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California Deluxe -- Reviews/First Impressions


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6 minutes ago, theHELL182 said:

Short review, but nails it for me at least. 

First time I won't buy a new record from blink-182. I am pretty disappointed with the DLX and I don't really share everyone's opinion of the greatness of the unreleased tracks and that's because of a few things...

1) The production is really bad! It can't get worse like someone already pointed out. Does blink live on a low budget for recordings? Famous band and dilettante production. Feldmann is a salesman, not a producer and an even worse songwriter for blink. 

2) The repeating song structure and melodies. I listened to the unreleased songs today, and right before I heard the chorus, it ran like right through my mind before I actually listened to it, because the chorus had to be that boring way. It runs like a thread through this record. There is no moment where you get a surprise in a song or at least some different chorus structures. They are getting lengthened all the time, which gets pretty annoying and boring. 

3) Good riff ideas were blatantly ruined by the most following verses or cringworthy instrumental continuations. 

4) Okay, it's a DLX, and wants to be the continuation of California standard. But I wished they experimented more. I hope that the next record makes a huge step into a +44/Alk3 mixture, at least more the 6/8 direction, because blink should sound like that now. Not a poppy puppy wannabe punk rock band from the `00.

5) Anyone remember the announced side project "The Cereal Killers" by Matt and Mark, where they want to make songs for kids and teens? I think a lot of the songs would fit a lot better there.

 

God dammit, blink-182, hire me as your next producer. I will make you sound like Pros and your music will be much better than this stuff! And that for a fraction of the cost! :)

 

 

 

 

Wouldn't surprise me at all if the Cereal Killers thing was the reason why they went the route they did with California. Obviously, Feldman will push that direction way more too.

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54 minutes ago, theHELL182 said:

5) Anyone remember the announced side project "The Cereal Killers" by Matt and Mark, where they want to make songs for kids and teens? I think a lot of the songs would fit a lot better there.

you might be onto something there. a lot of the music since the time they started working on cereal killers sound so sing-songy and simple that they belong better on a baby's lullabye compilation or something.

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8 hours ago, RAX said:

i had to dig a little deeper.

I put Last Train Home in my Pro Tools system and checked the file. It is 100% peaking as you can see with the RED light over the volume meter (orange) and the dynamic range (blue) is showing fucking -1 db at the time i took the screen shot. The song is actually in around -5 db which is just horrific. its peaking and no dynamics. way to ruin a song Feldmann. 

rsz_screen_shot_2017-05-17_at_94806_am.jpg

Thank you for providing some actual clarity on this, it sounded better when the album came out than the leak did, maybe this would be somewhat the same (I dunno how since it's probably ripped right from the source, but you never know), but it still just never sounded right and I wasn't sure if we were all just wild haters.

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16 minutes ago, ryan1125 said:

Yeah I know it's cool to dissect the production and rip Feldmann/Zach (his mixer), but c'mon these guys are professionals. They know what they are doing. 

And as for complaints about song structures, just a reminder that most songs follow the same basic song structure: Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus, it's not like Blink/Feldmann invented this. 

To me these are just lame ways of saying you don't like the songs, or refuse to enjoy anything with Skiba/Feldmann.

 

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Chewy030 said:

Everyone on here is a production master through remember? 

You don't need to be a production master to not enjoy Feldmanns production. 

Lot of the new songs are great but I think they could be even better with better production, needs a bit more rawness. 

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Like "Gosh I was going to like this song but that goddamn snare is 1 decibel too low, they let both lead singers sing, and then those idiots went off and sang another catchy chorus after the verse again! FELDMANN FACTORY CRAP!"

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46 minutes ago, Chewy030 said:

Everyone on here is a production master through remember? 

 

19 minutes ago, ...Dan... said:

You don't need to be a production master to not enjoy Feldmanns production. 

Lot of the new songs are great but I think they could be even better with better production, needs a bit more rawness. 

Seriously, I don't mean this to come off condescending but people don't need to be "experts" to have an opinion. Some have experience with writing/recording music and listen to genres other than pop and pop/punk so we're able to spot things that others might not care about or notice. For me, the entire Cali Era has sounded horrendous, even for a pop punk sound. Cheap, thin, plasticky, grating, clipping sound quality, with thin guitars and a seriously obnoxious tendency to layer vocals on top of vocals on top of vocals with a heavy dose of auto-tune. Some of these songs could have been truly great, but the production style makes them less enjoyable for me.

For one simple example, not to beat a dead horse but just as a comparison, in the Enema/TOYPAJ days they very rarely had more than one vocal part going on during the verses.* Just Mark or Tom singing his lines. Now they very rarely have any verses that DON'T include Mark or Matt constantly singing on top of each other or on top of their own lines, whether it's harmonizing or in one low octave/one high octave. It just makes everything sound extremely busy and kinda makes every song have the same "personality" if that makes sense. I think there is a little bit less of this on Deluxe, but it's definitely still happens a ton.

*-Not talking about double-tracking vocals, which is normal. I mean harmonies/layers/etc.

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29 minutes ago, ryan1125 said:

Yeah I know it's cool to dissect the production and rip Feldmann/Zach (his mixer), but c'mon these guys are professionals. They know what they are doing. 

And as for complaints about song structures, just a reminder that most songs follow the same basic song structure: Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus, it's not like Blink/Feldmann invented this. 

To me these are just lame ways of saying you don't like the songs, or refuse to enjoy anything with Skiba/Feldmann.

 

 

 

You don't need to be an expert / professional in music production to have an issue with or opinion about production regardless of who is producing. Music production is a skill just like singing or playing an instrument--you don't have to be a professional singer to know when someone is singing off key, you don't have to be amazing at guitar to know when someone sucks at playing it, etc. Similarly you don't have to know the complete ins and outs of music production to know when someone's production skills are shitty--or to dislike someone's production style regardless of their skill level. Someone could be a really great guitar player but you're just not into their sound--similarly someone could be a really great producer but you just don't like how they make music sound.  

As for song structure, I don't think the verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - chorus structure is what people are upset about. Like you said, most songs follow this structure, especially in the mainstream music world. But people are criticizing the lack of variation between chorus style in different songs across the album, or blink choosing to use the same intro for several songs across both records, or the lack of variation in lyrical content in the verses of different songs across both albums, etc. That stuff doesn't equate to the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. 

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You basically have to like every little thing about blink-182 otherwise you get fanboys shitting on your opinion, any form of critical discussion or opinion that does fall directly in line with everything being completely awesome is instantly shat on by some smart arse with the same 3-4 or people liking that post.

Happens on a daily basis.

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I'm sure the weener sniffers on blink online know more about production than a guy who has produced hundreds of records and sold millions of copies.

The songs sound great to me. It's all subjective.

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27 minutes ago, RAX said:

I actually have a degree in audio engineering, have worked on albums and so on, so im pretty confident in what im talking about. The songs are peaking and i have proof. Having a song peak and have -5db in dynamic range is unprofessional  

Professionals can easily ruin albums with mixing and mastering. Metallicas Death Magnetic being one of the most famous example. 

As i said. I like the songs (most) but hate the sound. And have explained why. 

Damnnnnnn. tell em RAX.

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9 minutes ago, ...Dan... said:

You basically have to like every little thing about blink-182 otherwise you get fanboys shitting on your opinion, any form of critical discussion or opinion that does fall directly in line with everything being completely awesome is instantly shat on by some smart arse with the same 3-4 or people liking that post.

Happens on a daily basis.

Oh i'm just fucking tired of everyone here acting like production experts. If you don't like it don't fucking listen. 

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3 minutes ago, Ghent said:

I'm sure the weener sniffers on blink online know more about production than a guy who has produced hundreds of records and sold millions of copies.

The songs sound great to me. It's all subjective.

That's fair enough, I can see why some people might like that style but there are clear reasons why others might not.

If it's subjective then make accept that others have a different opinion than you? not that hard really. Most of us like the fucking songs, just iffy on the production.

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3 minutes ago, Chewy030 said:

Oh i'm just fucking tired of everyone here acting like production experts. If you don't like it don't fucking listen. 

If you can't take criticism, maybe don't come intoa forum thread for that?

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5 minutes ago, Chewy030 said:

Oh i'm just fucking tired of everyone here acting like production experts. If you don't like it don't fucking listen. 

I'm fucking tired of hearing you say that to be honest, it's like your defensive safe space comment when people are mean about precious little blink and Feldy, it's the internet equivalent of you sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU"

We're all here because blink had a massive influence in our life and I'm fairly certain we're all going to listen irregardless of the little things that bug us and then we're going to talk about it. Go to Reddit and talk to the mongoloids there if you want a load of boring surface chat about how awesome every little thing about blink is.

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