Not a giANT album! (Anthology - Alien Ant Farm)

Member Name: valve90210

Product:	Anthology - Alien Ant Farm
Date:	08/12/08 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A couple of good tracks. Nice sound

Disadvantages: A lot of filler, The attitude of the band in interviews really put me off

Alien Ant Farm burst onto the scene largely thanks to their hit cover of Smooth Criminal, and the accompanying video, both of which got a lot of air time, on both radio and tv.

On the back of that song and a couple more I had heard, I decided to buy the album ANThology, a 'clever' play on words though not exactly fitting for your debut mainstream album... I'd have thought they'd have done better to save it for their greatest hits album somewhere down the line. Maybe they realised that they might not to be all that long lived, and they just really wanted to get the pun out there.

Anyway, I got the album and I have to say that at first it grew on me and I quite enjoyed it, the Smooth Criminal cover is great of course, but also two other songs stood out, Movies (which had been released previously but was later reissued after the success of SMooth Criminal) and Attitude. They were fairly catchy and sounded nice. However, it didn't take me long to see why they stood out, it wasn't so much that they were the brightest stars in an album full of great songs, it was more like, they were the good tracks in a pile of mediocrity.

Although the musicianship was clearly pretty good, and the singers voice was quite good, there was something lacking in the album, that virtually indefinable quality that some bands/albums have that makes them great.

Alien Ant Farm were the flavour of the month and loads of magazines etc featured interviews with the band, as did various tv shows. I sawa few of these and I have to say, they really put me off the band, they came across as arrogant and much too much like they had one eye on their bank balance and the other on marketing opportunities, at no point did they convey an unbridaled passion for the music. This really put me off the band because it really felt like they were more of a marketed music machine than a living breathing band that loved what they were doing.

This combined with an album which overall could only really be seen as average lead me away from the band. As far as I know they are still going but they have not reached the dizzy heights of their Smooth Criminal single nor do they get very much coverage in the press, and to be honest I'm not that surprised.

This is an album that I have all but forgotten and one that relly and truely I wouldn't recommend to anyone really. If you are looking for something catchy and guitar based, there are numerous far far better bands out there to check out!!!

Summary: There are a great many much much better albums than this if you want this kind of music!!!