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This album, I dreaded returning to because the last time I relistened to it I absolutely hated it and found it super boring and genuinely just disgusting too. And for the most part that was sort of confirmed.
Let's start off with the album art, on streaming services it's just billy bop up close, nothing notable there tbh. That's just because I had to make square art for streaming services and I couldn't crop the original without potentially damaging its structural integrity.
The original is awesome. Scroll past this next paragraph if you don't wanna see me dissect the album art's irregularites, it might ruin the fun for some.
It shows a guy hypnotized and drooling at an old tv showing billy bop and his evil mind control glasses. Except here's the thing, that old tv has an 8-segment display, an orange light behind a grate, and an open button... it's not an old tv... it's a microwave.
This sort of implies that the dystopia isn't exactly real but this guy is just stupid and hallucinating it and easily getting hypnotized at his stupid microwave that for whatever reason has antennas. This is all intentional btw, I intentionally drew this because I thought it was funny. I don't know what I was on to come up with that though.
It also shows kids looking at him and smiling, probably making fun of him for getting hypnotized by a microwave, or for owning one with an antenna, through his window... which is at floor level... His floor btw, because I couldn't make a wood floor texture easily, is watercolored over to add texture instead. This makes it look like he pissed all over the floor. There's also a second billy bop screen or poster on the oilpainted wall with a silly looking stick figure on it.
Also the silly Paint 3D 3D-rotation of the 2D head and microwave add to the art of this a lot. I think it's awesome to be honest.
The background is a black and white hypnosis pattern. That's probably why some of the songs got a lot of views.
The album starts off with BillyBop is a Bad Guy But Like the Good Kinda Bad Y'know is, very empty, but also kinda a banger? The intro was super inspired by A7x's Demons. Mainly just me realizing how cool chords can be in guitar (yea, no shit). I remember trying to chart drums for this song in Clone Hero only to realize it's literally impossible to play the outro because you quite literally cannot hit a sidestick, a china, and snare all at once. I feel like this song has some pretty good transitions from parts, it's good at using abruptness to make part changes seem less abrupt in an oxymoronic way. Anyways this song introduces the Main antagonist and ruler of this dystopia, BillyBop.
And then we throw all that shit out the window for track 2 because guess what? This was one of two songs that I did not write intentionally for either the dystopia story or the sidestory. It starts off with the really annoying chime glass that I thankfully, with exception to this stupid song, left behind in the 2022 era of Lyup. It introduces the song with a sound that sounds like keys falling down into a storm drain or something. This song has some really good piano work though.
THE PIRATE SONG!!! WOOO!!! It's the start of the pirate sidestory consisting of this, track 6, 8, and 10. I like the slow riff a lot. It's very emotionally sad but punchy. The toms and triplets are how you know this song is about pirates btw. AND THEN THE MAIN RIFF SLOWS DOWN AND IT'S FIREEEEEEEEEE WOOOOOOOO.
The fourth track, containing one of the rudest titles in Lyup history, is the other one that has nothing to do with either storyline. This song is super empty and lacks pretty much any substance.
The popcorn song wooo. Yet another dystopia song. The really high pitched fake guitar synths are getting a bit painful. And the slow metal riffs are just boring and a bit disgusting. Then again I was a bit more of a metalhead back then. I used to LOVE Avenged Sevenfold. These kinds of riffs were awesome so long as M. Shadows was singing some awesome melody over it.
M. Shadows is not singing an awesome melody over this.
The Corrupted Robotic Sailor is cool because it has an actually cool melody over it that isn't super duper annoying. It's a bit of a long song though. Kinda overstays its welcome to be honest. Still kind of an annoying song but it has its really cool moments.
YOOOOO WAR BREAKS OUT!!!! THIS USED TO BE MY MOST VIEWED SONG!!!!!!!! It has really cool drums that I definitely came up with by banging on the desks of my science class. It has really cool synths and riffs too. The title is a reference to Fahrenheit 451 which used to be one of my favorite books and is the reason why I used to be so obsessed with dystopias. This is definitely one of the least empty sounding songs in this album. 2:30 when it goes back to the original drum beat and then the guitars start doing those cool harmonies it's really good.
The Search is a nice Whack Jacko Steals the Elephant Man's Bones-esque song that happens to be really empty most times but it's kinda okay because the constant switchups tend to make it barable. Also the tempo speedups are really cool.
Welcome to the Internet is an alright song I made in Beepbox (before I've heard of Bo Burnham and it now haunts me whenever I see people reference that song he made when I made a song called that too). Anyways I think the point was like it was supposed to be like a very 90s Windows-esque startup esque intro and then the song delves into chaos to sort of imply like that the internet caused this dystopia. Silly idea that just came from creativity, not any personal beliefs.
The Desert Treasure is actually kinda a banger. Not only is it the least empty song in this album but it's also one of the most unique because of it's use of the accoustic guitar synth and the bendy steel guitar synth
HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH GET IT???
IT'S CALLED Trust Me, It’s Only the BEGINNING of the End BECAUSE IT'S THE SECOND TO LAST SONG!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay it's actually kinda cool because of the nylon guitar synth. It goes good with the other guitar's chaos.
Go Away is some sad emo sounding song because I don't know I guess defeating the dystopia had some kind of consequence idk and as such the main character is told to go away because this character hates them now grrrrr. Idk.
It ends with a sound that I was very proud of because it sounds like a computer melting down or something. It's also super annoying. because it's super high pitched and loud.
So yea this album isn't that bad but it has so much bad stuff in it that I never wanna relisten to it. It's never a problem of "oh it's a mix of good and bad songs" because with very few exceptions, no, it's not that. It's a problem of good songs that have some issue that makes them either unlistenable or boring.
(Available on most music streaming services.)