Average Rating: 2.37 Rating Variance: 1.42 Objectivity Score: 72% (Fairly Balanced)
Sort by: Rating | Release Date | Rating Date | Name4.0 excellentBlack Sabbath 133.0 goodElectric Light Orchestra Balance of PowerI like ELO, but I listen to them very infrequently. I listen to Time a lot though, and I love that album and will do a review of it, as well as Secret Messages of which I despise. My listening to Balance Of Power led me to two conclusions. Conclusion one is that this album has far too much dated synthesizer usage. Conclusion two is that this album has some great songs like Sorrow About To Fall, Calling America and Secret Lives to an extent. A lot of songs are filler like Send It and Getting To The Point, but bizarrely enough Heaven Only Knows is damn catchy and they have some good hooks. Getting To The Point is forgettable and I hated So Serious with a bloody passion due to the lack of good lyrics, too much synthesizer and not being memorable. Endless Lies was okay and so was Without Someone. I deducted a point for the sheer awfulness of So Serious and for the overkill of synthesizers, but all in all it wasn't half bad. I would recommend that casual listeners of ELO pick up Time, Out Of The Blue and A New World Record first and then pick this up.1.5 very poorElectric Light Orchestra Secret MessagesI like Jeff Lynne and all, but this album was poorly executed. The history behind this album is that Jeff Lynne wanted to make this a double album like Out Of The Blue, but was denied by the record company. After that, he cut out the side with the good songs available on Afterglow like Hello My Old Friend and Mandalay, as well as the never released song Beatles Forever which I found and listened to on YouTube and absolutely loved. Besides those songs, all the released songs should have been the ones nixed, save for Rock And Roll Is King which is the one saving grace. All these other songs are attempts to create a new classic like Out Of The Blue and they all fail except for Rock And Roll Is King. Letter To Spain and Four Little Diamonds almost succeeded at being good, but they fail in the end. Loser Gone Wild, the title track, Bluebird and Train Of Gold are complete garbage, while the others are a little better. Save yourself and don't listen to this so called"ELO" album and pick up Balance Of Power or Time instead if you need an ELO fix or just listen to any other ELO album.
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