this is so good. makes you wonder what the hell happened after this.

dopp is sick snips so is manips

doppelganger is great yeah. but not really this good. manipulator was barely passable, held afloat by a few awesome tracks (most of which were written pre-doppelganger) and generally superb guitar work. both their releases after manipulator are unspeakably awful.

iirc they were performing seattlantis, ex-creations, semi-fiction, and a slightly different version of a man a plan way before manipulator was recorded. i think they were written with the doppelganger tracks. i just feel like this band ran out of ideas really fast and kept releasing "new" albums with strong stuff they had already written. like the fact a few of the s/t tracks were on the demo of their older band, that four tracks from dopp were on the s/t, 4 tracks from manip pre-date the writing of that album, and poth is just reworked versions of this.

and then with itue, they finally had to write a full batch of fresh songs, and surprise!!
they fucking blew.

yeah maybe i was a little harsh on manipulator but c'mon it was just nowhere near as cooooool as their stuff before that. doppelganger has that fucking vibe and this has those riffs and the s/t was just fuckin nuts.

Album Rating: 4.0

Best FoT agreed

Album Rating: 4.5

i'm pretty sure the band started disintegrating around the manipulator era with tim leaving just after

its release; erak's slow transformation into a super-douche was almost certainly the catalyst and i

wouldn't be surprised if this was why the music began to suck.

agreed

Manipulator was great I never understood the hate it got. It wasn't as dynamic as their first album or Doppelganger, but it was still pretty great. Ghostship and Phantom are definitely the band's finest moments though. Both the old and new versions of Chapter I are utterly incredible.

Album Rating: 4.5

It's a shame Phantom ruined these songs.

Oh and the version of Macaulay McCulkin is also another big highlight.

i fucking hated the poth versions of all of these tracks

but that's just like, you know, my opinion, man.

Album Rating: 4.5

There were a few awesome moments, like the 2:00 minute mark on Chapter III and that heavy ass section on Chapter V, but overall it was a pile of shit that ruined any atmosphere these demos had.

@Sniper
No, you're not the only person I've heard say that. I'm divided in my opinion. There are some songs (like Chapter I & IV) that I thought were better written in Phantom, but the Ghostship versions are a lot more raw due to the lo-fi production and they're at a faster tempo. I love them both though.

AND ALL THE KNOTS ARE TIED TOO TIGHT TO HOLD

Just after Manip was released I saw these dudes live and after opening with some of their awesome stuff off doppelganger and s/t Erak asked the audience "who wants to hear some of our new stuff?". And it was pretty silent, then "who wants to hear our old stuff?" and everyone went wild. Gotta be a shit thing to hear as a band but it sums up their career pretty well.

LMAO

i saw thomas erak tweeting at danny brown the other day. not sure how relevant that is tho.

i wish this band had stayed cool, they could have been so cool!

Now Erak's in Chiodos which is fucking LOL but I'm actually kind of excited to listen whether for some light guilty pleasure enjoyment or to be entertained by how bad it is.

do you remember when horse the band and chiodos had beef like 7 years ago? that shit was funny.

Haha I'm not sure I ever caught wind of that. What about?