Music Roundup for 6/4/08

This week's Music Roundup is another biggie with three "hyped up" albums in the mainstream world. (Note: I'm skipping Weezer's new album for now, supposedly it is not that good compared to their previous efforts. Also not giving Ashanti's The Declaration a shot yet, likely passing on her new one too. With that out of the way, let's do the roundup of what I have been listening to.

Coldplay's long awaited album, Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends, is already leaked out to the interwebs and it is pretty good. It is better than X&Y at least and I think they took more chances to come up with a different sound, but still have their signature style and it came out great. This new sound definitely shows in their singles "Violet Hill" and "Vida La Vida" with the different instruments and whatnot. I do wish it was longer since it id only ten tracks in the whole album (unless you want to count the bonus acoustic tracks) being less than a hour long (it probably needed more tracks, but then it would be probably be filler stuff I guess). Obviously the hit songs are pretty good ("Viva La Vida" perhaps the best Coldplay song since most of their Rush of Blood to the Head stuff like "Clocks."), but you can probably find another favorite of these ten tracks like maybe "Lost!" This album is truly worth the wait for Coldplay fans and I think it lived up to the hype if there was any hype for it.

N.E.R.D's Seeing Sounds is another highly anticipated album of mine and I am liking it so far. All the songs in the album definitely feel like Neptunes songs with Pharrell singing the whole time. "Everyone Nose" is definitely that weird club banger I would listen to (The remix is amazing!!!!). "Spazz" is another cool song even though it is getting annoying to hear that in those Zune commercials now. This N.E.R.D. album is at least better than Fly or Die when more catchy songs, but of course In Search Of... is still their best album with "Lapdance," "Rock Star," and "Provider." Did I mention "Everyone Nose Remix" is awesome with Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and Pusha T from the Clipse - this song took over "The Finer Things" as my new banger.

I actually made myself to check out the new Disturbed album, Indestructible, and sometimes I feel like listening to some nu metal with this album fitting that bill for me. Thanks to Rock Band, this album is not that bad with the title track being a great head start towards another head banging album from the guys. "Inside the Fire" is their first single for the album and my favorite of the bunch (The music video for the song does some sort of parental warning because someone commits suicide). Everything else in the album just felt the same, which is okay especially not being that much of a metal fan. This one definitely is for the fans that want more Disturbed (Ohh Wah Wah!!!) and good nu metal.

That's it for this week - Gotta go watch Game 1 of the NBA Finals with the Lakers and Celtics.