Armor For Sleep - The Rain Museum (September 9, 2022) • Page 11

Have to say, I still think it’s one of the best artworks that I’ve seen on an album in recent years. Simple, but very powerful.

 

I got my clear splatter yesterday but haven’t opened it up yet - will post a pic later

 

Wasn’t my favorite variant but it is pretty!

 

Hot take: This is their best album.

 

Not a hot take at all. WTDWYAD beats this by a hair for me.

 

I think it's close to their best. I think the albums is a bit front loaded though. Rather Drown to the end is lacking a bit of variety.

 

Definitely my 2nd favorite album behind WTDWYAD, but I haven't spent much time with it since release day and WTDWYAD has WAY too many memories tied to it for me to overrule that any time soon.

 

I haven’t listened to WTDWYAD in a long while and didn’t connect to it as much as others. I feel like that album was front loaded but maybe just remember the fyi ray half more, who knows.

For me, it’s increasingly likely that “New Rainbows” is my favorite song by them, so the new album at least brought me that (and likely at least “second favorite album” by them if not #1 if I did a discography run)

 

WTDWYAD is one of my goat albums, and at the same time the content is so heavy and personal I can't even listen to it without going to a dark place.

 

Saw the band in Baltimore tonight. I was surprised a fair amount of the crowd cleared out after Hawthorne Heights, and surprised (albeit less so) that the new songs didn’t get a big reception. They sounded incredible though. Was expecting/hoping they’d play my town and/or being your walls but still a great set list. Glad we got to hear Nightmare. Set was short though, 45 mins, no encore, shows over by 10:30. Both bands hung out at mercy afterwards, feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve seen headliners do that, felt like the old days.

 

Shocked they'd be the headliner that show. I hate to hear people cleared out. New CD is really solid, but I think like most of these bands today that went away and came back, they're nostalgia acts more than anything. Not that I hate that about it.

 

Yeah and considering how long it has been since they were actually an active band is quite a while.

 

I wish I liked the new record more but aside from like 3 tracks? It’s largely forgettable to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I like the album but honestly I don't spin it as much as my other favorite albums from last year. I didn't really connect with it lyrically and I find the last 4 tracks blend together.

Seems like Hawthorne should have been a headliner since they've maintained popularity for much longer and was definitely bigger in their hey day.

 

A 45 minute headliner set. That’s a bummer. I mean this isn’t a VFW show.

 

I was on the fence about going after seeing them last year w/ dashboard. I’m really happy I didn’t take the train into town for a 45 minute set

 

I’m guessing they were alternating who played last, though I think AFS closed the previous night too.

 

IMO, headliners with at least 3 albums should be playing 20 song sets. But like, I dunno, maybe some singers couldn’t do 20 song sets for a full tour. But, headliners should be playing longer sets. I saw Anberlin 3 nights in a row a couple months back and they played an album and then 1 or 2 songs for an encore, that was it. Very short shows. I had a great time, but also feel like 2-3 more songs each night would have vastly improved them even more for me.

 

Yea I mean cool for locals but driving 90 minutes I need a decent set. Skipped Copeland bc they only did an album plus 3. I would love a solid 18-20 Armor for Sleep set and they have the depth to do it without even touching the lesser known album.

 

I think about sets as duration rather than number of songs, but I’d say a headliner should be playing at least 90 mins assuming they physically can. Might be misremembering but I feel like that was more common when I first started going to shows. I remember shows always getting out at 11:30 rather than 11.

on a related note, HH put on a great set but we could’ve squeezed in at least 2 more songs by talking less between them lol

 

Pretty sure they wouldn't fit 2x90min long headlining sets when there's another band on the bill as well. But it does seem very short for bands that have a couple albums etc. - so sad hearing people would clear out for any of those bands, I don't understand that at all

 

I think it's not like that for all the acts of course, but you're right, which is something I pretty often don't mind at all. Still, I've got faith in bands like Spitalfield or The Starting Line to return with some new music that would actually sound fresh too.

 

For whatever reason, having really enjoyed this album the week it came out, I essentially forgot about it at the end of last year and start of this year.

Put it on this morning and all my initial impressions came flooding back, and in new colour. The chorus of How Far Apart felt like an old friend. World Burn Down, with its antagonistic lyrics, invoked a sharp bitterness I didn't quite know what to do with. The post-chorus vocal refrain on Whatever, Who Cares, so dripping with irony, the gentle delivery belying the obvious weight of feeling behind it, was almost comical. I had a horrible knot in my stomach listening to New Rainbows, without doubt the standout song, and maybe their standout song. And Spinning Through Time is such a cold way to close an album, I actually felt quite sour when it finished.

I guess I never expected a proper breakup record from this band, one so honest, even targeted. The level of sheen in the production, the vocal sound especially, which was a small bugbear of mine when it came out, now feels to me like a strength, a gentle invitation into the emotional backdrop of the album; like you have permission to treat it as a solid, completely inessential comeback record if you want, or you can lean right into the heart of it, one that's quite painful and bitter, and, in my opinion, only cathartic in an unhealthy sense. It hits upon something quite true in breakups.

There's nothing particularly fresh or new about the songwriting, their sound; the lyrics still verge on melodrama at times, Ben's still not exactly Mike Patton as a vocalist. But I find this quite affecting, and in ways that I haven't tended to get from Armor For Sleep before. And I think it might be their best.

 

I got this album on vinyl but only listened once or twice and didn't care too much for it. This motivated me to give it another listen

 

I take no blame if you still don't care for it.