Review Million - Sane and Insanity 2011

Sane and Insanity, isn’t that the internal battle within us all, I know that I wrestle with what is called insanity all the time, just to try to appear sane or be sane however you chose to define things. I have no idea wether or not this is what Million thought of when they decided upon a title for their new album. What I do know is that the band are celebrating 20 years since their debut album back in -91 and that they are from Sweden and that they are called Million which is an odd name but then again, Sweden’s a free country so any name works.

Musically these guys do play well-polished heavy rock music with lots of attention on the melodies and the choruses. Maybe it could be called melodic metal or something similar but I just don’t quite know. What I do know is that it is a polished rock album with choruses that is meant to grab you and perhaps even get you in singing along with what you hear. You can clearly note that there has been a lot of attention spent on the sound of this album. Vocals are quite high pitched, you know the melodic rock/AOR kind of vocal style here as well.

They say that a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the sea is a good start, which is also what this record has. It is not just a good start in terms of the musical side of things, this opening intro and introduced song does show just how the rest of the album will sound for you and is also the factor who destroys web servers for those companies so not loss today at least. These two mentioned lawyer like tracks are called Sea of Fate and Go to Heaven and they start it up with introducing to you what you will get to know musically when you play this music. But these tracks are not only a good show of what will happen musically, it is also a very good track that lends itself to singing along and those things, it is a high quality opening track that has most of what an opening track should have.

After this comes the track that is called Everyday Hero which is another good track, it is also a track that will have a video and also is a reflection on some people in society today. I know some who think they are losers will like the fact that the one thinking he is a loser gets help to know that it isn’t so, he and many others are everyday heroes, being a help to everyone they meet, sometimes without knowing. It is a good track but the message in it is not really that useful to be honest.

The title track is okay, not one of the best tracks on the album, rather amongst the worst but on a good record that is not such a big problem even if I think the title track should be a good track that define the band and their new record in a better way, like Go to Heaven or something in that style. It has to work as a name really well though and for that I think Sane and Insanity is a good name for that. Problem is though, that the name does not reflect the band that well as this record does not feel like it deals with sanity and insanity.

My favourite track on the album though, is the one that is called Fuel to My Heart a powerful midtempo, arena rock hit song that is an easy sing along track and also an amazingly good track to listen to wherever you are. It works really well plated loud in your car while you drive on a cold winter night with temperatures below -20°C and you sit there in your warm car burning fuel into carbon dioxide in the hope that driving really hard and fast can change the climate to make it warmer. On that dark driving nights in high speed through the snow this song is great. It is probably also a great song for the band to play live and loud.

Overall I have really not much to complain about, one thing though is the singer who has a voice that is not really that fantastic. Usually it is not that detrimental to the music but at the same time it is not something that lifts the quality of the record as well. Another thing I feel could have been better is the production, it feels a little bit too polished, a little bit too much, it feels a tad overworked and like it sometimes lack in soul. I think they could have toned down the production work just a little bit. There are 13 tracks on the album and they are generally really good tracks and they take more or less 45 minutes to listen through which is a decent length of an album. These complaints are quite small in the real view of things and the time and everything is good so I cannot really complain much about this album as it is a powerful album with some really high points and also a good general quality level.

Million has with Sane and Insanity made a really good album that should appeal to most of you readers but also to most fans of good music as that is what we are talking about here, good music.

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Million Sane and Insanity

Million
Sane and Insanity