Manikin Parade

Great Indie CD

     

Indie rock has come to the mainstream nowadays, but I consider this a real indie album. It was made by two guys, one did drums and the other guy did everything else, and they recorded it and released it themselves which is pretty amazing. This wouldn't matter but it's really a great album that deserves far mroe attention than it ever received.

If i had to categorize this album it would definitely be under "prog rock", which is a genre that's not as popular as it used to be. There are also strong influences from video game music (which is amazing) here throughout a lot of the songs. The vocals are amazing throughout the cd, not only does the vocalist have ana amzing range he also conveys a ton of emotions through his vocals. Instrumentally the composition is great, no instrument has a boring part in the music and they all intermingle in such great ways throughout the cd.

Lyrically I could find this cd meaning different things to different people very easily. It has a lot of overt religious themes, personally being as someone who is agnostic I felt like there was a story of a cult that perpetrates throughout the whole album. Overall there are a lot of thought provoking lyrics and they aren't just thrown out there to accompany the music.

Albums like this don't get a lot of exposure but they deserve it, there are so many amazing songs on this album that could easily be singles and the album istelf is a must if you're a fan of any of the single songs. In my opinion the songs that stand the best as singles are Estranger, Manakin Parade, Gabrielle, and Etude of Sorrow. This isn't to say the other songs on the album are bad, I think they're all fantastic and a lot of them remind me of timeless soundtracks from video games. I've always thought that music in some games is way underrated and I'm really happy to see womeone incorporate it into their own music outside of games.