Revisited this one and I'm still a bit mixed on it. Elegy, Curse, Brain Dead and Chandelier are great. Judgement Day and Evil Eyes are solid as well. The rest makes me believe they don't do pop metal consistently well yet. Everything Ends and Broken MIrror are devoid of personality and remind me of the worst parts on The Classic Symptoms. Whiplash, Seeing Red, Landmines and Blackhole are catchy, I'll give them that, but are so generic as well. Some of the stadium metal moments and the attempts at heaviness are so corny they take me out of it and I end up painfully reminiscing about Hollow Crown or Daybreaker instead lol. For Those That Wish To Exist remains my favorite out of their alt metal era. I hope they can at least put out a body of work with that consistency again.
I admittedly love the new record perhaps more than any of them in their new stadium metal sound, and I can tell you every track, especially “Everything Ends” went fucking OFF in the live show I was at. The crowd was howling along. Meanwhile, Royal Beggars gets a lot of mumbles and fans going to grab another drink. They’re just a different band now, but it’s not a bad thing.
That’s the worst news possible. I actually enjoyed the new album for the most part. However, “Everything Ends” was easily the most derivative, bright beige song on there. Now they’ll only be encouraged to go further in that direction.
Checked some of this out and god it really is one of the most limp and uninspired, predictable rock records of the year. Hollow Crown it is fucking not. Also yeah this band are terrible people too, genuinely embarrassing all round.
they have at this point been out of ideas across multiple styles ever since tom's passing. it's sad when the opening run of their career was so varied and mostly kept up a high bar of quality, even when the fans rejected it (here and now), but i almost feel like that backlash conditioned them to never want to stray from their bubble
I thought I had heard every single song but it's my first time hearing this All Our Gods b-side They also covered Lady Gaga on BBC Radio 1 Oddly, this alt metalified version sounds so much softer and cleaner than the original, all of its edge has been removed lol. Obviously, she's in a league of her own but I love how her vocals ramp up in the original. It just sounds limp here. Wish Sam would've done his sing-scream thing in the chorus because having it fully clean in this key makes it fall flat.
silver bullet is great. between that, the two untitled songs, and black blood/cracks in the earth, they were cooking with their bonus tracks during their later run with tom
The untitled b-sides makes me miss the post-rock influences that seemed like an essential element in their music at one point