Very west end musical sort of vibe. I was going to give it 3 stars but then I realised how much I enjoyed the drama of it!
This album has been submitted by a user and is not included in any edition of the book.
Batey is a vocalist and musician for the indie folk band The Amazing Devil, as well as the primary writer and composer. He and collaborator Madeleine Hyland met while acting for the Royal Shakespeare Company and together they formed the band in 2015, producing what Batey has described as music that βsad people can listen to at train stations.β The band has released three albums including Love Run (2016), and The Horror and the Wild (2020). Their most recent album, Ruin, was released on 31 October 2021.
Very west end musical sort of vibe. I was going to give it 3 stars but then I realised how much I enjoyed the drama of it!
I'm done with indie folk.
'The Amazing Devil' actually amazed me. It's folk, but with a high percentage of rock (and even slight traces of hard rock). Lyrically, this album is very poetic (I mean, have you read the lyrics of Inkpot Gods for example). This album went fast from "unknown to me" to "man, I love this"
Music that theater kids would make for their point-and-click fantasy game thatβs a painfully unsubtle metaphor for being bullied in high school.
I liked this as music, though I remained on the fence about the sort of combination of a Folk Epic sound with twee cell-phone era romantic travail lyrics. I'll slide it an extra star for oddity and singularity.
Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Secret worlds, Inkpot gods
It was fine. It felt...I don't know...pretentious? But I didn't hate it. Harmonies were nice. It's not something I'd ever listen to again, but it wasn't bad at all. I guess indie folk isn't my genre. Inkpot Gods was nice, though.
It's alright, a bit too theatrical for me. 3 stars.
Tolerable for indie folk. I liked the vocal harmonies. Got a bit long in the tooth towards the end though, and overall still a bit too twee. The swearing was intentionally at odds with the music, but.... eh? I guess you'd have to like it before you'd say it was clever or effective. I don't think I'll ever like this genre. 3/5.
Okay so why do I like that decemberists hazards of love album but not this. Like why is hazards of love a great concept album but this sounds like theater kid cringe to me. Must be something with the production since this sounds like itβs from a stage musical but my ears rejected this even though the sound isnβt that far off from music that I really enjoy.
The Wikipedia page is not correct, so I can't detect what story there is in this album. It seems to me to be more of an indie troubadour proposal with momentary high choruses looking for epicness to stand out. The truth is that, given the cover, I was expecting something more challenging in terms of rock, but well, we are always going to be surprised by album covers.
Wow! Fun and occasionally epic
Great find.
I wasnβt excited at another indie folk bandβ¦ oh how misguided my brain was. The opening track, Secret Worlds, had me hooked immediately. Quick aside: After listening to over 1200 albums for this project my brain reacts negatively to almost every new thing that pops up here - and yet I end up loving the majority of the selections. Where else would I have discovered a group like The Amazing Devil? Weird though that my brain thinks itβs fatigued every time I get a something new to me hereβ¦ even after all these great discoveries! As this album progressed I got goosebumps numerous times! Fantastically theatrical and completely riveting. What a great addition to my library!
The cover art has my interest. Let's have a listen. I'm not usually one for "folk singer/songwriter" - but this album is the fuckin' tits, yo. The old witch sleep and the good man grace... What a track!
liked it, it's very "theatre kids" though 3.7
Indie folk. Me ha gustado. Un 4.
It's a very "dramatic" album with plenty of musical gravitas. A lengthy album that doesn't really reach beyond that, however. Makes a lot of use of acoustic guitars to give it that additional oomph. Interesting. The last song put it into the 4 range for me.
I wasn't into this, but it just got more and more enjoyable lyrically, and that made me warm to the slightly OTT dramatics of the music till I really started to enjoy the whole thing a lot. I will be coming back to this one. Intriguing
Very dramatic indie folk album, I did enjoy it even though it comes across as pretentious posh theatre kids at times. Overall I think this is Good choice for an album selection.
Fun light airy renaissance faire vibes. Very cool
Hooked me immediately and unexpectedly. I'm liking these epic folk albums
"'Cause if God made us all in his image, Then God's a fucking nerd." Lyrics like that do earn extra points, I must say. But all-in-all I don't find it a very remarkable album in the indie-folk genre. Enjoyable, but that's about it.
You know itβs going to be good when you canβt find a Wikipedia page for any of it
Very dramatic hard-edged folk (British folk rock?)
Yeah, this was a bit overwrought in places. I didn't particularly connect with it, but I appreciate the creativity. Fave Songs: The Calling, Ruin, Chords
This has the feeling of an offbroadway-level Disney animated movie soundtrack. Dramatic and theatrical, and a little overserious. An interesting listen.
There must be a modern folk revival that passed me by as there is a lot of 2020s folk on the user list. This is more interesting than most of it's contemporaries on the list and gets good when it gets big and textured. Rating: 3.5 Playlist track: Inkpot Gods Date listened: 13/12/24
Ruin of The Amazing Devil is a nice album with folk and rock songs. The songs vary between ballads, folk songs and accoustic hard/prog rock (a bit like Tenacious D). Sometimes the performance is a slighty too much dramatic and it gets annoying.
Folksy blues for the theater-nerd set.
Whe I read that it was the band from The Witcher's bard actor, I was a little skeptical, but the first song really impressed me. Overall I enjoyed this album, a lot of really intense moments, but I was left underwhelmed by some of the more softer and acoustic passages. Still a fun listen, great suggestion. 7/10
Better than I thought!
An interesting folksy type alternative album but nothing really stuck with me. I'm digging the album cover though, very cool shot.
There are one or two tracks on Ruin I really, really like; The Calling is the best of those because the girl's voice and stylings get very close to Sharon den Adel from Within Temptation territory, and they're a bit of a guilty pleasure band of mine. The rest of this is okay, it's sort of like if Riverdance was borne of a different sound and mythology, there's a real aura and atmosphere to it all but because it teases me with some soaring highs that aren't there throughout, and it's just a bit too folksy and slow in those slower moments, it's just a 3/5, but colour me intrigued, this was a pretty interesting listen.
Partly cringe partly okay
This is an indie folk band? I'd hardly call it indie folk at times. More like dramatic musical theatre. I agree with the other comments saying this is a musical. That's what makes it give off trying too hard vibes. It sounds forced. Like those little spoken word things sound so fake and inauthentic. It's hard to describe why but it just does. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.
Really not my thing- I respect the attempt (folky-theatrical fey ballads) but it's pretty false and contrived.
Folk music for theatre kids (not derogatory). This was quite fun - it got a bit predictable after a while, with a lot of songs going for the same reverb-heavy slow build bodhran-bashing songs that people would have described as epic about 10 years ago. Still a nice listen though, and some fun lyrics varying between a real high fantasy vibe to just some modern day nerds playing D&D and talking about their lives
This is simply music for the theatrical people. This feels like something you would hear on an off off broadway show where you get a 10 minute introduction about the journey and how everythingβs a metaphor for the new wave apartheid. Ok maybe that was a bit much but thatβs exactly how this album is. It goes a bit further than the musical realm and brings performance too. If youβre into that then this is for you. 4.6/10
Interesting⦠not my style
A bit too overly-dramatic for me to file this under the best music genre of all time - "goofy medieval music". Also, this is going to be extremely specific, but it reminded me too much of music you'd find in Youtube compilations titled something like "Royalty Free Viking Music For Your D&D Campaign 10 Hours (No Ads)". 2/5, but a weird kind of 2/5, because I can tell that I would have absolutely loved it with some production tweaks.
Is this the first artist to not even have a wikipedia page? That's how obscure we're going, I respect it. I can't say I loved this, I'm only keeping one song, but I can't say it was bad either. Musically, pretty interesting variety. But I wasn't impressed. 2.5/5
Ruined my day