Thousand Foot Krutch - Welcome To The Masquerade

Suggested guide for voting
10 - Amazing CD. Everyone should own it.
9 - Among the best of the year.
8 - One of the top CDs around, but could have been improved in a few places.
7 - Not a bad CD, but could have been better in a number of places.
6 - Pretty good for it's genre, but overall it's only acceptable.
5 - Decent CD, but only if you're a big fan of this genre.
4 - If you love this band, you'll like this CD. Otherwise, probably not.
3 - If you're a fan of this genre, the CD is barely acceptable.
2 - If you're a big fan of this band, this CD is tolerable.
1 - Even if you like this band, you won't like this CD.

Listen to the bridge on Bring Me to Life.
Listen to the bridge on One Step Closer by Linkin Park.
'Nuff said.


Other than that, loved the CD.

I don't own it and I didn't listen to the entirety of every song, so I won't drop a vote, but I hated it. It was a lot of yelling and power chords and not very much music. They will forever hold a place with me for "Hurt", but this album was an epic disappointment for me. I bought I'm Only A Man from Emery instead and I'm not regretting the choice at all.

This CD is easily an 8, if not a 9 or 10. It is possibly TFK's best CD yet, with the other possible runners-up being Phenomenon and Set It Off, depending on your personal tastes. But, to me, this album is their most diverse, yet most complete and all-around solid effort. There are driving rock songs (Fire It Up, E For Extinction), there are slower ballad-esque songs (Watching Over Me, Look Away), there's even an almost pop-rock song in Forward Motion.

The one thing about this CD is that, to really enjoy and appreciate it, you have to listen to the whole CD, in order, without skipping any of the tracks, to appreciate just how diverse and well-crafted it is. Songs that sound poor or repetitive when listened to alone or as singles (Fire It Up especially) sound much better when they're presented as part of a whole, rather than standing alone.

Even when two songs on the harder side follow each other (Bring Me To Life into E For Extinction for example), they never get monotonous. Because there's a ballad coming up next, it's not rock overload. Unlike Skillet's Awake, which suffers from a ballad overload, this album hits the perfect balance between soft and hard songs on a rock album.

All in all, one of TFK's best, and easily one of the best albums out this year.