Well, the magic of "A Thousand Lives" as stated before is that it doesn't have a message. Normally when The Herd don't have a message in their music, they go batshit crazy, trying new things which normally don't work. This song is rather different. They use their skills in both rap and instrumental music as well as their ability to weave an interesting and enthralling world through lyrics to tell the story of a member of The Herd. I'm not going to analyse this song, but I recommend you go listen to it. Worst case scenario, you give it a few hits on Youtube. You're not wasting money or anything.
After "A Thousand Lives" this album suffers a terrible problem: none of the other tracks stand out. I'm not sure if this is a strength or weakness of the album, but it certainly makes it difficult to review. Sadly, I think the rest of this review is going to have to be a general overview.
Actually, one song that stands out to me is the title track, "Future Shade", which is to date the only song I've heard in English about the Arab Spring. I admire The Herd greatly for just basically spending a song complimenting change. It's nothing groundbreaking or a new concept, but I'm glad to see that The Herd is able to react positively to a political action which follows their policies. Listening to too much of their music can leave people thinking they'll never be happy, but this song is The Herd going out of their way to say otherwise.
The rest of the album is a mix between personal anecdotes, many of them tragic, fictitious tales with morals and others which lack the story and focus more on passing on a message, more like the previous work of The Herd.
Honestly, there isn't that much to say about this album which it can't say by itself. It's a change, a revelation and a fantastic piece of music. There is little more I can say.
The album I'll discuss either tomorrow or next weekend (schedule rules presently) is an album by a solo British artist. Can anyone guess it?
H. Rourke
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