Album Review

David Vazquez

Coldplay “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends” (Capitol/EMI Records, 2008)

Coldplay’s 4th album “Viva La Vida” tests the bands own limits with politics and religion and losses their so-called sadness from previous albums. The album is quite balanced with rhythm and sound from slow and mellow, to some intertwined up beat echoes. This album shows the minds of the band members branching out from their usually love lost lyrics, with representations of soldiers and death around the world. They have lost a few goodies like Chris Martins piano in some songs and incredible guitar sound and replaced them with orchestra riffs that are enormously soothing and buoyant. Clearly 2 songs stand out among the rest of being top chart singles, “Viva La Vida” and Violet Hill.” They seem to have still held on to the sound and technique that made them a big Brit-pop-rock band and just tweaked it up a bit. Some bands get a bit too predictable after so many albums, but Coldplay has allowed them-selves to experiment early on in their career as a group, and it pays off in “Viva La Vida”. Their previous albums contain much heartache to loneliness to new life and finding friends and living life to now. “Viva La Vida” feels like a true piece of art that took time and effort and doesn’t feel rushed. The tempo keeps you coming back for more in each song. Chris Martin still makes you hold on with his poetic and comforting voice and doesn’t over shadow the wonderful sound and beat of the songs. You can truly sit down and feel the band playing right in front of you in your living room, a symphony of sounds ricochet from wall to wall at times. Though the album only has 10 songs, it does have about 2 hidden tracks mixed in to 2 songs, which makes you a bit happy paying as much as you did think this might have been a rip-off for only 10 measly songs. With Coldplay experimenting early on, it makes you wonder what other limits they might try to reach with their future albums.