A Joker Card having having a female identity is a really good idea. I mean, they already called the devil “the witch” on hell's pit right?

And from what i gather, BPB and MDP do have a similar theme,,,,,ELIMINATION!

BPB's character relenquishes all the wandering souls that are leftover from Wraith.

MDP takes away a persons soul after their “death” pops.

point being, the first hand of joker cards were all LEADER roles:

COC was the overall Carnival itself, like the gateway

RINGMASTER was the leader of the parade of souls entering the Dark Carnival

RIDDLEBOX determined whether a person went to heaven or hell, he was the decision maker

GREAT MILENKO is the guy that shows you where you fucked up in life and judges your soul

JECKEL BROS determine how your soul will be divided up (Jake juggles the good part and Jack juggles the bad)

WRAITH takes you to that final ground after all has been determined by the five previous cards: A) you will be ushered in to shangri-la or B) you will be forced into hell's pit

now the second deck doesnt lead you for shit, they just TAKE:

BPB doesnt determine anything, doesn't care about your past or where your headed,,,if you are in his path, then your soul is gone- plain and simple.

MDP waits for you to fuck up your life, then he takes you once your “death” pops.

…so in short, the characters in the second deck don't care if you're Adolf Hitler or Santa Claus, they're gonna fuck you up regardless of who you are!

scruffy said:

bang pow boom was about blowing up thousands of racists, wife beaters, and child molesters at the same.  mdp is more or less about dumbasses who think theyre bulletproof finding out the hard way.  either way, santa claus would be pretty safe. 

Okay, I shouldn't have to defend my opinion, because as far as I know the first amendment is still valid, but I will anyway. When ICP started, the guys had very little skill or experience, that's really just how it is, they weren't very good at what they did. The production qulaity was crap on CoC. They had to rely on oringiality and imagination, and CoC really isn't that imaginitive and the topic of serial killing starts to take away from the originality after maybe the third song with said topic. The most paranormal, otherworldly subject was Guts on the Ceiling, besides that, it was some pretty standard killing sprees, hoes, and lashing out at some very real evils, but the delivery wasn't great. I still like the album, but I don't feel it holds up to others. The Ringmaster was a big step forward, mostly production wise, but they did pick up some skills. They're better performers on Ringmaster than they were on their last joker's card, but they still weren't anything special in the rhyming department. They managed to branch out in subject matter to the point where their massacre tracks didn't all just bleed together into an amalgous clusterfuck of random murder like on CoC, the songs were actually distinguishable. But with that said, I feel like The Mighty Death Pop is a stronger album than ICP's first two cards, based on their skill, delivery and the diversity of the tracks on it. I can't say those old albums are better sheerly because of nostalgic purposes, but I'm also not saying I still don't love them.

Now if people still prefer every single card from the first hand to MDP, that's fine, but I don't. So maybe we should leave it at that.

Damn, I don't know if I'd go as far as to say The Calm was better than CoC, but in some ways I guess I can see how it might be. At the very least, The Calm was definitely mastered better… I suppose it doesn't take much though.

I don't know, comparing ICP's current album to their earlier work is like a professional artist comparing their latest illustration to a doodle they did when they were a teenager. It may have seemed good at the time, but with age comes experience and improvement, and the artist can do so much more now than they could even dare imagine all those years ago. But not only have they grown as an artis, but the tools at the artist's desposal have evolved as well. Back then the artist would rock a sharpie and some copy paper, now the artis has the latest version of photoshop and a pressure sensitive tablet.

Seriously? How is Carnival of Carnage not a doodle compared to the Mighty Death Pop? It doesn't sound much better than if it were recorded on a cheap walkman, there was obvious fluctation in the production, the lyrics are simple and can get repetitive and their delivery wasn't that strong. I'm not saying there's no passion in it, I'm saying they didn't have as much skill then as they do now and that the technology they have at their disposal is so far beyond what they had in those days. A doodle isn't really an insult, a doodle is art that lacks finesse, and that is the exact case with CoC. I respect the album for what it is, but I can't say with any confidence that I'd prefer to listen to Carnival of Carnage over Mighty Death Pop. That's not to say I wouldn't listen to the album at all, give me CoC over 99% of what's up on the Billboard any day.