second listen is definitely better than the last, but not by a whole lot. oddly enough, i think i like All Out a tiny bit less than my first runthrough. Ritual is still the best song on here.
I probably just went in to the record with expectations for a Prada record with some interesting guitar and breakdowns and more Mike, even if like songs like Twenty-Five, Trapped, or songwriting like Noise from Color Decay. That type of song shows up occasionally, namely Where the Flowers, and When You’re Gone. Now, if my expectations were pop metalcoreish album I would be very happy. It is a pretty good pop heavy- adjacent record. Super catchy and predictable which under right circumstances is what I want. I just don’t want a Prada record to sound like that since they have proven to be such better and more dynamic song writers
So far my favorite tracks are: "All Out," "When You're Gone," and "The Silence." I think I enjoy the back half of this album more than the first half. It's a decent step down from Color Decay imo, but I think I'll still spin this a bit.
Ugh, I HATE when bands take this approach. Architects did it too (there’s probably more examples I can’t recall) and it’s always struck me the wrong way and comes across as immature.
Here’s the hidden track: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1A5bUn1tQZ/?mibextid=wwXIfr insane how heavy/silly it is
Especially when in both cases, the sound change isn't *the* problem. It's that it's just not executed that well. I mean, it's not a big departure from Color Decay. They just took what they did on that one and dropped the heavy riffing and asked Mike to come back on the last day in the studio to lend some parts if he wanted to
Zakk Cervini mixed and mastered this and just like most stuff he does it really lacks any kind of punch in the guitars and the drums. You can tell just from the snare that he was involved.
This isn’t even a good clapback to the folks who miss their old sound because 1) it’s musically more interesting than the majority of Flowers and proving the point 2) it’s still not even that great (again, better than the majority of Flowers) and I imagine it’s cause their hearts are not in it so the whole thing comes off as silly/immature
there's apparently a FLAC file of the extra song out there, but the place that supposedly has it is currently down
I liked this album a bit more than I expected to but it's still definitely one of their weakest. Probably doesn't come as a surprise that All Out was my favorite song EDIT: the hidden track is fucking obnoxious. Like, I was able to tolerate it on Seeing Red by Architects but I really hope this sort of shit of "making a throwback song just to say fuck you" does not become a trend.
I was able to add it to my Apple Music library. Not sure what the process would be for Spotify users.
if that's a thing that matters to you, you can use a program like Mp3tag to also add an explicit marker ("ITUNESADVISORY" = 1), but only if it's in an m4a format of some kind
i like that song a lot more than the architects one tbh lol ugh this band could be so much better if they wanted to be
The more I listen the more I notice on the occasions Mike takes lead vocals you can still hear Jeremy singing the cleans in the back. Probably only 3/4 times across the whole album where he doesn't
i tend not to trust my first impressions too much so i've let this sit with me a bit. some bands become their best selves when they lean into the pop metal thing (dayseeker, bad omens, etc). tdwp are not one of those bands. but that said, there's a decent amount of stuff that i would come back to, and it's far from a death knell for them.
jamming this again and its a little better than i gave it credit but im still not big on this sans the pseudo t/t and all out. when youre gone is the best slow song for sure