Stream of Consciousness & Music Reviews

      Continuing my yearly tradition of reviewing Aphrodite's Child on Christmas Eve is their third and final album 666. This is their most well known and critically acclaimed album, and uh, yeah it deserves it. The album is a massive improvement over their last showing with It's Five O'Clock, returning with as much bombastic energy, slow sorrow, and experimental weirdness that was present in End of the World, but now tenfold to deliver an even better product. Every compliment that I paid to their first album is the same here. 666 is a pseudo-concept album, as it tells the story of the Book of Revelations; I'm not religious and haven't read the Book of Revelations, but the 'story' that this album tells is perfectly suited to the band's weird and psychedelic sound, with how cryptic and trippy some of the material can be. In addition, the band has majorly improved their sound that they've established, increasing their quality and complexity, while also...

      It is now a tradition to review an Aphrodite's Child album every Christmas eve (except they only have one more album after this so it won't last very long). Speaking of let-downs, this album falls very short of its predecessor End of the World. I liked that album so much because of how zany and chaotic the music was while still remaining coherent. This album, however, seems to have done a hard left turn and decided that most of the songs should follow a rigid structure of verses and choruses, which really diminishes the sound because of how it feels like it's forced into being more uniform. The same goes for the general sound too; it's much more generic and bland and just less interesting to listen to. The instruments feel more uniform and "doing what they're supposed to do" which makes the music more boring as a result. Also, the vocals don't sound anything like they did in the first album. You can tell that it's the same guy singing, but hi...

      What the hell did I just listen to? I feel like that sentiment is exactly what the Greek band Aphrodite's Child was trying to convey with End of the World. The album is like a combination of psychedelia rock, prog rock, pop, and metal. This odd concoction sounds like it wouldn't work very well, but it surprisingly does. The constant switching between trippy, excitable moments and slow ballads works really well and I have no idea why. One part might be the vocal performance, which manages to be haunting at times, other times loud and frantic, and sometimes both. I can't really credit a name to it because multiple members of the band are credited with being vocalists but there aren't any specifics past that. All I know is that what they offer goes pretty well with the overall trippy feel of the album. One thing I do know is the keyboard (played definitively by Vangelis Papathanassiou) is easily the best aspect of the music. Much the vocal performance, it's a...