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The Megas new album "history repeating: blue"


psychowolf
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First, I love The Megas. I've been listening to History Repeating: Blue on my daily commute, nonstop, since Monday.

That said, I have mixed feelings about the album, especially as compared to Get Equipped.

Some of the tracks, especially To Watch You Die, represent some of the best they've ever done. The vocal parts not only go along with the melody and harmony lines of the sources, but they're good tunes in and of themselves. They're catchy--I particularly like the part in One Last Time that's done like a duet in a musical. The original tunes are played masterfully, and the whole piece receives attention.

Gamma Unchained is, IMHO, at the other end of the spectrum as far as source treatment. I love this source tune, which is actually kind of lengthy, but Gamma Unchained focuses 90% on the first part, with no coverage at all of some parts. It's a good song, but a less effective homage to MM3.

The other oddity in source treatment was that there are a few songs where the harmony line (usually the keyboard part) was pretty loud, and drowns out the melody line. One Last Time It's pretty cool, but I'm personally more a fan of "Mega Man with lyrics" than "songs with Mega Man worked in."

Lastly, in the original parts, I notice a few repeating melodic themes across songs. The bridge of Walk Away from Light sounds a lot like part of Wily 2, and there's part of Can't Stop the Top that reminds me greatly of Look What You've Done (from Megatainment). There are also quite a few monotonic sections of vocals that could have been mixed up a bit.

On the other hand, the lyrics of this album were, IMHO, much better than those of Get Equipped. Get Equipped had some pretty cool lines (my favorite being "Your speed means nothing if it's death that you're running from"), but there was an awful lot of cheese, too. This one is more original, with only a few figures of speech, and the only cheesy line was "History repeating/Who do they call when robots need defeating?" They could still do with better grammar, though.

All in all, totally worth the money, and I'll be there with my dollars when History Repeating: Red comes out. I know from concerts that Fly on a Dog and I'm Not the Break Man are awesome, and I'm definitely looking forward to Hard Man, Shadow Man, Gemini Man, and Needle Man--and finding out what the remaining 3 or 4 mystery songs are.

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As for which song to submit to OCR... well, if you put Sparked A War on there you won't sell any more copies of the single. OCR has a few other remixes of the title screen, so I wouldn't pick One Last Time. Similarly, Can't Stop the Top is awesome and a good example, but we already have Cataclysmic Crash. So my pick would be To Watch You Die.

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if you put Sparked A War on there you won't sell any more copies of the single.

I'm not sure how much a legit concern that would actually be, but you do have to remember that the 'Sparked a War' single not only has that song on it, but also the acoustic AND instrumental versions (which is the only instrumental release of any Megas song and will probably remain that way, from what I understand) and the exclusive covers of 'Sunglasses at Night' and the Mega Man cartoon theme, so there are still plenty incentives to pick up that EP.

'Sparked a War' could actually be a good candidate because for any of the vocal hate that will inevitably crop up, the response could easily be "well, go buy the single with the instrumental version on it!"

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I ordered the CD a few days ago, and it came with a digital download as well. I am now regretting the fact that I did not order "Get Acoustic" and "You've Sparked a War E.P". Might just pull an extra shift and finish off their discography, get a few shirts too. I think Sparked a War and Magnet are the best candidates for ocr, but Walk Away From The Light isn't shabby either.

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I didn't get the physical copy because the S&H price made it a bit too steep for me. But I did just get the digital off Bandcamp! Love love love this album. Seriously is the best thing I've heard in years, I can't stop listening to it.

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  • 1 month later...

I just bought this a few days ago and am absolutely loving it. I enjoyed "Get Equipped" quite a bit, but you guys really turned it up a notch for "History Repeating". The music itself sounds a lot crisper & cleaner (better recording equipment since Get Equipped perhaps?) and the vocal range and layering shown on this album are a huge improvement as well (no offense to Get Equipped). I haven't been to able to stop listening to it, great job guys!

If you're still looking for suggestions for a song to submit, I'd say personally "Don't Mess with Magnet Man" is my favorite, it's just such a fun & upbeat song. "Can't Stop the Top" and "History Repeating Part 2" are close runner-ups though.

Any idea on when the second half of this album is coming out?

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  • 1 year later...

History Repeating: Red comes out in 5 minutes! It should cover the rest of the Mega Man 3 soundtrack. Very excited.

Edit: Poo, it's just a pre-order. They aren't even done recording yet. What have they even been doing for the last two years?

Edited by MindWanderer
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I bought blue and loved it. I had no idea that red was finally coming out. I can't find blue anywhere so I'm considering buying the red+blue bundle. I wonder if I could pay extra to have the band sign it. Do you think they would do that?

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I was also getting my hopes up for the actual release once that countdown concluded, but this is the next best thing. I only recently purchased Get Equipped and History Repeating Blue and have been enjoying both immensely, though Blue is easily the superior album. Hoping Red is at least on par with how well Blue turned out.

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