Funny timing, I just pulled my boxset out last week and looked at the booklet for the first time in probably 5 years I just pulled my boxset out last week and looked at the booklet for the first time in probably 5 years
If you have ~$300 you can buy the boxset on discogs. I'm so sad I sold mine when they were hinting at a reunion. It just took up so much space and I knew that they were going to release more material.
somehow the video makes it worse EDIT: I don't know how to properly put this into words, but for some reason the lyrics to this song come across more... cringey with Meaty singing them.
in another timeline where Stephen was still the primary and only vocalist, i wouldn't be opposed to hearing what NTFP would sound like with 2025 production and mixing. but Matty sounds very stale on the new version of A Day Late. instruments and mixing sounds decent, but this is not good.
i guess i would just take new material over re-records 100 percent of the time edit: i don't really want either with matty, and can't see myself listening to any material with him as the primary vocalist
if the band was doing something musically-interesting, sure, but for all intents and purposes, it sounds like all future music with Matty is gonna be derivative of older Anberlin.
damn copium got me thinking we'd at least get new material with Stephen, but since it sounds like we aren't, i'm probably gonna tune out for the foreseeable future
lol it wasn't copium tho!! it was the band's own communication on the subject! they are gaslighting us!
The only net positive I can see in releasing a record with matty on vocals would be ushering in a bunch of Memphis May Fire fans into the fold and getting a bump in fans at this point in their career. I’m sure MMF fans that aren’t familiar with anberlin would check this out and dig it. I bet this was relatively inexpensive to do with Matty in his own home studio. I was never a big fan of this era in the first place. I lean toward the later, weirder stuff. Super not into this or interested to listen to a full release of Matty vocals. Still intrigued to hear a full length from Matty and would be shocked if this goes on longer than a couple of years before Stephen makes a triumphant return.
The only people I've seen that like any of this are Memphis May Fire fans ... but that band already exists? I dunno, I don't get this at all.
So fucking weird, absolutely weird. Like... if this was Memphis May Fire, or Matty solo, covering an Anberlin song I would just think... it's fine, boring, never will think about it again. But since it's actually "Anberlin" it's just a lesser version of what exists, so weird. I thought I would hate it more, but it's mostly just ambivalence and completly forgettable. That bridge is horrible though
this seems like...a miscalculation. i had never heard MMF or Matty before any of this Anberlin stuff, so I dont have a lot of the baggage with him that a lot of people on here seem to have....so that said, i actually dont think it sounds that bad personally, but also...why do we need this?
lol I REALLY don’t like Memphis May Fire or any of the heavy bands that have a really polished sound, and when I saw the announcement I was horrified, but it’s been better than expected and the attitudes of all the members seems to be working for them keeping the train going. I have 0 emotional attachment to the era they’re celebrating though so I can’t resonate with how annoying it would be to hear another singer doing a less compelling take on a record I love. the closest parallel I can think of is when blink did the enema tour and released that video mashup with lil wayne.
you're right re: communication, but there was at least a little bit of copium on my end re: new material with Matty on it. i wasn't that familiar with MMF or his solo work before all of this, but what i heard i wasn't a fan of. i figured if he was gonna sing on recorded material (which i didn't want), he'd at least be semi-passable if they dialed down the vocal processing and didn't just resort to sounding like his favorite era of the band. but aside from Seven (which i actually didn't hate in spite of the odd lyrics - it was at least musically interesting, and his vocals on that track are better than the other Anberlin songs he's sang on), that hasn't really happened and probably isn't gonna happen. if they had to use Matty, they could've marketed the band as a six piece, had him do harsh vocals or BGVs only on recorded material, and it would've been okay. but they've more or less indicated that for the foreseeable future they're more interested in making music that sounds like Stephen's tenure without Stephen. i get that the intention was to give listeners something familiar with a personnel change, but it's just been jarring for the most part, and the more they push in that direction (especially given their shift from the direction they were headed with the other 10 EP/Vega tracks), the less interested i am.