Swollen Members
Monster In The Closet
The Band: Mad Child
Prevail
Moka Only
Featured Artists: Nelly Furtado
Swollen Members is a band, well more of a group really. Just thought I’d clear that up, so that any more ignorant people reading this don’t get the wrong idea. Yes, ‘Swollen Members’ is a rather peculiar band name. I like many of you once pondered what could possibly possess a band to name themselves “Swollen Members”. Luckily for myself I was filled in on the matter by a fellow Sputnik member. Anyways, the story goes they were drunk at Denny’s when they came up with it. I myself find that to be pretty lame, though I’ve never been to a Denny’s so I can’t really judge. One thing is for sure, based on what they managed to come up with it’s not a good idea to name your band/group while intoxicated. Now, as the old saying goes “never judge a book (band) by its cover (name)”, so let’s get a little more into the group itself. To be blunt, they’re just not good. Their rapping skills are average at best and their ability to write lyrics is even worse. I must give this album some credit, though.
It did have one good track.
Steppin Thru (their spelling error not mine) is actually an enjoyable track. It has great beats throughout, nice rhythm and moderately decent vocals. The reason the vocals can be considered ‘moderately decent’ is because Moka did most of the vocal work in that track. Although, none of these men are very good at all, Moka is the best of the three. The instrumentals, or lack thereof in this album were also less than adequate. There was some keyboard and even cello and violin in select tracks, but it was poorly written and didn’t match up well with the vocals. There drums also, but it was just the same simple beat over and over again. It did change every so slightly between tracks, but for the most part it was the same beat. Other than that pretty much anything else you here, aside from the vocals is computer generated, or done by a soundboard. Now, I’m perfectly aware that just because something is computer generated or done by soundboard doesn’t mean it’s not good. Especially considering this is rap music and very little music in this genre is actually played on an instrument, but even taking that into consideration it’s not good. A lot of people don’t know this but I have heard my fair share of rap. I have an older friend from a near by town and whenever he drops by he crams rap down my throat like you wouldn’t believe. So, I actually do have a good idea of what I’m talking about and this is just poor work at best.
Lyrical Messages
Any actual lyrical messages are difficult to find in this album. The majority of it is the group singing about how great they are. For example “The members do it like you never knew”, “Swollen always brings it home”. The list goes on. Some tracks like
Temptation gave the illusion of having a message, but it, like the other tracks doesn’t. You could argue that songs like temptation have a message, but if so it’s an extremely generic message, that’s already common knowledge anyways. Continuing to use temptation as an example all that song will teach anyone who reads the lyrics are that money, sex and drugs are tempting. In fact some songs lyrics don’t even make sense. Let’s now bring in
Heavy Thinkers as an example. Nothing in that song really makes sense, but to spare you all some time I’ll just use one line as an example.
“Heavy thinkers, got the world spinning hectic. Now ignoring the fact that it’s impossible to think ‘heavy’ this statement is saying that because people are thinking ‘heavy’, or are in deep thought they are actually causing the planet earth to spin faster. I could go on for about a thousand more words describing different lines from various tracks that make no sense, but I think you all get the point. There was only one track that I enjoyed the lyrics to.
Rockapella, SM manage to make a fifty-two second track where practically every word is bands name and it almost makes sense too. Now I’ll close the paragraph with perhaps the best example of their terrible lyrics.
Intro, the majority of the song is just the group saying S and M rocks and they’re correct. S&M by Metallica does rock. There are some other lyrics, also. They’re just the band members saying how they rock. Example “Mad Child rocks”, he doesn’t though. To sum this up Swollen’s lyrical skills are equivalent to that of Slayer, but slayer has a better vocals and way better instrumentals, so they’re cooler.
Overall Feel
This album’s overall is best suited to be played at a house party. It’s fast, steady beats will get people dancing, or it will have people yelling to turn it off. Depends what kind of crowd you’re entertaining. If you’re entertaining a group that generally listens to rap then sure, they might like this. Or, they might not because it’s not good quality rapping. Depends how much they know about the genre. I personally can’t stand this album and would throw a fit if I heard it being played anywhere. Though, I can’t deny it does have sort of a ‘fun’ overall feel, which is why I said it would be good for parties. Personally I can’t listen to this album very often, but that’s mainly because I’m not fond of it. Some of you out there may enjoy this on a daily basis. Because of this albums fast beats, but soft vocals it can be good to listen to when you need to get pumped up for something, or when you’re just sitting around. I do like that it has that diversity, unfortunately the poor quality of music prevents me from listening to it at anytime, thus that does not effect my overall rating. Another thing that prevents me from listening to this is how evident the bands massive ego is. Yes, this album’s overall feel could actually be called egotistical. Now, many of you (Bron) are thinking “Hey, you can’t talk about ego’s you listen to Metallica”. Fair enough Metallica have big egos. I said it. I still like them, though. Let’s avoid mass amounts of retaliation following the review. Besides this bands ego is just too big. Half the songs were about themselves. Even Metallica aren’t that bad. That’s a main reason why I can’t listen to this album really. All they sing/rap about is themselves, that’s a turn off for me.
Conclusion
Monsters In The Closet is a mediocre rap album. The lyrics make very little sense, are mostly about the band themselves, have no overall message and aside from that the guys can’t rap very well at all. This album is also about half filler tracks. It really didn’t need to be twenty songs. Ten would’ve done just fine. Although, the mass amount of filler is mostly likely due to the fact this album is composed of B-sides and unreleased tracks with a couple new singles, as stated by Mad Child in the album booklet. He also said to consider this not their third and, but their second and a half. Regardless of that it’s still a poor album. The only thing that saved this album from getting below a two was the decent instrumental/soundboard work. Oh, and
Steppin Thru helped, as well. I do like that track.
Pros: Steppin Thru
Cons: Bad lyrics
Bad rapping
Overall Rating:
2/5
