economy. Imagine Jim Davidson giving tips to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Flowers took note, went away and returned with "Deadlines and Commitments".
Battle Born comes after an extended break for the band and refines the quartet’s increasingly trad pedal-to-the-metal guitar-driven romanticism. After a few gentle electronic bleeps on the opening "Flesh and Bone" this is an album that gallops along at such a heady pace one has to hold on to the metaphorical reins for dear life. It is about as mainstream as rock gets, coming perilously close to poodle-permed power ballad territory on "Here With Me" and finding Flowers doing a serviceable junior Springsteen on "The Way it Was" and the recent soaraway single, "Runaways".
When it comes to the lyrics the dozen songs are rammed with dramatic clichés. The Killers seem incapable of resisting epic overkill. Welcome to a cinematic world of broken dreams, escape, Elvis, deserts and thieves stealing hearts. Yet somehow Flowers pulls it off, as if partaking in some kind of meta-Spinal Tap parody. Maybe there is nothing here that shakes one up as vigorously as "Mr Brightside" or "Bones" but those songs did set the bar very high. As for the Carr-triggered "Deadlines and Commitments", there is an eerily biblical sentiment to the line "if you should fall upon hard times... there is a place in this house that you can stay". Despite Jimmy Carr's involvement, it has nothing to do with Inland Revenue deadlines and tax payment commitments.
(I'm only posting reviews that end up in the album's wikipedia page.)
NME: 7/10
The Arts Desk: 4/5
Brandon Flowers gets back to his rock roots with his old gang
The showbiz titibit that has intrigued me more than any other in recent weeks is the story that comedian Jimmy Carr helped to inspire one of the tracks on The Killers’ fourth album. The Lloyd Cole lookalike apparently suggested to Brandon Flowers over dinner that the next album to make a breakthrough would be looking at the problems of the economy. Imagine Jim Davidson giving tips to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Flowers took note, went away and returned with "Deadlines and Commitments".
Battle Born comes after an extended break for the band and refines the quartet’s increasingly trad pedal-to-the-metal guitar-driven romanticism. After a few gentle electronic bleeps on the opening "Flesh and Bone" this is an album that gallops along at such a heady pace one has to hold on to the metaphorical reins for dear life. It is about as mainstream as rock gets, coming perilously close to poodle-permed power ballad territory on "Here With Me" and finding Flowers doing a serviceable junior Springsteen on "The Way it Was" and the recent soaraway single, "Runaways".
When it comes to the lyrics the dozen songs are rammed with dramatic clichés. The Killers seem incapable of resisting epic overkill. Welcome to a cinematic world of broken dreams, escape, Elvis, deserts and thieves stealing hearts. Yet somehow Flowers pulls it off, as if partaking in some kind of meta-Spinal Tap parody. Maybe there is nothing here that shakes one up as vigorously as "Mr Brightside" or "Bones" but those songs did set the bar very high. As for the Carr-triggered "Deadlines and Commitments", there is an eerily biblical sentiment to the line "if you should fall upon hard times... there is a place in this house that you can stay". Despite Jimmy Carr's involvement, it has nothing to do with Inland Revenue deadlines and tax payment commitments.
(I'm only posting reviews that end up in the album's wikipedia page.)
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