Anberlin Band • Page 271

i have been a fan since ntfp, but i did not want them to "return to form." i thought the direction of the eps were great and was looking forward to more of that. i'm so sick of bands re-recording their old material, especially when you know they have the creativity and ability to put out cool new shit.

 

"Return to form" implies they weren't in form before though.

 

Oh this reminds me I haven't heard the rerecorded album in full yet, let's go

 

Kick drum!

 

Those EP's were definitely the best direction for them since the hiatus and am really sad we didn't get more of that from them. Both of those releases are encapsulated as such a cool part of my life. I remember driving on road trips listening to them as the sun set and it was just too perfect.

 

Matty isn't any good, but it is 100% about how they've handled everything with Stephen. If the announcement was, "Stephen doesn't want to tour right now, and he may not want to do recorded music moving forward either. Stephen brought Matty to us, who he knew was a huge fan, and we jived with him and he will be the singer moving forward. We know everyone loves Stephen, but let's give Matty a warm welcome, because we believe he is the best option for Anberlin moving forward" the whole thing would've been a lot easier to swallow. I wouldn't have liked it, but I would've understood that Stephen put them in an unenviable situation, and they're just trying to make a living on the road. But instead, they are super vague, troll fans online, and re-record old songs that had no business being re-recorded.

 

Just remembered that they put the re-recording on NTFP on vinyl. I could think of 100 other things to spend $30 on. Not trying to be a hater, but that original version is already perfect.

 

All this talk is making me go back to listen to Vega. I don't have a very high opinion of the EPs overall, so I probably need to become better acquainted with them since most seem to like them pretty well.

Honestly, I think I like Seven. I like Matty way more when they lean into their heavier side. It's when he's aping Stephen on the poppier stuff that I start to have a problem with him. Lyrics still suck though.

EDIT: The harmonized vocals between Stephen and Christian (I assume?) on Lacerate is really fun, wish we got more of that.

EDIT 2: Nothing Lost really bothers me and I can't put my finger on it. The chorus doesn't work for me at all. Walk Alone also isn't as bad I remember it being. Also why are the drums so compressed sounding? I don't remember this issue on the older Anberlin albums.

EDIT 3: Decoder always reminded me of another song but I could never put my finger on it. I finally realized it's Paramore's Born For This.

EDIT 4: Asking and Body Language are both great songs, but both being closer to the ballad spectrum for Anberlin (and Body Language being 5 and a half minutes!) and towards the back of the album are baffling decisions in tracklist order.

EDIT 5: I forgot Nothing More was a ballad too, man that is quite a way to end an "album", with three ballads. Middle of it had me vibing just as much as any other part of the album though, and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, lol.

Anyway. That's the end of my listen through. I realized the main songs that give me a bad impression of this release is Nothing Lost and Decoder, as well as the pacing. I think if I viewed this as a 6-8 song EP and the two Matty songs as bonus tracks, I'd have a better opinion of it.

 

i like most of Seven in spite of Matty's vocals and shitty lyricism. it's the one "new" Anberlin song i can get behind, especially since Matty only wrote the vocal parts. Chad Carouthers brought the demo to the band and they wrote around it. if they continued in that direction instead of trying to make NTFP 2.0 (and removed all that layering and pitch correction off of Matty's voice), maybe i'd feel a little bit differently about new material.

Lacerate is a top 5 Anberlin song, and i wish they'd just continue making music like that.

 

Haha. These are my two favorite songs along with Asking. They both sound like they could have come out of the Vital era to me.

But yes, the tracklist choice is baffling. I still listen with my own track order instead.

 

Listened to the EPs today again and I think any context when discussing the band’s current direction and state has to be viewed from the lens that these fucking rule and then … the backslide was immense and unexpected and completely disappointing in every way.

 

NARRATOR: “But on Chorus.fm, it wasn’t fine.”

(Cut to a trash can on fire. A brick hurtles through a storefront window in the background. We pan over to a brick wall overtaken by graffitil: “MATTY GO HOME.” The Cities siren wails in the distance.)

In all seriousness, though, I hope the Matty era of Anberlin ends up being like the Skiba era of Blink — a transitionary phase that yields some interesting output while also keeping the band alive long enough for an eventual triumphant return to form.

 

That’s a much better explanation and their recent polarizing choices like re-recording NTFP makes sense framed that way. Wish they would’ve communicated that transition as well as he does here though.

 

The Skiba era of Blink is great though.

 

apples and oranges tbh since skiba was downgrading by coming from alk3 to blink instead of the other way around like it is here

 

Side note: there are just too many podcasts/youtubers. Like how does Anberlin, a band which number one singles, end up doing a semi important interview with some guy who’s doing his first interview on his channel? I just feel like they should have more cache than this.

 

The Marty effect.

 

I always thought the choice to re-record NTFP with Matty was self-evidently a promo for the 20-year tour with him on vocal duty. I didn’t even think to look if the band had made it explicit, and if they didn’t until now, that’s very weird.

I thought so too, but I see plenty of Blink fans who shit on both California and NINE. I’ll be curious to see if opinions on Matty change once he has a chance to acclimate to the band’s writing dynamic. Taking a few lyrical pointers from Stephen wouldn’t hurt either.

Eh, that’s both subjective and irrelevant. People were judging Skiba’s output based on what they wanted from Blink, not how it stacked up to Alk3. Ditto for Matty in Anberlin. The only thing people care about is whether he can hold a candle to Stephen.

 

wouldnt say its irrelevant because people are definitely more against the premise of the memphis may fire guy being in anberlin than they were the alkaline trio guy being in blink, so the criticisms were different because it did get compared to matts contributions. one of the biggest complaints people had about california was that he was underutilized and felt like a session musician, wheras nobody is saying there isnt enough matty lol. some people were just upset it wasnt tom, sure, but it wasnt the entire fanbase like it is here

 

I don't think it's comparable at all, two singers vs one alone renders the comparison moot

 

Oh, I fully grant you that I think Skiba had more overall goodwill with the Blink fanbase than Matty has with the Anberlin fanbase, but I don’t think that distinguishes them to the level of “apples and oranges.” It’s more like a Honeycrisp apple versus a Granny Smith apple. Do you hate Granny Smith so much that you won’t touch the fruit salad it’s in? Do you want to keep the chef in business until he can get another Honeycrisp shipment in? (This metaphor had officially been overextended and I apologize for that.)

Sure, it’s not 1:1, but moot? In both situations, this was the prevailing sentiment: “I like this band based on the output created by its classic lineup. A key member has now left and been replaced by someone from another successful band. I am concerned that the new member will not bring the same level of value to the band or change its artistic direction in undesirable ways. I continue to hope the original member will be in a position to eventually rejoin, but in the meantime, I’m questioning whether the band means the same thing to me in its new incarnation and how much I feel like supporting/patronizing it going forward.” That’s all I meant with the comparison.

 

And Marty doesn't play guitar or contribute on that front either, as far as I know

 

Doesn’t that make them more 1:1? Skiba replaced Tom (guitar/vox) to the same degree Martholomew replaced Stephen (just vox).

 

Oh... yeah. Tbf the nicknames are so distracting I can't keep up with the argument lol