Cleggy

On some tracks the strings are too loud, but other than that I think it was produced very well. The distorted vocals are only noticeable on Major Minus really.

I give it a 7. The last part is absolutely incredible. It's wasn't as good as I would have expected 2 years ago, but I was pleasantly surprised. My favourite moment on the album is A Hopeful Transmission when it brings back the melody from the opening track, it's fantastic idea. The transition into DLIBYH is brilliant too. There's not a song I hate really, I've changed my opinion on ETIAW and Paradise because of the way they fit into the album, particularly ETIAW. So yeah overall I'm impressed. I didn't really get a feel for the narrative until the 2nd half where I sort of worked out what was going on. Decent album. I'd rank it 3rd behind VLV and AROBTHH.

I'll PM you. You'll need a program to extract the .rar file such as WinRAR though.

It's difficult but I'll give it a go: 1) Us Against The World 2) Don't Let It Break Your Heart 3) Charlie Brown 4) Up With The Birds 5) Hurts Like Heaven 6) Up In Flames 7) Princess of China 8) UFO 9) Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall 10) Major MInus 11) Paradise

PROS: Rihanna doesn't suck on this song as much as I thought Decent lyrics CONS: Too much Rihanna, Chris should have sung the line about the princess and the king

Was everything like this a few days before Viva was released? It's pretty hectic.

I'm...I'm sickened.

Well I just think that 7 singles from an album is overkill. I don't understand why you'd bother to release an album at all if you plan to release 7 of the songs as singles anyway. Maybe I'm biased because I love listening to complete albums but it seems that every song on the album was written for no other reason than to make money and that's not what music is about.

Hmm... if there was a hidden track then the most likely place for it would be after Up With The Birds. But all of the reviews have mentioned Up With The Birds as being the final track and haven't talked about there being any hidden tracks. Nobody at any of the listening parties mentioned a hidden track either. So I don't buy it.

There's definitely going to be leak on Wednesday after it's released in Japan, so after the weekend is over we only have 3 days to go. Surely you can wait that long guys? Especially after waiting for the album for over 2 years already.

There's an option on Windows Media Player and iTunes to rip CDs with lossless audio but the file size is enormous (about 80-90MB per song). Songs in lossless format have a bitrate of over 1,000kbps if I remember correctly.

There is no truth to that at all.

It would be even funnier if it was ETIAW, Paradise or Major Minus.

But if was leaked within a video file on YouTube... Nobody would know a thing right? Because the original audio file has been converted into video form. Maybe.

I don't think the reviews actually got a digital copy of the album or it probably would have leaked by now. There's been loads of reviews from websites and magazines where hundreds of people work. Maybe they all got the vinyl copy that's much more difficult to leak.

Brian May isn't credited as a writer so I think the Spanish reviewer saw some similarities between the songs and assumed that it had a sample. Same as where they say that Takk is sampled on Princess of China. Or maybe Coldplay will have another couple of lawsuits on their hands...

Better this than the nominally Euro-disco bent of Princess of China, where Rihanna’s presence feels more of a marketing tool than a creative necessity I've suspected it would come off as being a marketing tool since it was first announced that Rihanna would be on the track. Obviously I haven't heard the track yet but I've always thought that the inclusion of Rihanna on the album was completely unnecessary. I'm still sort of looking forward to the song but I think I'll hate it.

I think Florence Welch would have been a great choice, I think she's got a better and more interesting voice than Rihanna. She's also a lot more talented and actually gets involved in the song-writing process of her songs whereas Rihanna doesn't. I just don't like how commercial Rihanna is. From her newest album 7 out of 11 songs were released as singles. I don't know if that was a choice from her record company or whatever but I just can't respect her as an artist when she allows decisions like that. It's just an obvious attempt to maximise profits. I seriously doubt that she has any emotional attachment to her songs whatsoever. Overall Rihanna is presented as a product rather than an artist and I just don't like that.

Are those guys supposed to be funny? It's hard to tell. Something tells me that they're not the most intelligent people in the world.

That's just copied and pasted from Google Translate. It doesn't really make sense. It's interesting to see that they mention a sample from Sigur Ros in Princess of China and a sample from Brian May and Leonard Cohen in Up With The Birds. Whatever happened to making their own music?

Google translate is crap for long pieces of text like this, is there a native Spanish speaker somewhere that can translate it into English for us? I'm sure we'd all greatly appreciate it.

This is quite obviously fake.

If they gave the album a good review would people still be saying that they're unreliable? I doubt it. If they said the album was flawless I'm sure people on here would be proclaiming G1 to be the greatest website on the internet.

No, YOU shall be the one that is fired. HAHAHAH

Chris mentioned a few months ago that Hurts Like Heaven will probably be a single. It certainly seems to be more accessible on the first listen than Up in Flames or Us Against The World for example.