Hail to the Thief

Radiohead kombiniert Synthetische- mit Rockmusik und hat dadurch ein gelungen Album geschaffen. Leider hat es durch die Länge einige Längen und gelegentlich wirkt es schräg. Trotzdem lassen sich „There There“, „Where I End and You Begin“ sowie „A Wolf At the Door“ sehr gut und bestimmt nochmal anhören.

It feels like another Radiohead album I'm supposed to like... And I mostly do, but sometimes I'd rather listen to The Bends, you know?

After the hard tangent of Kid A/Anmesiac, Radiohead finally refind their lost guitars and this album is all the better for it.

parts are good, 2+2=5. parts are bad, We Suck Young Blood. The back half vocally is closer to like shitty ghost imitation warbling. the intrumentation is generally pretty rock solid though.

I waited in line at midnight for this album and I love me some Radiohead, this album relistening to it years later it feels like it lacks an immediacy of there later albums yet all the anxiety and depression is gone that made their earlier albums so groundbreaking to me as a anxiety ridden depressed 20 something. That being said when the jambs come they come at 100. I think this is about the time I got into electronic music and this doesn't disappoint. The slow songs just feel like dead weight though.

Tror egentlig aldrig at jeg er kommet helt igennem den her plade før, fordi sangene måske ikke er de stærkeste når de står for sig selv.
På grund af Radiohead stemningen og en fed lyd på guitaren i There, There, sniger den sig ret højt op, men det er ikke en top 3 Radiohead plade ❤️

Stodgy homework

2+2=5 is the only redeeming song off of this album, and this album is a far cry from the records that Radiohead gets its cult following from.

I have never really been a fan of Radiohead, and Hail to the Thief does not change that for me.

There are moments where individual songs are perfectly fine, but as a full album it feels overly long and a bit repetitive. The mood rarely shifts enough to fully pull me in, and after a while many of the tracks start to blur together.

I can hear the ambition and the political edge running through it, and I respect what they are trying to do. It just does not connect with me emotionally. A lot of it sits in that space of being OK rather than memorable.

Favourite track: None that truly stood out
Least favourite: The overall sound becomes repetitive over the length of the album
Album artwork: Distinctive and bold, certainly more striking than the music for me

While I don’t think this is one of Radiohead’s greatest albums, I do think it is another great one for their catalogue. Somehow, I’ve never been as drawn to it as their other classics (“The Bends” through “In Rainbows”), so it was mostly unfamiliar to me. I appreciate that it feels like a marriage between the disparate styles of “OK Computer” and “Kid A,” marrying guitar rock with electronic instrumentation. The album has some fun musical explorations and always sounds undeniably like Radiohead.

I find it amazing how “prog-y” they sound given how critically and commercially successful they’ve been. Even though I would probably consider this my least favorite of their entries on the list (maybe “Amnesiac” gets that honor), Radiohead is just really good at making music. A solid 4/5!

yuck. 1.79

Might be the most underrated Radiohead album. Back half has some of my favorite tunes. Such an amazing run. 5/5

This is maybe the fifth or sixth best Radiohead album (IMO), and it's still a pretty easy 5/5. Favorite track is maybe "There There", but there are plenty other contenders.

An album as bleak as 2003, Hail to the Thief captures the ambient dread, malice, and sense of distant violence of the metropole at the dawn of the global war on terror. It kicks off with 2+2=5's synths going off like an alarm. There There is that era's best song, a refusal of the injunction to become a terrorized paranoid freak sensing danger lurking in every corner - "Just cuz you feel it, doesn't mean it's there". The amalgam of electronic sounds and (relatively) raw guitar parts, chaotic techno beats, frenetic synths, close but off kilter harmonies, and bleated vocals ratchet up the tension over and over. Though there is the odd cathartic climax, there's little relief - the songs don't resolve into stable melodies or return to familiar terrain. Drunken Punch Up offers a bit of a groove to sink into, then layers with with discordance. Myxomatosis has a heavy synth riff that's used a platform for more textural experimentation. Sail to the Moon is a disquieting lullaby with its relaxed piano. ethereal reverby guitar parts, uneasy synths and searching vocals. Wolf At the Door is like a nightmare nursery rhyme with a guitar part that's always falling forward into the next arpeggio without resolving as the vocal descends wildly into a frenzy until catching itself at the last minute, fading away deceptively sweetly. This is the soundtrack of a world spinning out of control.

Probably the weakest Radiohead album I've heard but still excellent. Could move down later since it's only the 2nd on this list for me, but I'll leave it here for now

Eerder noemde ik een album van Radiohead al dreinend. Dat kon ik bij dat album nog wel hebben. Maar nu gaat het gedrein soms door merg en been. Ik ben zelden zo gepijnigd door muziek. Een 1, omdat lager niet kan.

6 stars. Done and Dusted.

There were a few moments that I thought this was quite good, but overall it felt quite pretentious. 2.5

I think I would look at this album more favorably if it hadn't come directly between Kid A/Amnesiac and In Rainbows. It just feels like a step backwards from either direction. The political themes don't help either, because they feel very dated by now. Myxomatosis is incredible though.

A really strong start with 2 + 2 = 5 that lulls for a good chunk of the middle before coming back with an excellent last few songs. I can see the idea with a lot of the album, with a lot of songs building up to one part, but this one part is not given enough room to breathe, and the song feels cut off most of the time. I think the album would actually benefit from less songs, but make them like seven minutes long, as I can here things that are predecessors to the longer songs by bands like MGMT and Tame Impala, but the songs here are far too short. Those last four or so songs are doing so much heavy lifting for this album that it gets a light four.

I really didn't know I disliked Radiohead so much. Some of the guitar work is pretty good, but the voice is driving me crazy.