Iendicis

I might have wanted to start off this review with a few likes of "Oops I did it again," but songs written by said fallen diva-pop stars would only sully the webpage where anyone can download the newest album of Brad Sucks, a one-man band with a heck of a lot of fans. Listen up, people: Brad Sucks has officially arrived.

The original release, "I Don't Know What I'm Doing," was a great release with a wide variety of music. Out of It is a little more cohesive than the first album, and is obviously a sophomore effort from a newly wider songwriter. Of course there is still a good variety standing, but the range is smaller. Themes are built upon in ways that few albums - even commercial - ever even think about.

Brad Sucks has finally realized that the songs are all done on a computer, and indeed Out of It takes advantage of it (as opposed to IDKWID, which sounded like it was trying to cover up the fact). The vocals in many songs sound a little scruffy, as if they were wired through an SNES by some clever programmer a decade ago; this doesn't degrade the quality, in fact, and gives the entire album a certain electronic indie vibe that really cannot be exacted. The guitars are harder, the lyrics are darker, and the music is deeper.

And yet, it never goes beyond consumable, excellent pop-rock music. I'm still getting used to the new angle, but in the end it's still the same old fun the first album was, and is destined to have a long, wonderful history on Jamendo as one of the best Creative Commons works ever released.

You can't get much better than this, people.

I'm not much for punk, but this was a metal album that was enough for me to try it out. The first track is an interesting ambient tone, and the third and seventh tracks ("Perfection" and "One and the other") are very, very decent metal songs with bits of electronic distraction to make it a little closer to Nine Inch Nails than anything else.

The rest of the album is pretty poor, though. Some of the songs don't really go anywhere, and a lot of the lyrics are dark, shallow and dull. Ignore those songs, though; this is still a band to watch.

If a bunch of Italians went and tried to make an album out of twenty-or-so English words they learned from metal albums, it would sound like this. Hilarious, charming, and yet, it's still darn good music. Even the parts in Italian are pretty self-explanatory (Pino, for instance, is funny with or without the language barrier).

Best Metal band ever. Just like they said.

When I share FBS with friends, I usually put both Make This End and Tasteless on the same CD. First, we get the hard rock, guitar laden Make This End, which feels rough yet tight and beat-worthy. It'as a good introduction to the sound of FBS.

But then the listener gets to Tasteless. The biggest problem with FBS was the lack of strong songs, but in Tasteless, they're all excellent. It's musically different, ranging from many different genres that Make This End never dreamed of, and yet each song feels much more potent and thought out. It takes the quality of Make This End and spreads it around, making an enjoyable listen all the way through.

Songs like "Spacecat" and "Deep Catchy Hole" really show off FBS's talant at making an accessible Industrial pop song. Nine Inch Nails can make one too, but it's usually overpowered with static and depth that the typical music listener fails to comprehend. With FBS, the songs are catchy, fun, interesting, easy to get into, but not easy to come out of.

Tasteless is a great album, one that anyone can enjoy.

Fresh Body Shop is one of my favorite artists. I'm not going to qualify it saying, "on Jamendo" or "free on the net." I'm going to say that FBS is one of my favorite artists, and that's it.

Few artists (much less free ones) have tried to beat Reznor at his own game. For the most part, Nine Inch Nails rules the Industrial genre, being the post popular and most deep, intimate, interesting. Fresh Body Shop takes a bit of the metal out of NIN, emphasizes a lot of the pop elements, but never loses any quality.

As for Make This End, the first FBS album I heard, it's weakness is that only a few tracks are really good. "The Middle Line" is probably the best Industrial track I've heard in years, and songs like "Angry Machine" and "Locked In" really embolden that rock/pop/industrial feel that you simply cannot get anywhere else. Not even NIN does it quite like this. But other songs on the album are less than interesting, though average.

Other reviews have discussed the lack of "polish" in the songs, but I beg to differ. It sounds great, plays fantastically, and is one of the best albums you can get for free. A download worthy of anyone's bandwidth.