Last Tuesday, September 10, Rise Against released their
"B Side Compilation" album Long
Forgotten Songs. The band essentially compiled a list of 26 songs that have
appeared on the albums Rise Against has released. Certain songs were once
region restricted, while others such as Death
Blossoms, only appeared in the popular rhythm game Guitar Hero: World Tour.
In a nutshell, this album perfectly describes what Rise Against is about. The
songs are set it no specific order from what I can tell, and there are quite a
few covers in here as well such as Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad, and Journey's Any Way You Want. The album as a whole is a great way to see how
the band has progressed over the past decade since their debut in 2001.
The album opens up with Historia Calamitatum, a track that closely resembles Rise Against's
core sound from their most recent albums such as Appeal To Reason and Endgame.
The tracks Death Blossoms and Elective Amnesia follow and they are
pretty strong tracks. Death Blossoms
was featured in Guitar Hero : World Tour and was never really released on any
soundtrack. Whilst watching the premiere video for Long Forgotten Songs, Tim mentioned that he really liked Grammatizator, which is the next track
on the record. It is a really hard hitting track and hardly ever lets up. Blind is the fifth track on this album
and it is one of my favorite tracks. It embodies everything that I really like
about Rise Against. Everchaning Acoustic is
the next track, and I believe it is the only full acoustic track on the album.
If I recall correctly, this was in a Warped Tour compilation album, and it fits
the album well.
For me, the next two tracks kind of blended into each
other, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Generation
Lost, and Dirt And Roses blended
into to each other for some reason. The
Ballad of Hollis Brown, a Bob Dylan Cover, blew me away. It was immensely
powerful and well put together. One of the first tracks released in relation to
this album was Sight Unseen, and it
is by far one my favorite tracks off of this record. It stand for some reason
to me, but then again, I guess that's the point of a single. The following
track Lanterns didn't really stick
with me well the first couple of times I listened to it, but it eventually grew
on me. The next track, Making Christmas,
sounded like a basic punk rock track at first listen, but I later found out
that the band tried to follow the original score for the song for the movie
soundtrack Nightmare: Revisited. The
next set of tracks, Join the Ranks, Built
to Last, and Voice of Dissent all sort of went over my head. Although they
are all very different tracks, nothing about they really stood out to me as a
listener. The next Bob Dylan cover, Little
Boxes, was an interesting track to me. I wasn't a big fan of the track, but
I do like what the band did with it. The following track is quite possibly Rise
Against's most popular B-Side Give It All.
It was originally featured in the compilation album Rock Against Bush Vol. 1. It was then re-released on their third
album Siren Songs of the Counter Culture
four months later.
Rise Against's next track Minor Threat is a cover by the band of the same name. It's a live
version of the cover, but that does not take away from the album at all, as
there is a lot of energy in the song. Obstructed
View follows the Minor Threat cover and it was originally released on Siren Songs of the Counter Culture. The
track really pushes the album along and it has an insane riff to it. The
picking pattern and style is fantastic and it sounds very menacing and in your
face. But Tonight We Dance is a track
that really stands out to me lyrically. In the interview regarding the release
of this album, Tim mentions that he wrote the lyrics when he was at a show and
the singer discussed that there is a time for revolution and change, but there
is also time to kick back and have a good time. It's a very mid tempo track. It
isn't too punky, but it isn't an acoustic ballad either. It's a great balance,
and a great track overall. Nervous
Breakdown is the twenty first track on this compilation album and it sounds
extremely punk rock. I know that may sound like a silly thing to say, how can
something sound like a genre of music, but the tone and sound of the track just
screams old school punk rock. It has a raw sound to it, and the drums push the
track forward in an even pace. Gethsemane
is up next, and it caught my attention from the beginning with the guitar
riff that sort of follows the vocal melody. The track has a nice feel to it,
and the drop ins are stellar. The final four tracks on the album are all
covers! Boy's No Good by Lifetime, Any Way You Want It by Journey, Silver by Nirvana, and lastly The Ghost Of Tom Joad featuring Tom
Morello, Wayne Kramer, and Brian Fallon. These covers are all amazing in their
own right, but my absolute favorite track on the album would have to be The Ghost Of Tom Joad. It is one of my
favorite Springsteen songs of all time, and when bands like Rise Against and
Rage Against The Machine cover it, it just makes the track fifteen times
better! Plus, Tom Morello's guitar solo on it just blows me out of the water
every time!
This album had so much to offer. It really shows how
flexible of a band Rise Against really is. Some of you may have seen then the
band of the week a couple of weeks back when Rise Against was featured. In it,
I mentioned that they were mainly a punk rock band, but as time progressed,
they developed more melody in their music, and created an equal balance between
the clean and unclean vocals. The fact that the band added a lot of covers interested
me because it showed that they didn't just want to release songs that never
made albums, but also covers of songs that they liked and grew up listening to,
or songs that just outright inspired them. Their cover of Journey's Any Way You Want It was amazing in my
opinion, as was their cover of Bob Dylan's The
Ballad of Hollis Brown. The overall
album was amazing and I'd give it a solid 9/10. The album shows how amazing
of a band Rise Against really is, and how far they have come in the past 12
years as a band. I full recommend this album to anyone who wants to listen to
some good rock/punk rock.
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