Review Summary: A poorly produced album with one guitar riff
Manafest, a Christian rapper from Ontario, released his sixth studio LP The Moment in 2014. Instead of refining the wheel, Manafest completely abandons it and starts something new. Leading to a record that is all over the place making it anything but enjoyable.
The opening/ title track opens with a very promising rap, but then shifts into a very poppy chorus, only to resort to the rap again. Off from a poor start, you would think the next song, the most popular in the album, would be good, right?
Wrong.
Edge Of My Life, like its preceding song, does not even contain a guitar riff. The closest it gets to it is an acoustic guitar chugging through it, which is drowned out by the poor production. It also shows very poor lyrics that have no relevance to the song at all, like (Little Johnny needs a lunch box/ little Susie needs clothes on). And then goes into a chorus talking about how nothing can make him sell his life.
On the contrary, there is a good chunk on this record. Light, a one-minute interlude, leads into it. In Light, Manafest sort of gives a speech on what being a fighter is all about. “A Fighter is not someone who never fails, it is someone who never stops. You can’t beat a man who never stops.” (paraphrasing) Light leads into Diamonds, which is all around decent. A decent bass line, a decent rap, a decent chorus sung by Trevor McNevan, but no guitar riff. And then comes Paradise… which opens with a guitar riff! Unfortunately, it is the only song with a real guitar riff, which is drowned out by poor production.
Bull in a China Shop is the last of this chunk, which features a very enjoyable bass riff. The strangest thing in this song is how often they use the phrase “Bull in a china shop”. But alas, the weak production drowns out the bass riff half the time.
Every track on The Moment has one thing, unfortunately, in common. They all have synthesizers. Very loud synthesizers. Which is another sign of poor production.
The absence of guitar riffs is the biggest downfall of this album. What’s even worse is that they are replaced by the synthesizers. All of the songs with these heavy synthesizers are very poor and unmemorable.
And that sums up The Moment, unfortunately. There is barely anything memorable here, and when there are, they are poorly produced to the point where they are annoying. I would highly recommend any of his other albums over it.
