Pawns & Kings (Alter Bridge - VII)

[scarecrow]

You know, I'm actually starting to like Sin After Sin now that Fable Of The Silent Son is out....

Yeah, I suddenly much prefer Sin After Sin to Fable. Weird how fast things can change!

[MaraCarr]

I love the entire album! The energy is amazing! My Beautiful Car + Pawns & Kings + Me driving = A Beautiful Combination. (Meaning : A passenger could easily reach NIRVANA.)

Every track is a unique work of art and being a fan for over 20 years, I hear every signature... from each individual in the group and I love that! i love it and I adore them as people and as Music Gods! I hope they get a Grammy. It is so well deserved!

[SHEAKENBAKEN]

Trying out this track order of the album and I think it flows better than the official one.

1. Sin After Sin
2. This Is War
3. Dead Among The Living
4. Silver Tongue
5. Pawns & Kings
6. Stay
7. Holiday
8. Season of Promise
9. Last Man Standing
10. Fable of The Silent Son

[zazthespaz]

Figure I'll put in my 2 cents - I'm not much of a music critic so I'm not gonna get into that, either I like most/all of an album, it has a few good songs, or I don't like it. Alter Bridge always falls into the first category for me - I love everything they put out, have yet to hear a song I didn't like. With that in mind, I'm aware I'm probably biased every time I listen to a new album. Stay, Season of Promise, and Dead Among the Living are probably the standout songs for me. I'm glad to see everyone rating Fable as an epic - I've listened to it 6-7 times now and it doesn't stand out as such for me. Maybe it'll click eventually but for now it's kind of blending into the rest of the album for me.

The one thing I will say is I'm not a use of the flanger effect. I think there's a couple songs where they use it to do some accent notes on top of the rhythm guitar, and I personally think a regular distortion effect would've been fine. Just irks me, idk why.

Glad to see all the songs getting a variety of responses - sounds like there's a song for everyone on this album and it's overall getting good reviews. When the first two songs came out, a lot of people's opinions changed after some time passed, so I'm curious to see how many of your reviews remain the same come Thursday.

[The Dissident]

Just listened for the first time, I had heard each single once, Barring Silver Tongue and the title track.

Initial Thoughts:
Side A:
This Is War - not my favourite opener it is solid
Dead Among The Living - Fun track, it would be a good live one
Silver Tongue - Excellent and catchy! I love it, personally this should have been the opener.
Sin After Sin - Better than the first listen, but not amazing in my books yet
Stay - A nice slower Mark song which adds some variety in what he could do.

Side B:
Holiday - I think this would be a great opener
Fabel of The Silent Son - A fairly unique epic that I quite enjoy, It feels like this would be a cool early concert set epic, or one right before and acoustic set begins.
Season Of Promise - Starts pretty strong but the song loses me a little in the end. I will have to revisit it.
Last Man Standing - On first listen, this is the weakest song on the album for me.
Pawns & Kings - Excellent title track, love the chorus this could be a staple

What I wish to hear when I see them live:
Pawns & Kings
Silver Tongue
Holiday
Fabel Of The Silent Son
Dead Among The Living
Stay

[maximzub]

Trying out this track order of the album and I think it flows better than the official one.

1. Sin After Sin
2. This Is War
3. Dead Among The Living
4. Silver Tongue
5. Pawns & Kings
6. Stay
7. Holiday
8. Season of Promise
9. Last Man Standing
10. Fable of The Silent Son

The one thing I strongly disagree with is Last Man Standing being placed near the end. When I listened to the album in order, that song kinda flew over my head. When I listen to the song individually, I can tell how good of a song it is.

[maximzub]

I'm trying to post my own track listing, but I keep getting a 500 error.

[maximzub]

Trying to see if me typing This Is War gives me a 500 error. Every post in recent times that I got a 500 error on had some mention of This Is War.

Nope. Seems like 500 errors are out to get me whenever I want to say something important.

[maximzub]

1. This Is War (with extended intro)
2. Dead Among The Living (with a better guitar solo)
3. A midtempo happier song (along the lines of Take The Crown)
4. Stay
5. Silver Tongue
6. Last Man Standing
7. Fable Of The Silent Son (develop on the first third of the song and make that into a ballad)
8. Holiday
9. Sin After Sin (with a better chorus and actual guitar solos)
10. A heavy radio single (along the lines of Clear Horizon)
11. Season Of Promise
12. Pawns & Kings

YES, IT WORKED!

[WaywardOne]

Man I love Holiday. It's so cool that Myles took what was supposed to be one of his solo songs and AB-ified it. There are little hints throughout the song where you can tell it had bluesy/folk rock origins. I'm guessing it explains the weird intro too - probably made more sense in it's original form on a resonator or whatever it was, but they figured screw it, let's roll with it! I hope they play it a lot on tour, it's got perfect live-performance energy.

[Crumbso]

Loving that Myles managed to turn 'Next' into a four syllable word! "Nay-ee-yeah-hext"

[VigilantSteve]

Guys...Holiday is growing on me a lot. It's super catchy, and even my 4 year old (who's only heard the song maybe twice) keeps randomly singing the chorus melody.

[Mr.Vlado]

Guys...Holiday is growing on me a lot. It's super catchy, and even my 4 year old (who's only heard the song maybe twice) keeps randomly singing the chorus melody.

What I love about this song is especially the "spread my Wings and fly" part at the end of the chorus. Kind of unexpected, makes the chorus more special in a way.
I have to say that if you asked me for my favorites on the album, I wouldnt respond with Holiday yet but I have to admit: it is the one song that I play the most during the day when I just listen to 1 or 2 specific songs on the album. I almost always start with Holiday lol

It is just so different and sounds more like Slash & Myles but is - imo - much better than most of the fast upbeat tracks they released. Such a fun song that brings me in a good mood immediately.

[VigilantSteve]

Guys...Holiday is growing on me a lot. It's super catchy, and even my 4 year old (who's only heard the song maybe twice) keeps randomly singing the chorus melody.

What I love about this song is especially the "spread my Wings and fly" part at the end of the chorus. Kind of unexpected, makes the chorus more special in a way.
I have to say that if you asked me for my favorites on the album, I wouldnt respond with Holiday yet but I have to admit: it is the one song that I play the most during the day when I just listen to 1 or 2 specific songs on the album. I almost always start with Holiday lol

It is just so different and sounds more like Slash & Myles but is - imo - much better than most of the fast upbeat tracks they released. Such a fun song that brings me in a good mood immediately.

The "spread my wings and fly" part is the only part of the chorus melody that my son is also singing the words to, where the rest he's just kind of humming or singing the melody out loud. It's really great though.

[Miro]

Today i stayed longer at work so i can finally play very loud this new album from my original CD, bought at very nice price 11,39€ with customer's discount After first two spins seems inferior to Walk the Sky to me; it may change of course. But i dig the artwork and i'm definitely buying the T-Shirt at Prague However i'm wondering how the two remained unreleased tracks sounds like

[nagpo]

No P&K b-sides?

[thatfunkodad]

No P&K b-sides?

Based on the comments Mark made in an interview he did on the release day, it sounds like we'll probably be getting a "pawns and kings 2.0" at some point next year with the 2 additional songs they recorded the didn't make the album.

[Kreuger]

For all of you who said songs on TLH felt pieced together, do any of you get that from these? Cause Fable sure as hell sounds like 3 or 4 songs to me.

[Crumbso]

For all of you who said songs on TLH felt pieced together, do any of you get that from these? Cause Fable sure as hell sounds like 3 or 4 songs to me.

Apparently, it was pieced together from 2 different song ideas. However, I don't feel it makes it sound disjointed at all. The various themes follow the narrative of the lyrics and they become combined at the end in a way that also feels very natural. Same vibe I get from Fortress.

In terms of structure, it's one of the more actually progressive things AB has done, I just think when people say 'progressive' in relation to AB they mean long and with long instrumental sections.

[cheesedip1]

Can someone lay out all the time signature changes in Last Man Standing?