Just Like a POLL Without a Key! A Poll of New Order's Brotherhood

The band's not crazy about the production, but I love its industrial grayness; it matches the cover. The recent remastering did an exemplary job highlighting the crazy number of guitar and bass overdubs; I heard lines I had no idea existed in "Paradise" and "Angel Dust."

(another write-in vote for "State of the Nation")

I remember "Weirdo" being okay?

Actually playing this now and I'm wondering why so many people hate Get Ready if they like this one

both albums really rock the shack iykwim

Get Ready rules. Brotherhood has more finesse? I can't think of fadeouts as exquisitely worked out as the ones in "Way of Life" and "Weirdo."

I love the fierce instrumental version of "Angel Dust" on the expanded edition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n0u85Ok1Ng

this is my second favorite new order album after low life, it both rocks and sounds very distinct from the albums surrounding it, and as alfred said the remaster does make you aware of how detailed and layered it is. prob voting for "all day long" but "every little counts" is one of the best fake velvets songs ever made

ah shit i could also vote for "broken promise"

so much energy on this record

the dual guitars on "way of life"!

Movement was hard to find in the early '90s unless you had a good used record store, so Brotherhood was the last I owned after falling hard for Low Life, PCL, and Technique. All those guitars came as a shock -- New Order could jam!

it's still "all day long" though, what a song

good god the sound of Hooky's bass on "Broken Promise."

My 17 year old daughter is branching out and listening to a wide variety of music at the moment - we were in the car on the way to college and she asked “why do you like New Order so much?” I told her it was sublime music made from mundane parts. I found ELC on my music player and cranked it - as it grew from fucking around in the studio, then picking up a few instruments and settling in, she was into it, and then when the melody EXPLODED and mutated into cacophony we both sat there stunned.

"All Day Long" is my favorite song of all time, so that.

wow

it'd be 'all day long' even if 'bizarre love triangle' had been included.

also, technique is easily my favorite new order album. this is, and always has been, locked firmly at #2. idc.

it'd be 'all day long' even if 'bizarre love triangle' had been included.

Exactly my thought.

ditto

I go back n' forth on them but "All Day Long" is a track I'll always listen to every time it comes up, I really wish they had more stuff like it

That drum program, somewhat new in 1986, was a staple of Miami bass for the next decade.

Has a similar feel to "1963" for me. And also somehow Christmas-y.

hooky's greatest moment ever in there, as well. anybody know what chorus pedal he was using on this album? was it still the clone theory?

very solidly their second best album behind technique. "bizarre love triangle" is probably my favourite song ever but behind it i think "way of life" just beats out "all day long" and "as it is when it was"

hi everyone, long ass time...

Alfred you must really like this album as you polled it yourself a few years back:
POLl Day Long: The New Order "Brotherhood"

but a redo is always nice, voting "All Day Long."

i also see all the images are gone in the New Order artist poll, this made me sad. i think i still have all of them and will re-post all images when i get some time.

Husker Du/Replacements-loving me made fun of them for the first half of the '80s; I think I called them "tapioca homeboys" in a review of their compilation. It seemed funny at the time..."All Day Long" was the first song of theirs I loved, or at least since their first couple, when they were still sort of Joy Division.

This was my first New Order purchase and I was genuinely shocked by all the guitars. I was all about the synth pop when I was 10, or whatever, and wanted nine "Bizarre Love Triangles" dammit! I immediately dug the extended layered codas of "ADL" and "ESL" but the first side was very hard going. And the lyrics seemed soooo bad. I still can't shake my early impression that it is somehow second-rate New Order, even though the lyrics were rarely less, er, problematic elsewhere.

Right now I'm inclined to pick either "Angel Dust" or "Broken Promise" precisely *because* of the cacophonous guitars in their second halves. Come to think of it, most of these songs end well.

yes, an album of great codas

Every Little Counts. Saw them on the tour for this record. Bernard sang, 'Every second counts, when I'm fucking you'

No-one i've met likes this record much. They almost never do tracks from it live iirc?

I love this version of "Paradise" from Reading '98

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct2T7aW_d8Y

and "As It Is When It Was":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-T3yzQbMVE

the first three songs of this album are so bad that it hurts.

I never even bought this one, don't know why.

Sleeve uninspiring maybe. Wasn't totally sold on the singles, possibly. Something else happening? Quite probably.

My least favorite NO album (noting that I've never heard anything post-Technique front to back). I don't come to NO for jangly guitar mope. Even the album version of "BLT" is suboptimal. With it eliminated from contention, I guess... "Paradise"?

I wouldn't call 'Broken Promise' or "Way of Life" victims of guitar mope at all -- the rhythms are too sprightly (and the acoustic guitar on "As It Is" works as a wtf moment). I remembered a description written by a Select writer in '93 reassessing NO's albums: "Elsewhere, the Bass of Hook prowls the first side, presumably with a hangover."

the album version of BLT is the best one

Sleeve uninspiring maybe

when i got into new order (in pre-internet days) i bought everything i could find by them... except this album which i'd always passed by, unaware of what it was. it was years later that i saw the sleeve online and realized "oh! so that's brotherhood".

Nice to see Gillian playing guitars in those clips. No one is (should be) listening to NO primarily for the guitars, necessary, but it's interesting to see who brings what in terms of texture. Also interesting to see the band in that '98 clip relying so much on backing tracks for the synths and backing vox.

the magic of new order is they were also incidentally the best guitar-pop band in the world when they wanted to be

No one is (should be) listening to NO primarily for the guitars

lol what?

Oh, I like the guitars! I just mean it's the electronic/dance elements that really set them apart, imo. That and good songs. Or I guess you could say it's the guitars that set them apart from a lot of electronic/dance music, I suppose. Anyway, when anyone describes a band as being like New Order, they're rarely talking about the guitars, imo

I just assume they mean the lead singer is terrible

"Limp Bizkit, a New Order-influenced band from Florida ... "

checks out

http://img4.bdbphotos.com/images/230x300/e/p/epe5tvz6zherh6ez.jpg?skj2io4l

https://images.complex.com/complex/images/c_limit,dpr_auto,q_90,w_720/fl_lossy,pg_1/hzuevut6p7azm9jt7x69/fred-durst

just an odd take, since for me Peter Hook's bass playing is just about one of the most distinctive things in music

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Oh I missed that - I would have voted for Broken Promise with Paradise a close second. Like others, it's the NO album I know least (including the come-back albums which I love). Unlike others, I really don't like "All day Long" and "Every Little Counts" which I think turned me off this album. Something about barney's singing that I find really off-putting on these songs (kinda similar in thsi regard to Love Vigilantes and 1963)

I too have always been a bit baffled by the love for those two songs, in particular. I think I missed the poll but I probably would have voted "Paradise." This is definitely not my favorite NO album.

Having recently seen Wagner's Rheingold at the opera, I was struck by the similarity between the synth line in All Day Long beginning at around 3'10" and the Rhine leitmotif emerging in the Rheingold's prelude at ca. 2 minutes into the piece.

For comparison:

https://youtu.be/MuHNXoZvlgg?t=189

https://youtu.be/gH4947fQcgo

Isn't the Reinghold the walk on music for New Order typically?

Thanks! Haven't really kept up with NO after Technique, so that's news to me. Checking recent setlists and concert clips, the Rheingold prelude indeed is their walk on music, so the ADL string synth part is definitely a conscious borrowing.

The walk-on music last Saturday was "Times Change."

Yeah, I watched a very long video compiled from the Miami shows and that instrumental version of Times Change was the best thing they 'played' in 4 days. Mostly due to Bernard not singing on it. Although Dream Attack sounded great.

The Saturday show was solid. The show last January was superb.

It's so much better in person than it is watching a hand held youtube stream.

Despite squishing together several superior NO singles, "Angel Dust" is perfect orientalist goth.