Bring Me the Horizon - That's the Spirit [Review]

Genre: metalcore, hard rock, nu metal

The title of the British ex-metalcore group's Bring Me the Horizon's new album, "That's The Spirit", almost suggests some sort of cheeriness. Since, as I mentioned, they used to be pretty heavy metalcore (the remnants of that are still apparent, but they've definitely softened up since 2013's "Sempiternal", which itself was less heavy than their previous works), "cheeriness" is not a word you'd expect to hear in connection with their music. And, indeed, the title is misleading, as in the title of single "Happy Song", which is most definitely not a happy song, being a conglomerate of horribly depressing thoughts that can be willed away by singing "a little fucking louder to a happy song". This is all backed by a drop tuned headbanging riff that slams home every time it hits. 

The three lead singles are packed together back to back to back, with "Happy Song" immediately followed by "Throne", and then "True Friends". The first two of these are two of the best songs on the album, a curious phenomenom that often leads to a very mediocre album. Not so here, since the rest of the album lives up to those two tracks excellently. "Throne" is reminiscent of "Sempiternal" opener "Can You Feel My Heart", with an electronica influenced riff and innate hugeness in the already massive hook. "True Friends" has a rather grating melody, absolutely terrible lyrics, and a riff that's pretty similar to "Happy Song", though there's a lot of emotion in it, and the riff is pretty great. It also contains some screaming, as does "Happy Song" and a few others, so they haven't totally abandoned metalcore, just moved away a little. People on metalcore forums like to say they've gone "full pop", which is absolutely ridiculous, because maybe 1 or 2 of the songs on this album would be considered anything resembling pop by 99.99% of the general population. It's still a very heavy record, just not bone-crushingly brütal. 

"Follow You" is a powerful ballad, the poppiest track on the record, and one of the best. Lots of emotion to be had here as Oli Sykes tells an unknown person "you can drag me through Hell, if it meant I could hold your hand". "What You Need" marches on with a rumbling, rolling bassline, and continues the larger than life, awe inspiring choruses that can be found all throughout the album. "Avalanche" invokes an avalanche in its slamming synths and drums. A rerecording of year old single "Drown", retitled "Drown (New)" is mostly the same as the old version, with the same power. "Blasphemy" has one of the hardest rocking choruses on the album, and "Oh No" closes out the album with a pulsating synth bassline and a sax solo, bringing it all to an oddly dance-y flawless landing. 

Overall the album is very, very, strong, despite its panning by the metalcore community. While it may not be metalcore, if taken as it is, it's a really damn good hard rock record, and I think "That's the Spirit" deserves more credit for what it is, which it's actually getting in most critical reviews outside of very small sectors.  I know I've had it on repeat many times since it came out, and I'll continue that. 

Two tracks with spirit: "Throne", "Blasphemy"

Overall score: 82/100

The Wonder Years - No Closer to Heaven [Review]

The Wonder Years- No Closer to Heaven

Genre: pop punk

This album is incredible. I usually save that for the end of the review, but this album is too good, too perfectly formed, for me to be able to reasonably review the majority of the record without the readers going into it knowing already that I absolutely love it. Now that I've got that out of the way, I like The Wonder Years. "Suburbia" is an excellent album, and "The Greatest Generation" is very good one. In the pop punk realm, I believe they occupy a second tier along with bands like All Time Low, below the legends tier of Green Day and Fall Out Boy, but still excellent. So I was reasonably excited to hear this record, especially after the singles ("Cardinals" and "Cigarettes & Saints" had me hooked). In a week where new albums by Iron Maiden, The Dear Hunter, and FIDLAR were released, TWY definitely had to fight to be noticed, and boy, did they pull it off or what. 

From the reverb drenched chords and post-rock-esque tremolo picking of "Brothers &", this is something special. The crowd chants "we're no saviors, if we can't save our brothers", a quote that shows up again a few times. The song builds up before dropping into the infectious opening clean riff of "Cardinals", which explodes into one of the most powerful and intense songs I've ever heard (and the second most powerful and intense song on the album), coupled with a chorus that worms its way into your brain for a long while, before returning to the crowd's refrain and some more tremolo picking before slamming to a stop in the form of "A Song For Patsy Cline". If we're looking for emotive melodies, we found it. The verse of this song is just serenely gorgeous, but do they sustain it? No, that would be too easy. Instead, Soupy and co. slam into one of the heaviest riffs in pop punk as hard as they can, before returning to that verse melody. But wait: there's more. The chorus is an explosion of frantic arpeggios as Soupy howls "It's hard to watch you walk away", before the main riff returns. This song is really just something else. I can't quite put it into words in a way that captures it, all I can say is that you have to listen to it. It's amazing. 

Might TWY decide to follow up that one-two punch with one of the weaker songs, just to hide it and hope no one notices? Well, strictly speaking, they do, with the single "I Don't Like Who I Was Then". But one of the weaker songs on the record is one of the stronger songs of the year still, and it's the most hurried song on the album, really strongly punk. And then? Oh, and then you get punched in the face with a glass fist of emotion. This is "Cigarettes & Saints". "Cigarettes & Saints" is... something else. In one word? It's powerful. Soupy's lament for a missing friend just overflows with pain and regret, with every word threatening to crack with tears, but he holds steady. He stays strong, even on lines like "now you walk with Jesus, so the drugs that took your life aren't gonna cause you any pain". It all adds up to one of the most poignant and perfect, goose-bump inducing experiences of 2015, almost a threat to take over Steven Wilson's "3 Years Older" as the best song of the year. 

Any song would have trouble following that up, and "The Bluest Things on Earth" is no exception. With a distinct lack of a hook, and not much else going on, it doesn't leave much of an imprint, which is fine because you're probably still in shock from the last song. "A Song for Ernest Hemingway" opens with some very nice harmonies, and goes into a good song. Not much else to say about it. "Thanks for the Ride" addresses a "Hannah", thanking her for the good times while pleading her not to leave, over a earworm of bendy riff. "Stained Glass Ceilings" has something in it's downtuned and downtempo intro that strikes a chord, and a passionate feature from letlive.'s Jason Butler, followed by two emotive (they all are, really) tracks of regret.

The grand finale, "Palm Reader" features a similar bending riff to "Thanks for the Ride" but with some more emotion added in for good measure, and a slower chorus where Soupy proclaims he's going to "clear (his) throat and speak out unafraid", giving off a lot of Gerard Way vibes vocally, which fits with the very emo-punk feeling of this album, there's definitely an abundance of My Chemical Romance influence. This is a fitting bang to go out on, before the calm-after-the storm-epilogue in the soft vocals, acoustic guitar, and electric piano of the title track, "No Closer to Heaven", which is also the closing line of the album, and definitely the leading theme. 

The heavy religious undertone helps the feel of the album, and it feels like an album, which the single most important factor in album making. This record is a fantastic and cohesive set of fantastic songs, and I can't wait for more as soon as I can get my hands on it. Despite this, it's only number 3 on my year list, because 2015 is the nest year for music I can ever remember, and it's borne THREE bona fide masterpieces (Steven Wilson's "Hand. Cannot. Erase" and Between the Buried & Me's "Coma Ecliptic", in that order). And it's not over yet. The Wonder Years have exceeded high expectations and crafted a masterpiece of a record, and no one should ignore it. 

Two songs that bring me closer to heaven: "Cigarettes & Saints" and "A Song for Patsy Cline"

Overall score: 84/100

Halsey - Badlands [Review]

Halsey- Badlands

Genre- pop

Note: I reviewed the standard edition, as I do with reviews. The deluxe is what was pushed mostly and seems to be how Halsey planned it out to go, but I have to review the standard, just because it's the standard. The deluxe is what I recommend buying though, it's got a few more songs and the existing songs are swapped around a little. 

Halsey is in an odd state of being ridiculously famous, and yet no one has ever heard of her. She's insanely popular in some places, and almost nonexistent in others. I saw her this year in an arena opening (as the first act on a 3 act bill) for Imagine Dragons and Metric, and yet, judging by the sheer volume and adoration of the comments on her Instagram posts (mostly from people who, very creepily, like to call her "mom", often in all caps and with repeated letters), she could easily fill a good sized venue anywhere in the country. Interestingly, the split of popularity tends to be on the pop side, the VMA side. I say this is interesting because (along with twenty one pilots of artists from that scene), she's really good. Like, really good. The control she has over her voice is absolutely insane. The songwriting is good, and the voice is incredible. Her 5-song EP from last year, "Room 93" contains all high quality songs, one of which made it on to "Badlands" ("Ghost"), with another ("Hurricane") on the deluxe version, and another of which did not, but is my personal favorite ("Empty Gold"). 

On "Badlands", she sounds mostly the same as on "Room 93", which is understandable considering they came out less than a year apart and feature a couple of the same songs. It's also fine, since an extended "Room 93" is something people have been waiting for ever since the EP came out. The opening track, "Castle", is one that was not available as a recording before the album's release, but one Halsey has been playing live for a while (including the show I saw, where she opened with it). It has a powerful hook, and gets stuck in your head. It also displays the forcefulness in her voice, low, powerful, completely under control at all times. It moves into two of the pre album releases, lead single "Hold Me Down" and fan favorite "New Americana". "Hold Me Down" is one of my favorites from the album, with a hook slightly borrowed from Panic! At the Disco's "Miss Jackson", but it redeems through pure force, backed with lyrics that paint a vaguely creepy picture. We move on to lyrics of a less… subtle nature on "New Americana". The music is the best it's been on the album, her voice is on point, the chorus is ridiculously catchy, and the song absolutely destroys live. The lyrics leave something to be desired ("we are the new americana, high on legal marijuana". Bonus points for being topical, I guess.) but I've always cared far more about the music, with lyrics as a far secondary concern. 

"Drive" introduces itself with an absolutely gorgeous synth line, that continues through beautiful vocal melodies, and a nice, if slightly jarring acoustic guitar joining in the chorus. I only say jarring, because as far as I can tell, it's the only traditional instrumentation found anywhere on the album. It's all synths and drum machines, which only warrants mention because of how much that goes against everything I usually listen to, which is mostly metal (which, admittedly, does use a drum machine occasionally, looking at Meshuggah) and harder rock. And yet, I love it. "Roman Holiday" is a nice ballad, and "Colors" is fantastic, with the exception of the spoken word bridge, which is grating, and the clunky lyrics don't help it. Forcing *way* too many colors in there, even for a song called "Colors". 

"Colors" is followed up by two solid tracks, "Coming Down", a slow ballad, and "Haunting" which has a memorable autotune opening. After those? "Control", easily one of the better songs on the album. Halsey kind of sounds like an über angry, terrifying, less immediate Taylor Swift here. This is followed by "Young God", which is frankly incredibly boring. Other than the shock value of dropping the f-bomb out of nowhere, nothing interesting comes out of the song. The album closes out with "Ghost", which is short, sweet, and one of the most beautiful songs of the year. It hits all the right places and brings the album to a smooth landing. 

Overall, the record isn't a masterpiece, but it's an extremely solid debut and shows a lot of promise for future releases from Halsey, who I'm predicting to easily be an A-list famous star by the release of her next album, she's on the rise and she is not coming down. At least hopefully she'll be headlining over Metric. 

Overall score: 76/100

Two songs from the Goodlands: "Control" and "Ghost"

Grab Bag for 8/21

Yes, it's very late

Grab Bag 8/21

So this is the Grab Bag. I do full reviews of 2 albums a week, the ones I'm most excited for, but there's always a couple more that interest me. So there'll be little mini-reviews of two more albums each week here in the grab bag. 

Carly Rae Jepsen- Emotion [synthpop]

This is pretty far outside of my usual territory, but the good people over at /r/recordreviews voted it highly and it's been getting positive reviews, so I felt I should take a listen. I was underwhelmed. It's certainly not bad, but it absolutely suffers from every song sounding the same, and it gets very tiring about 4 songs in. Some songs suffer a little from lyrics ("I really really really really really like you"), but there's a often nice catchy melody to counteract it. The saxophone that opens the opener, "Run Away With Me", is the best moment on the album, and it's part of the best song by far.  "All That" and "Making the Most of the Night" are also highlights, while "I Really Like You" stands out for catchiness, but it feels like too much of a hollow attempt at another "Call Me Maybe" to be great. The album is a lot of decent repetitive pop music with occasional flashes of something more, but it's a tiring listen due to lack of variety. 

Best song: "Run Away With Me"

Overall Score: 68/100

The Royal Concept- Smile (EP) [indie pop]

The new EP from the second Swedish band of the week is an EP. Which means it's short, which means I don't have much time to get sick of what I'm hearing. Since it doesn't offer me the time, I'm not sure if I would like this as an album, but as an EP, it's very enjoyable. I swear I've heard "Smile" (the song) somewhere. I can't tell if I actually have, or if it's just that kind of song. It's very catchy, and as the title promises, it puts a smile on your face. Some of the lyrics are lovably terrible, such as "I'll step on a grenade so you can see I'm the bomb". I don't know how you come up with that, but I like it a lot. "Fashion" is incredibly catchy, and again the wordplay creeps in. "Higher Than Love" is engaging, but it also gives me the feeling of having heard it before, and this time I know where it came from: the opening tag is straight out of LCD Soundsystem's "Dance Yrself Clean". The chorus is catchy, and that tag barely shows up, so the song still gets a passing score, especially once the guitar line comes into the bridge. The remaining two tracks are both incredibly catchy, and also reasonably fresh sounding, especially "Hurricane", which will never leave your head. Ever. Royal Concept have created an engaging EP that's gained them a new semi-fan, and I'm excited to hear more. 

Best song: "Hurricane"

Overall Score: 78/100

Royal Headache- High [Review]

Royal Headache- High

Buy: Official Website 

Genre: punk, garage rock

Apparently, this week's theme is "Bands whose members don't have real names". Papa Emeritus (from Ghost, who I reviewed in my last review) and Royal Headache's Shogun are two of a select few nameless frontmen who are currently trending upwards in the rock world. Royal Headache's new album "High", just came out, three years after their self titled debut, and it gives us 29 more too short minutes of insanely catchy punk nuggets, or, in some cases, insanely catchy slow burning ballads. 

The album starts with a quick punk song and ends with a quick punk song, and hits many things in between, mostly different variations of quick punk songs. This works more often than not, making a cohesive set of songs without suffering from too much similarity. While almost all of the songs come and go in a flash (the longest, bass-anchored ballad "Wouldn't You Know", is still only 4:17), they leave a lasting mark. "My Own Fantasy" opens the album with a look at how different rock 'n' roll life actually is from how a kid in a garage with a practice amp might imagine it to be. "Need You" follows in short order, a Hüsker Dü-esque punk jam featuring an organ adding a nice sense of urgency to an already urgent sounding song. Shogun's repeated cry of "need you, need you, need you" is brilliantly restrained yet desperate. The title track, "High" is another love song, which is what most of the songs here are, and they all hit it spot on. "High"'s primary melody is a bit grating at first, but I grew to enjoy it on repeated listens. 

The bass shines throughout this record. I can't find the bassist's name anywhere, but he does a fantastic job of underscoring every song with a rumbling counterpoint to the somewhat restrained guitars. If there's one thing this record is missing, it's some punch in the guitar sound. I've never been a fan of lo-fi for this reason, I like my guitars (and bass and drums for that matter) to sound massive. This sounds small, like it was recorded in a garage, which I'm sure is exactly what they were going for, it's just not my cup of tea. I do like the spots where the guitars should be more restrained, and are, such as on "Wouldn't You Know", which is definitely a highlight of the album. 

Shogun's vocals don't lack any punch, though, and his range (dynamically, not note range) is outlined brilliantly in the differences between the back to back to back to back  punch of his howl on "Another World", his soulful croon of "Wouldn't You Know" and his sneer followed by his scream on the ferocious "Garbage", which has one of the better basslines I've heard this year. 

Overall, Royal Headache have created a very solid garage punk album, with occasional moments of brilliance and no standout disappointments. Every song will get stuck in your head relentlessly, and it won't come out until you go and listen to the record again. It's short, why not?

Two tracks that get me high: "Wouldn't You Know" and "Garbage"

Overall score: 75/100

Ghost- Meliora [Review]

Ghost- Meliora

Listen: Spotify 

Buy: Official Store, iTunes

Genre: Heavy metal, doom metal, hard rock

Who else was psyched for the newest release from everyone's favorite Satanic theatrical classic heavy metal band whose members don't have names? I know I was! Ghost (also known as Ghost BC for copyright reasons) is a Swedish metal band that sounds as if Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, and post-Watershed Opeth had a beautiful, faux Satanic baby. Their status as "metal" is contested by some metalheads, but I've seen metalheads contest Between the Buried and Me's status as "metal", so we can pretty safely say they have no idea what they're talking about. While Ghost clearly aren't nearly as heavy as bands like BTBAM, they're heavy, and what really matters: they're good. Their first two albums, 2010's "Opus Eponymous" and 2013's "Infestissumam" (the titles of which should give you a solid grip on what kind of band this is), were excellent and received a lot of well deserved praise and attention (including from Dave Grohl, who has actually played with the band), but "Meloria", just released this past week blows both of them out of the water. Papa Emeritus (the lead singer, in his third incarnation) and the Nameless Ghouls (the rest of the band. Seriously.) take classic doom metal, occult lyrics, and pop melodies and merge them into something truly impressive. 

From the opening bell and synth, "Spirit" sounds like the soundtrack to some metaled out Halloween special. It also sounds like it came straight out of the late 70s, in a good way. And finally, as with most Ghost songs, it sounds like *pop*. The incredibly catchy melodies to every song (most notably penultimate track "Absolution") stick in your head and never leave. Papa Emeritus and co. keep both the crunchy riffs and the catchy hooks coming, often at the same time, as in highlight "Cirice", which opens with an Opeth-esque acoustic guitar section that builds with drums and synths before exploding into one of the heaviest riffs this side of "War Pigs" as Papa howls over it "Can you hear the thunder? Can you hear the thunder that's breaking?", before flipping it in the back half of the song to respond "I can feel the thunder! I can feel the thunder that's breaking in your heart."

An acoustic guitar riff that can only be described as beautiful runs opens and runs throughout "He Is", which is basically a Christian rock song, except with the key difference of being dedicated to... Satan. This ain't your mommy's metal. If your mommy listens to metal. She probably doesn't. But if she does, this isn't it. 

Weak points are rare to nonexistent here, the closest we get is the chuggy and downright creepy "Mummy Dust" and the rather forgettable "From the Pinnacle to the Pit", both of which are actually really great. The two interludes "Spöksonat" and "Devil Church" both do their job effectively without making too much of a mark, while the overtly classic rock influenced "Majesty" and the catchy—if slightly overlong—closer "Deus In Absentia" both rock. That sounds over-simplistic, but it's the most accurate way to describe them and the album as a whole. This album ROCKS. 

"Meloria" has already worked its way into my top 10 list of 2015, and while it may not remain there (we've still got new stuff from the Wonder Years, TesseracT, and Kanye West among others coming), it's an extremely enjoyable record. And remember, don't take Ghost too seriously (they sure as hell don't take themselves seriously). Just take it in and make sure to headbang and tell your friends about it. 

Two tracks that might turn you to the side of the Satanic Pope: "Cirice" and "Absolution".  

Overall score: 81/100

Valiska- Repetitions [Review]

Valiska- Repetitions

Genre: ambient, drone, noise

Listen: Bandcamp

As much as I listen to music, I rarely make other associations with it. Generally, when I think of a song, I hear the music, and I see the album artwork. So you can imagine my surprise as throughout the opening trio of tracks of the Calgary based ambient and drone project Valiska's "Repetitions", actual words started popping into my head to describe the music. In the back half of opener "Clearing", with its sparse droning sounds (I can't identify the instrument) the word that came to mind was "serene". While that may seem like an obvious thing to say about a peaceful ambient album, it really does describe the complete feeling of peacefulness that rides over you as you take in the sounds. However, it doesn't seem that "Clearing" has enough steam in the way of ideas to justify its 7:49 runtime. It closes out on a whimper, with some reversed piano, a sound that recurs throughout the record, but without building on the previous repetitions. Judging by the title of the record, the recurring instrumentation was probably intended as a theme, but overall it doesn't do much other than be kind of boring by the end. 

This isn't to say there aren't a few high points. "Glide" which opens with a gorgeous piano line and steadily builds with a type of low horn (french horn, maybe?) providing a very nice counterpoint. The climax of the track features an organ coming in and what it brings with it is chaos. The pieces don't slide together musically, and I'm not sure if it works or not. It's calming and disconcerting at the same time, which is an interesting combination, and one I'm not sure I like. The outro of "Dawn" has a similar effect, with a pulsating bassline that doesn't seem to be exactly in the scale (if there is one) of what's going on with the rest of the song. "Held" has a nice opening organ line, but again devolves into a chaotic sort of half enjoyable/half confusing mess. 

The rest of the album doesn't have much to talk about. It's not bad for background music, but it doesn't demand much attention and it gets pretty boring by the middle of the album, which isn't even particularly long (41 minutes). The chaos doesn't do much for me, the calm parts are either gorgeous or boring, with little in between. 

While it sounds like I hate the album, I definitely didn't, and in fact upon first listening, I enjoyed it. Admittedly, that first listen was while I was also helping to install an air conditioner, so the music was background music, and it didn't stand up on a more concentrated second listen. 

Overall verdict is that while it has nice moments, and overall is a nice listen, it doesn't demand attention, and I can tag it with the damning "background music" label. I may even come back and listen to it more, but after a couple of listens, it doesn't stand up. 

Two tracks I've had on repetition: "Glide" and "Escape"

Overall album score: 56/100

Amy comments or suggestions are completely welcome, you can comment here or email me at sdsweeney56@gmail.com. Music suggestions or your own music you'd like me to review you can also semd there. Thanks for reading!

Fall Out Boy- Take This To Your Grave [Album of the Week]

Fall Out Boy- Take This To Your Grave

   Here's something I'm starting because I've been more interested in writing about (and writing) music recently. Every weekend I'll have my album of the week on here and probably some other places as well, with an indepth track by track review of the album. This week's album is "Take This to Your Grave", Fall Out Boy's 2003 debut album. (yes, it's their debut. EOWYG doesn't count). Wikipedia classifies it as pop-punk and melodic hardcore. You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/6ULqIJ3p0RU. Fall Out Boy is Andy Hurley on drums, Patrick Stump on guitar and vocals, Joe Trohman on guitar, and Pete Wentz on bass and screams (for the early albums). Pete also writes most of the lyrics. 

 

   They announce their presence quickly on the opener "Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today" with some slamming chords and then a very nice octave progression, a precursor to how often they use octave slides throughout their entire body of work.  Fairly immature lyrics from Pete, but it was early (he was 24) and they're pretty funny, especially the way Patrick delivers them. His voice was still pretty nasally (more stereotypically pop-punk sounding) at this point, though he clearly has the chops that he's been refining ever since (check out their latest "American Beauty/American Psycho", especially the songs "Novocaine" and "Centuries". He's got PIPES). 

   In the next song, "Dead on Arrival", the "record" motif pops up for the first time in the catalog, in the chorus here, which they love using later on, as evidenced by "I've Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Ides That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth" from 2005's "From Under the Cork Tree" and "Favorite Record" from "American Beauty/American Psycho". This song gets incredibly repetitive, but that's something a lot of pop punk debut records suffer from, and even later records from some of the less original bands out there *cough*Blink-182*cough*. 

   Moving on from unfounded hatred on derivatively terrible bands, we move on to the next song, the classic, the one everyone knows: "Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy". The one non "Saturday" song from this album they've played at almost every live show post-hiatus. Except, of course, the tour I saw, because why would they? My own annoyance at setlists aside, this is truly one of the greatest pop punk songs ever written, from that opening a capella (which Patrick was opposed to, I think we're all glad he went with it) to the quick power chords from Joe, to Pete's rumbling bass. Iconic, really.

   "Saturday". Fall Out Boy loves this song, and I'm not entirely sure why. Don't get me wrong, it's a great song, but it's not a "close every show for the rest of our career with it" level great song. Maybe that honor should've gone to "Grand Theft Autumn". Pete does provide some really great screams in the background, which he does quite a bit on this album and the next two, with a bonus 2 line appearance on "West Coast Smoker" from 2008's "Folie á Deux". I like them, though I'm a big metal fan, so screams/growls/screeches don't bother me much anymore. I used to hate 'em though, don't ask about the first time I heard a Black Crown Initiate song... 

   Entering the middle of albums, especially pop punk ones, can always be a risky business. "Homesick at Space Camp", the next track, is decent, but nothing extraordinary. It kind of passes by without much ado. I will say that the bridge, with it's "these friends are, new friends are golden" refrain is very nice and can definitely hit close to home for a lot of the angsty pop punk crowd (including myself). The lull doesn't last, as the following song (with the charming title of "Sending Postcards From a Plane Crash (Wish You Were Here)") wastes no time in introducing itself with more angst: "I am such a sucker, and I'm always the last to know". While we're on the topic of words, let's  take a second to memoralize pre-hiatus Fall Out Boy song titles. This one especially is up there with my personal favorites. It gets the point across perfectly, as do the lyrics, which again, fit perfectly in to many angsty teenagers lives, again including mine. Pete Wentz definitely has a gift for capturing certain things in his lyrics that manifested itself later in spades, but here there are occasional glimpses of the genius. Bonus points here go to the slightly bluesy breakdown and solo. 

   The next song, which some post-hiatus fans may recognize from a more recent song, "Chicago Is So Two Years Ago" also passes relatively without notice, other than the bridge section, which was sampled ten years later on Fall Out Boy's own "Save Rock and Roll". It's not even that great of a melody, though the way Pete's bass comes in under it is pretty cool. It does have a very cool ending transition (I'm a sucker for song transistions) to my favorite song on the album, "The Pros and Cons of Breathing" which starts off with a ridiculously and surprisingly emotive chord progression, flows into a catchy verse, and then makes it's way into Pete's most relatable chorus yet: "I want to hate you half as much as I hate myself". While they don't fit in musically as well with bands like My Chemical Romance and Panic! at the Disco, just listening to some of their early lyrics (and looking at early Pete Wentz, who brings the screams back here) it's easy to see how they got slammed with the "emo" label, which unfortunately tends to also shut most of the critical public off on them, as well as the other two bands I mentioned, who are both very solid bands (MCR slightly moreso than Panic!).

   Fall Out Boy started their career off in the Chicago hardcore scene, which wasn't particularly acceptive of their more melodic and poppy direction. Here in "Grenade Jumper" they tribute their biggest and "only friend" whose name is -surprise!- Chris. It follows a pretty standard pattern for songs on this album (and many other pop punk songs, and I'm guilty of this as well on a couple songs) with the bar or two of one instrument to start before the entire band slams in together, but it has heart. We're entering the last parts of the album now, which can be another dead spot, and unfortunately they fall victim to it. They got through the middle with solid music, but as we enter here? The next song here is "Calm Before the Storm" and I'll be honest, before it came up on my listen through of the album to write this thing, I completely forgot this song existed. Listening to it again, it's not hard to see why. It has no real hook, and I can't remember the chorus melody while I'm literally still listening to the song. Some Pete screams come in to try to salvage it, but they can't really do much. This is a pretty short album (39 minutes), but I think overall it would've been better without this song. The next song's title ("Reinventing the Wheel to Run Myself Over") is promising, but it's another letdown. One of the best lines of the album in "18 going on extinct" is here in this song, but there's not much of a hook, and while the chord progression is decent, it's nothing really special. They definitely hit a late in the album slump here, but it's ok because "The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes" is here. This has one of the best introductions in Fall Out Boy's catalog (odd since it closes the album) and a rather big sense of urgency and weight helps bring the album to a nice close, along with a great hook that makes you forget those last two songs ever even happened. Let's not ignore the absolutely gorgeous scream that leads into the last chorus, and the heaviness in the final chord that leaves you wanting nothing but more. 

      Overall a very good album. A couple of missteps, but nothing too terrible, and as pop-punk songs, they're gone pretty quickly and you can get to the next journey. If you don't know Fall Out Boy, check 'em out on Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, etc. and go see shows and such. They're one of my favorite bands, so I hope you guys like them. 

If you liked this album, you may enjoy: Paramore, My Chemical Romance, All American Rejects

Top pair: The Pros and Cons of Breathing, Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy

Album score: 68/100

I hope everyone enjoyed reading, if you have any comments on the album or the review, please comment and tell me. Next week I'll be writing about Muse's "The 2nd Law", so stick around for that. If you have any suggestions for an album I should review, please tell me and thanks for reading!

Mission Statement

Hey, I'm Simon. I'm in high school, I live in Pittsburgh, etc. On here I'm basically just going to randomly select an album I like every week, and write an in depth review of it, usually track by track.  New Album of the Week posts'll usually go up every weekend. Every post will have suggestions for similar artists at the bottom, as well as the two best songs from the album (Top Pair) and an overall score. 

In addition, I'll have 2-5 shorter reviews up every week for brand new albums that week.

That's basically it, I hope everyone enjoys the reviews. I'm always open for suggestions of music I should check out, so please comment here or on Instagram @sdsweeney56.