Birds Of Tokyo Human Design
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BlushfulHippocrene
Staff Reviewer
April 25th 2020


4052 Comments


Agreed with Sitar's point about the tattoo (though I think it's a horrible lyric regardless), but also I giggled so I don't think it matters. :3 Think the intro is a bit too long / states too much of the obvious. Otherwise, super well written! Very well-deserved promo mate, keep it up.

I wonder if this album would be better (I haven't listened to it yet) if it leaned into the pop cliches a little bit more? Like, accept that it is actually very difficult to describe what is a very familiar human experience without resorting to cliches.

WhiteNoise
April 25th 2020


3887 Comments


Man it’s sad to see what happened to this band. First two albums were genuinely fun.

More Karnivool please.

PistolPete
April 25th 2020


5304 Comments

Album Rating: 1.5

I used to genuinely get excited about this band and now I can’t even muster up the energy to listen to one new song let alone an album.

JS19
April 25th 2020


7777 Comments


Are these guys mega popular in Aus? Is that why they keep making boring lame releases - because they make bank?

mrend55
April 25th 2020


69 Comments


their songs Plans and Lanterns were massive here, and it seems their albums sell really well.

PostMesmeric
April 25th 2020


779 Comments


I thought Brace was pretty great, but I'm about halfway through this record, and man, this is tepid as all hell.

Scoot
April 25th 2020


22201 Comments


universes is awesome

shame to see how far kenny has fallen

veninblazer
April 26th 2020


16838 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

This is probably not the best place to start with Birds of Tokyo, but fuck it. Giving this an honest shot.

veninblazer
April 26th 2020


16838 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

its been ok. Nothing special, but you could do a lot worse with this style.

Dewinged
Staff Reviewer
April 26th 2020


32034 Comments


Is this the band with the Karnivool singer? If so please, go back to Karnivool.

veninblazer
April 26th 2020


16838 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

yes this is the same band, also he never left Karnivool. i dont get the issue, he probably just wanted a cathartic release. you could do a lot worse with pop rock like this... stares at Hoobastank's last album

SitarHero
April 26th 2020


14704 Comments


"Is this the band with the Karnivool singer? If so please, go back to Karnivool."

Lol, this is the cash cow. It's likely that the only reason he can even be in Karnivool is because this is profitable enough that he can take time off to go do something like Karnivool that doesn't make money.

veninblazer
April 26th 2020


16838 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

and this isnt even that bad, come on...

SitarHero
April 26th 2020


14704 Comments


Never actually listened to this band apart from a video or two. This just kind of sounds like Train to me. Bland and inoffensive adult contemporary for the soccer moms.

GhostB1rd
April 27th 2020


7938 Comments


That's okay as long as the soccer moms are hot.

GhostB1rd
April 27th 2020


7938 Comments


If you're targeting the ugly soccer moms that's when it becomes a fucking problem.

veninblazer
April 27th 2020


16838 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

This sounds nothing like Train to me lol

SitarHero
April 27th 2020


14704 Comments


Lol, I wasn't paying close attention tbh. Train is just my go-to references for earnest angst-free alt-rock. Might be a dated reference though. Who are the big dogs these days in that department? Imagine Dragons?

thumbcrusher
April 27th 2020


3790 Comments


If Karnivool were more active I would have thought they'd be at least as if not more profitable than BoT? They appear to get far more international recognition and their albums look like they have sold well in Australia going by their chart positions

I would guess Kenny really enjoys BoT and/or the other members of Karnivool are too busy with other things to do things as consistently as this band

SitarHero
April 27th 2020


14704 Comments


Interesting question. My guess would be that BoT is much more popular in Australia than Karnivool. While their peak chart performances are about the same, BoT has two platinum and one gold record while Vool only has the one platinum, which was Themata surprisingly enough. It's possible that BoT has more commercial popularity while Vool has a very dedicated cult fanbase. This is all based on wikipedia though so take it with a grain of salt.

For some reason Spotify isn't displaying the number of monthly listeners numbers for me so I don't have an accurate picture of how popular Vool are compared to BoT globally. And since neither band is Trapt I'm not going to bother checking Pandora (lol). A couple of interesting stats though:

Vool's most recent video for "We Are" from 2013 has 233k views on YouTube. "Two Of Us" off this album, the single/video for which was released in early February of this year, has over 310K views right now. However, Karnivool has nearly 200k followers on Facebook while Birds of Tokya has a little over 150k. Neither comes close to a Gojira (750k) or a Meshuggah (700k) or a Porcupine Tree (558k) or a Periphery (450k), who I guess would be the most apt comparisons for globally successful cult bands.

So it's a fairly safe bet that Vool has more overseas fans. However, international touring for Aussie bands is a massively expensive venture with very little in the way of profit, which is why Aussie bands do it so rarely. Plus, I would assume it takes much more effort to write and record a Vool album than a BoT album.

So there you have it, my not-at-all conclusive, exhaustive, or in-depth comparative analysis.



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