So for those of you that don't know, in 2000 Edguy released a re-recorded version of their 1995 debut Savage Poetry, giving it the shiny new title of The Savage Poetry. You can listen the original in its entirety here, and there's a playlist with all the songs from the re-recorded version here.
Personally I much prefer the original. There's something charming about the rawness of it. I really can't stand the production on the remake. It's so squeaky clean and sterile, it's like they recorded it in a dental surgery. It's the auditory equivalent of this dumb meme.
The performances are obviously a lot more ironed out, with less hiccups and mistakes, but then they added a couple of post-production bells and whistles on certain songs that just irritate me, like the echoey effects on Hallowed, and that annoying chorus effect that's on every Avantasia song being jammed in everywhere, even if it works well on a couple of songs like Sacred Hell. Tobias Sammet's voice is obviously far technically superior on the remake, and I think it actually elevates a couple of the songs, but there are a lot of changes to the vocal lines that I feel are for the worse, like re-recorded version of Eyes of the Tyrant totally changes the flow of the original and just makes it sound like a generic Avantasia ballad, while the original was a lot faster and heavier and had a bit more bite to it.
One song I will say I prefer the re-recorded version of is Sands of Time. The original is pretty naff and whoever was playing the piano really didn't know how. It feels like it's on the album just because they wanted at least one ballad. With the remake, Tobias' more technical voice makes it a lot more pleasant to listen to, and the new orchestral additions really help it stand out.
It got me wondering what you guys thought and what the general consensus is. Over on the Metal Archives a lot of the reviews seem to think the re-recorded version is way better, and I can see why, but I have a personal preference for the original.
Very worth a read:
Al Alvarez obituary
Writer, critic and poetry editor of the Observer best known for The Savage God, a meditation on literary suicide (Guardian)
...
A poet he most certainly was. But he never achieved the reputation his admirers felt he warranted. He was too busy with other things to work single-mindedly on his own career. He did much for the careers of other poets and even more to reshape received ideas about the form. As poetry editor of the Observer (1956-66), he used the post as a bully-pulpit to raise British awareness of such hitherto unregarded American writers as Robert Lowell and John Berryman.
His journalism fed into the polemic anthology The New Poetry (1962). Alvarez’s introduction opened with a declaration of war: “The London old boys’ circuit can be stupid, parasitic and conceited.” The mainstream of British poetry, he maintained, had been self-neutered by its deference to the “gentility principle”. He scornfully repudiated the “school of Hardy” and its tame apostles, John Betjeman and Philip Larkin.
Art, Alvarez asserted, was the product not of tepid Wordsworthian tranquillity, but the white heat of suffering, rage and self-destruction. It was a doctrine he labelled “extremism”. The New Poetry, he conceded, “earned me a lot of enemies. I intended it that way; it was a kind of fuck them.” It made the bestseller list and for Penguin (not Alvarez) much money.
...
Ever restless, Alvarez enjoyed his greatest success with mid- and late-career books rooted in acute critical intelligence and raw personal experience – “fully existential criticism” he called it. The series kicked off with The Savage God (1971), a meditation on literary suicide. Its learned conspectus ended with the personal recollection of his own aborted and Sylvia Plath’s actual suicide.
Both occurred at the period when their marriages were breaking up. If he did not actually make Plath’s reputation as a poet, on the strength of her end-of-life “extreme” verse, Alvarez was its most effective proponent. They were personally close and he was among the last t
... keep reading on reddit ➡Like the title says, I have Edguy's Savage Poetry (not the re-recorded The Savage Poetry) but I can't find any pictures of the album art that is bigger than like 300x300 and it looks really bad on my ipod. If anyone has a higher resolution picture of the album art I'd greatly appreciate it!
From Brave New World:
"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something in that?" he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. "Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?" "There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time." "What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending. "It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory." "V.P.S.?" "Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenalin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences." "But I like the inconveniences." "We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably." "But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." "In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy." "All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
Can this "right to be unhappy" be controlled?
