Poets of the Fall recently released a note on their facebook page about a band that they will be performing with called Phoenix Effect. Poets of the Fall also happen to be helping with the production and songwriting of Phoenix Effect's first album, so I decided to give their first single, 'Broken Promises,' a listen. (You can listen yourself here or here).

The lead singer, Janne Kärkkäinen, is a former member of Sunrise Avenue, who has had recent success with their album On The Way to Wonderland in Europe. 'Broken Promises' is a little edgier than most of Sunrise Avenue's work, but it's also a whole lot better.

'Broken Promises' is full of strong guitar riffs, but it also has some excellent lyrics (Poets of the Fall's Marko is participating in the songwriting, so who would expect anything less?) and "power" to it without being screamy or overdone. Hopefully Janne and Phoenix Effect can carry the effect on to the whole album while still keeping it fresh, because it is a sound that works. 'Broken Promises' instantly catches you and begs to be played over again and again.

Undoubtedly, 'Broken Promises' is a song about Kärkkäinen's ousting from Sunrise Avenue, but it may just be the best thing that has happened to him. The album is set to be released sometime in early 2009. You can find more about Phoenix Effect at their webpage. 'Broken Promises' is available for $0.89 at Amazon as a DRM-Free MP3 download. Check it out!

Broken Promises Lyrics

You let me in so I could guide your hand,
A quest for gold that yielded lead,
So many things I still don't understand,
Would rear their ugly heads instead

No instigation
just run away
With nothing to fall back on
no skin left to flay

(Chorus)
What you needed the most
were no more of these ghosts of my
broken promises
What you needed the most
never even came close to my
broken promises

Sedated sorrow palms a lazy coin,
You'll find no vindication here,
Flashing a fast lane if you've come to join,
The ill fated fortune of the year

Castles we built now
crumble like smiles
Skeleton hope now
eaten by trials

(Chorus)

How you choose to wear your heart,
is how they’ll cast your part,
How you choose to wear your heart
You wear a world upon your sleeve,
The way you choose to wear your heart,
is how they will tear you apart,
Do you choose to save the world or to deceive

(Chorus)

Being a musician, especially a successful one, is no easy feat. You're always remembered for what you did first to make it big. Being able to overcome your first hit track or album is something many artists cannot master, and they are cast off into the netherworld of one-hit wonders.

The pressure to continue success is multiplied by a thousand when your first successful album becomes the "tenth best-selling album of all-time," as Jagged Little Pill did for Alanis Morissette. [Wikipedia] Most everyone over the age of 10 can recognize a couple of the tracks off the album, as nearly all of them made their way onto the radio at some point.

13 years later, very few people could recognize a track off of any of Alanis' other 8 albums in that time. The most notable of the tracks being Uninvited and Hands Clean. But none of the albums could compare to Jagged Little Pill's blockbuster success.

The reasons behind this are many. When you sell 30 million albums, do you really need to continue making popular albums? The answer is probably no, and many people, after such a big success, choose to head in a more artistic and personal direction, shunning the popular media and making "art." While the first few albums after Jagged Little Pill stayed more on the side of pop music, the latest few have a decidedly Eastern sound to them. Flavors of Entanglement, Alanis' latest album, follows this trend.

Flavors of Entanglement is edgy, artsy, and definitely not Jagged Little Pill. Unfortunately, this works against Alanis, as the expectations coming into the album are entirely different from the result. Flavors of Entanglement, taken from the view of a single album, is not a bad album. It may not win 10 Grammys, but it is a solid effort as judged on the scale of regular artists. Versions of Violence attempts to hint at the anger and bitterness that enshrouded Jagged Little Pill. Some tracks, such as Underneath and Incomplete are catchy enough, but you can't help to feel like you're missing part of the puzzle that is Flavors of Entanglement.

The rawness that existed on Jagged Little Pill is gone, replaced by a variety of instruments and studio effects. The heart-wrenching lyrics are replaced with a smattering of tales, from eco-awareness to playful love. For any other artist, this would be the norm, but we've come to expect more from such a star as Alanis.

Incredible success is something that haunts many a musician, and Flavors of Entanglement only slightly moves Alanis out from the shadow cast by Jagged Little Pill.

When you think of Finland, you probably think of a Nordic lifestyle: Fishing, Snow, and Ice Palaces. You may not think of music. Yet recently two bands have come out of Finland with a lot of presence. The first is HIM, the first Finnish band to have an album certified Gold in the United States. The second is Poets of the Fall, a slightly newer band whose third major album release is titled Revolution Roulette. Poets of the Fall is not currently well-known in the US but does have a strong presence across Europe. They recently played their first show in the USA at the MUSExpo in Los Angeles, demoing for record industry professionals.

For many gamers, they may have been exposed to Poets and not even known it. Poets of the Fall's first track, 'Late Goodbye,' was the theme (and only) song in the sequel to the bestselling PC Game Max Payne. Max Payne 2 featured 'Late Goodbye' a few times, most notably playing the entire track through the credits. The song became so popular tools were developed to extract the track from the credits, as it did not exist for purchase at the time.

Following up on the success of 'Late Goodbye', Poets released their first album Signs of Life in 2005. A year later they came back with Carnival of Rust. Both albums were well received in Finland and Europe, including being voted Best Finnish Video of All Time for 'Carnival of Rust' and Best Finnish Act at the MTV Europe Awards for Signs of Life, but received little notice in the US since they were only available as imports.

Enter Revolution Roulette, their 2008 offering. The album has a lot to live up to, given the accolades of the first two albums and the pressure to make it big in the US, and it's definitely a step in the right direction. The album is not simply "more of the same old" but shows a true progression in their musical abilities. The songs are each very in-depth and interesting in their own ways. They vary from the hard-rocking ('Revolution Roulette', 'Psychosis') to the melodic ('Where Do We Draw The Line', 'Fragile') and everything possible in between. Even within the songs the tempo and feel varies dramatically ('More', 'Diamonds for Tears'). This album showcases the way Poets of the Fall can take a song and make it into a story, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Most artists nowadays simply have one catchy beat that gets them the one-hit wonder, fading into obscurity soon after.

Probably their best offering off the album is the title track, 'Revolution Roulette'. The song makes you feel as though you are in a stadium watching them play live at the best concert of your life. But beyond its sound, like so many of Poets' songs, is a deeper meaning. In 'Revolution Roulette' it is that we shouldn't give our lives to the precision and repetitiveness of machines, even as our technology brings us so many new things; the meaning in 'More' is that we should be happy with what we have, but we are constantly wanting more. 'Save Me' is a track that, despite its more upbeat tone, is very dark and disturbing, about being in the last days of despair. Each song has its own message, independent of one another, but the whole album remains cohesive. Their music packs the tri-fecta in music: Sound, Songwriting, and Dimension. Whereas many artists can conquer one or two of these points, it is rare to find one that can hit all three of them, which is exactly what Poets of the Fall achieves.

Also helping Poets' case is the fact that their songs are now available in the US via iTunes. At less than $10 an album, it's easily worth the money, but if you only have a few dollars, check out the tracks 'Carnival of Rust', 'Revolution Roulette', 'Late Goodbye', 'Locking up the Sun', or 'Diamonds for Tears' to get a taste of the whole experience. You can also download samples of their songs here.