This week’s Miscellany focuses on album anticipation, a favorite pastime of mine. 😀
It’s sorta like this
First up is the new Goo Goo Dolls album, Miracle Pill, due out September 13. I’ve had a big soft spot for Johnny and Robbie since A Boy Named Goo my freshman year in college. I like the songs they have released so far–“Money, Fame, and Fortune” has been stuck in my head for days! They continue the searching that we heard on 2016’s Boxes, with an exploration of new influences and styles. While this process can produce mis-steps, I look forward to hearing the rest of the album!
Check out the first three songs:
Apocalyptica, the Finnish heavy metal cellists and my favorite band, stated this summer that they finished recording their new as-of-yet untitled album!! The best news is that it is an all instrumental album! I’ve been wanting them to go back to this format since the 90’s. That is a long time to wait for a dream to come true. 😄 I believe we have to wait until next year for this awesomeness to be revealed, but what is another few months at this point?</p>>
To tide us over, the guys did the soundtrack for the film Aquarela. You can hear the whole EP here. It sticks with the recent Apo formula, though like the Black Ice film soundtrack before it, the album features an existing song under a different name.* This time “Aquarela Genesis” is actually “At the Gates of Manala” from the 7th Symphony album:
They also recently covered Swedish metal band Sabaton‘s “Fields of Verdun”. Check out the cool video:
So here’s hoping “next year” means January 1st. A girl can hope…
Lastly, not an album, but a movie. Downton Abbey returns on September 20th! I can’t wait to be with the Crawley Clan again. May it live up to expectation!! How have we managed without Lady Violet?
Here’s to a great September (and hopefully January)! 😄
* Technically since both “I Don’t Care” from the Apo album Worlds Collide and “Love Song” from Black Ice came out in 2007 it’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing. “Love Song” is not an exact lift of “I Don’t Care”, so it could be as Wikipedia suggests and “Love Song” came first. However, for Aquarela, “At the Gates of Manala” is a direct lift and some acknowledgement of it would be nice. Regardless, borrowing from oneself is in the time honored tradition of Bach and Vivaldi, so at least Eicca is in good company!
Be sure to check out the full Black Ice soundtrack, it is quite excellent. Definitely worth the cost of importing it!
Random side note: Wikipedia really is a treasure trove. I didn’t realize the U.S. version of World’s Collide featured different versions of “I Don’t Care” and “I’m Not Jesus”. I happened to be in Europe when the European version came out (months ahead of the U.S. one), so I grabbed a copy. Ok, that makes it sound easy. It took a whole afternoon slogging around Athens with my mom to find it and HIM‘s Venus Doom (amazing record!) that had came out the same day. My mother was a saint.
See this really was full of miscellaneous goodness, wasn’t it? 😉