Hale - Twilight

Hale - Twilight
Year : 2006

Track Listing
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1. Last Song (2:49)
2. Fire in the Sky (4:03)
3. Empty Tears, Empty Heart (4:45)
4. The Ballad Of (5:09)
5. Waltz (4:11)
6. Hide and Seek (5:18)
7. Eyes Wide Shut (3:51)
8. Liham (4:14)
9. Shooting Stars (4:12)
10. 7, 8 (5:17)
11. Elegy (4:04)
12. Dahil Sa'yo Sa Himig ng Aking Gitara (3:32)
13. Starting over (4:27)
14. Brother (5:17)

“Aw HALE noooo!!! Deeezz wack ass posers are back again!!!”

Hale. So popular. And oh so dreamy…... I have to admit, it’s hard writing a review when you can’t even bear to listen to that Hale band. It’s one thing when you like a band and then you realize their album sucks. At least by the time you realize that their album sucks you have a clear idea of what the album has to offer. But what about in this situation where just the mere mention of their name makes you want to get a knife and cut both of your ears off? Where listening to two fat people having sex is more pleasurable? Yes. It’s that terrible. Some of you HALERS might say: “How can you say that? Your not a fan?” Exactly my point. Im NOT a Fan. Or a HALER might butt-in and say: “If you have nothing good to say, don’t say it. People have different tastes in music and we should all… blahblahblah….”. or “Have you released an album? And do you know how hard it is to write a song?” All good points. But it doesn’t take away the fact that HALE’s music blows. OK. So how did I approach this dilemma of mine? Simple. I gave each song a minute sample and did my review on that. This album is an hour long. That’s an hour that I could be doing something more productive with my life. That’s an hour that I could spend on downloading something educational at boldatporn.blogspot.com (shameless plug for pareng dandy’s website). That’s an hour. And an hour is a long time. OK brb.....

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(after 20 mins.)

Whooo...got that out of my system....

OK one of the things that I have also noticed on this album is that some of the songs sounds very amateurish and has that unfinished child-like nursery rhyme thing going on. Songs like “Waltz” and “7, 8” and “Elegy” have melodies and lyrics that are just too awful to bear. Have you ever tried to write a song? And when you try to sing it, you tend to fit the sentence or phrase in before you change the chord? Or you tend to make a melody by the way you pluck the strings? Haha amateurish right? Still don’t get it? Why don’t you do this. Pluck your guitar strings from E-A-D-G. And while plucking each string, sing “My – dogg – has --- fleasss!!!” Now you know what I mean. Add to the fact that his lyrics sounds like it was taken out of his diary when he was 10 years old, this album is a testament that just because you scored one hit doesn’t mean it can happen again. He is just notorious for writing lyrics that either doesn’t make any sense or just plain cheesy and downright obvious. Everyone remembers the line: “Losing the sides of your circles”? Here we have the lyrics for 7, 8:

“I’ll always be around but I wont be home/
You’ll see me every time/ when were not alone/
You’ll hear me when you’re deaf/ coz you’re impaired
You’ll lose the sight of me/Coz you haven’t stared”

What the f**k is that s*it ?!?!? Is this guy on crack when he was writing that piece of garbage he calls lyrics??? It’s like he just put words together that rhymed and built sentences around it. Does it make sense? No. Did they still record it? Yes. What a bunch of fucking retards.


And here are lyrics that are just plain nauseating:

“You said that you’d call/what time you’ll be home/
But you never did/you said you did mean to/
Now I am enraged/ as if we were engaged/
You made me realize/I’m just your alibi “– Waltz

Boo-fucking-hoo!!! No wonder the girl didn’t call back. Sometimes his woe-is-me lyrics are too downright annoying for even an emo freak to sympathize with. Did he really expect people with at least half the brain of a chimpanzee to listen to this and go: “Wow. That was deep and meaningful. That’s exactly what I told this girl before she filed for a restraining order!!!” If you are going to use lyrics like these at least have the balls to come up with a better melody. That or work on it some more. Because those lyrics are just plain unacceptable for a so-called ‘professional musician’ who already has 2 albums under his belt to even think of making it into a song. But I read somewhere that it was written by someone else, which makes them more stupider (not really a word – Ed) for hiring a 10 year old to write lyrics for them. Dumbasses.

And even with upbeat songs like “Last Song” and “Fire in the Sky”, Champ’s vocals are just a bore to listen to. People describe his voice as gentle and soothing. I describe it as thin, monotone and lifeless. There is just no emotion to any of his songs. Even the more upbeat music didn’t have anything to reel me in. Why would you sing like you live in a mortuary for a song like Fire in the Sky? Yes, we get it Champ, your sad and you like to sing in your sad voice and do your sad little face. But even Robert Smith sang like he was the happiest guy on earth on some of The Cure songs. God, I have no idea why this band even got a record deal. Or why they chose him as the vocalist.

“Im singing my last song!! Im singing my last song!!!” - Last Song

I hope you really are Champ. I hope you really are.

I guess the sophomore jinx has taken its Toll on Champ & Co. They failed to come up with a song that will put that overplayed “The Day You Said Goodnight” song to sleep for good. Were they under the pressure to come up with another hit? Obviously. Were they able to pull it off? No. Music-wise and lyrics-wise, they took two giant steps backward. Their songs are just an overdose of melancholy while the lyrics suffer from “I-don’t-know what-else-to-write” syndrome. Combine that with Champ’s woebegone singing, listening to this album can get very tiring and at times annoying. Didn’t they read the label? It says: “Melodrama, if not applied as prescribed, may cause diarrhea, loneliness, anxiety and even DEATH”. Which exactly what happened to this album.