The Last Candle

2007 is the best year for releases since I started paying attention to, well, music on a serious basis (i.e., when I started delving into catalogues other than the Top 40). The imminent records for power metal are particularly strong, with no less than ten or so albums due to be set upon the salivating guitar-harpsichord duet lovers by the end of the year.

Kamelot and Sonata Arctica, two of my favorite metal bands, have recently uploaded videos for album singles. Let’s take a look at what the Finns and American rockers have to offer for their respective upcoming albums.

Tony, the lead singer and songwriter of the Finnish Sonata Arctica, said in interviews a few months back that the new album, Unia, would be quite different that the usual double-bass kick anthems of the previous four albums. I don’t recall him saying that narrative or lyrical content of the band’s content, which usually falls in the concept of lost love or wolves, would be changing, however. A little progression would work well in Arctica’s favor — while they do double-bass rhythms, guitar-harpsichord duels and soaring choruses better than any other typical power metal band, they still sound pretty ordinary sometimes.

Paid in Full doesn’t really sound that different compared to Sonata Arctica’s last album, Reckoning Night, which was a more complex and rewarding album that the previous three. That said, Reckoning Night was my favorite Arctica album to date, and Paid in Full is a pretty good song.

As for the video itself, it is astonishingly dull and uninvolving. Besides what the lyrics relate, there a complete lack of a narrative or any depiction of the events accounted through the music. All the viewer sees is the band self-indulgently jamming on what looks like a big ice plane. Bo-ring. The video (and the song) gets a little better after 3:08 (or at 43 seconds remaining), but exploding ice and Tony’s sullen and shaggy stares into the icy horizon can’t save the overall video from the previous three lacking minutes.

Nonetheless, I like the song , with the browser window sitting in the background while I buzz around with other tasks. The content is pretty sappy, but I’m used to the stuff after about four albums of it. Commenters for the above film at YouTube say the single has been abridged in typical fashion, and the song does seem to jump around a bit, particularly in the solo portion (where is the guitar solo!?), so the full song will likely be even better. A “preview” of the video production presents a little more of what sounds like the full song, and it does sound more deliberate and composed than the video version.

But man, what a boring video. Looking back, though, the video for Don’t Say a Word was even more self-indulgent and uninspired, featuring the guys playing what looks to be a dimly lit room in a dingy warehouse. The odd bit is that back in 2001 the band made a pretty good video for Wolf and Raven, the single from the Silence album. Maybe with the money the group saved on the Paid in Full video they’ll make another video with an interesting concept.

Where the Paid in Full video fails, Ghost Opera succeeds pretty well. Much like the band itself, Kamelot’s video of the new album’s title track is much more mature in concept and nature, and the band’s concert meshes pretty well with the narrative. The production appears to be polished and is pretty classy overall.

On the other hand, the song is pretty forgettable, which needless to say hurts more than Sonata’s insipid video. Kamelot’s previous two albums, Epica and The Black Halo, are two of my favorite metal releases, so this somewhat impotent start for the new album is a little troubling.

Kamelot has proven before to be arguably the best in the genre, however, so there’s no doubt I’ll still pick up the record. I’m just hoping Ghost Opera isn’t indicative of the quality of the final release.

Special-signed limited edition, too!

I won’t be able to listen to it for a couple days: My Swedish friend and I are going to have a little (but big-sounding!) listening party for the release — the Swede isn’t a fan like I am, but he’s no stranger to good music and musicians (plus he’s a big Rush fan, and Alex Lifeson has a solo on the new album) — with 5.1 fine-ness, and beer, and probably a deck of cards.

The full music video of the new album’s title track popped up online yesterday. The video was originally supposed to come out a week ago last Monday, but considering some of the content and the events from two Mondays ago — teenagers with guns, and the VA Tech tragedy, respectively — the video was tactfully (and probably smartly) delayed to this week.

Chelsea State Bank has finally updated their web page to join the rest of us in the second half of the 00’s. It’s much nicer than the previous format, which I spend some time griping about in earlier posts.

I’m not sure what the page title, “Welcome to Your FI,” is supposed to mean though. I also wonder about the reason behind this bit of Javascript in the source:

<script type=”text/JavaScript”>
<!––
function MM_popupMsg(msg) { //v1.0
    alert(msg);
}
//––>
</script>

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just call alert() directly. Maybe the usage will become more obvious in v1.1.

Update: The identifier of the Javascript seemed a little, well, particular for such a simple method. After doing a search on MM_popupMsg, the function turns out to be a standard function inserted and used by Dreamweaver. Case closed! Bankblogging lives on!

Phoenix Wright: Justice for All has so far proved itself to be far below the original in quality; being on the fourth and final case, I don’t expect it to ramp up much, although this last case looks to be the best (about time!). Nonetheless, as I’ve complained bitterly about in several previous posts, the writing quality in Justice for All is far below the terrifically high success of the original game. Why is that?

I finally did a little research on why the translation and localizations are so different, and the short answer is easy: two different localization teams were used for the two games.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was helmed by Alexander O. Smith, who is evidently well-known in the community, or at least respected enough to get his own Wikipedia article. Smith’s resume reveals an impressive list consisting mostly of wordy, plot-heavy RPGs (and then the occasional oddball, like the fighting game Bloody Roar 3).

Justice for All did not include Alex Smith in the localization; instead, an internal team at Capcom Japan was used. Nintendo.com conducted an interview with the team back in January, and a Capcom USA blogger chatted with editor Brandon Gay in February about his olive hat as well as with two other members on the team. The interviews are not very interesting, but at least the punctuation is good.

Here’s a bit from an N-Sider interview about Justice for All, found through the Justice for All Wikipedia article (in the Release Date section, strangely enough — might have to edit that).

What really propelled the first entry in the series to cult hitdom was just that: its story and writing. At its core, it was often preposterously funny, sometimes tense, and always full of character. The original entry in the series had the distinct advantage of an outside translation by famed game translator Alexander O. Smith. For the sequel, Capcom opted to use internal teams instead, and the results left me wondering at first whether I would be able to stomach playing through the entire game.

Characters established in the first game suddenly took on bizarre traits (most notably Phoenix himself), critical dialogue seemed out-of-place and weird, but worst of all—bad punctuation and a clear attitude of “spell check is good enough, no need to actually read the dialogue” made the first half of the game feel like some bizarre Phoenix Wright fanfic instead of an official entry in the series. Whether all the blame can be laid entirely on the feet of the translation and editing is not something I can say for sure; it merely seems likely given the overall feel of the story.

Right on.

Another thing that’s bugged me throughout Justice for All regards Franziska von Karma, the German anagonist who sits on the prosecutor’s side. When she yells “OBJECTION!”, she does it in a completely American, valley-girl-ish kind of way. Valley girl is, y’know, totally okay — besides the fact that Von Karma spent the last 18 waking years from birth living in Germany, so the voice is completely jarring and renders the character less believable. Argh. In an adventure game, these details matter.

So, there it is. Two games, two different teams, and two totally different results with a trend downward. My anticipation for the next game now depends highly on who Capcom announces to be doing the translation.