Yeah, I grew up in NEPA and got into them while going to college in Scranton (just between OTIP and RW), so a lot of the imagery they reference just feels so nostalgic to me
Spent like 8 hours in the car today with a healthy healthy dose of the new blink and the Menzingers. As with blink, I like this more with each spin. Nobody and Ultraviolet have been stuck in my head all day.
I wish I liked this more than I did but except for Ultraviolet, the rest of this album doesn't wow me. I don't hate it like I do HE at least.
It took me road-tripping across northern Kenya earlier today, with my daughter sleeping soundly in the back seat (40 minutes of respite from Disney songs) for this record to ‘click’ with me today. Something about the feeling far from home, and the new-yet-familiar Americana style/production of the lyrics just hit perfectly. The Menzingers knock it out of the park yet again…
Man the internet is a wild place. Wild to think you were cruising through Kenya jamming to some Menzingers.
Haha yeah man. it’s the fucking best. Video that describes kind of what I mean (this wasn’t from today): https://m.youtube.com/shorts/IGrP_5J_99Q I am shit at YouTube so hopefully this link works
Album has finally been clicking with me. Basically everything through Take it to Heart is between good and great. I still think the back half drops off and they should have scrapped I Didn’t Miss You. No Place In The World working its way into at least top 10 if not top 5 Menz though. Incredible song. Interestingly I think they tuned the guitars back up to standard for the first time since Chamberlain. Interesting when bands do that as they get later on in their career as usually it’s the opposite
Agreed. After having enough time to really experience and sit with this album I think it is great, the majority of it is really good and sometimes absolutely spectacular but I didn’t miss you just feels so inessential and kind of just like going through the motions. It’s the only song I think should have been cut though.
I think if the delivery of this bit of the song was more emphatic/raw, it could be a very good song: 'Causе you're still in the rear view At a red light in my life I don't want to think twice I need to run it, gun it, and go I want the sadness out of my soul I miss the love we used to know But I didn't miss you A few other scattered thoughts: One song I have really taken a dislike to is Take it To Heart, both lyrically and musically, to the point where I've just taken it out of my playlist of the album. The closer is really growing on me, might be my favourite song on there along with Try. The verse of High Low I like a lot, but I don't like the chorus.
Try / Come on Heartache / Ultraviolet is such a “holy shit” trilogy. I’d stack it up against any three song run in the discography.
When all is said and done, personally speaking: "Take it to Heart" is a good song, but not my kind of good song "High Low" is good but kind of plods along "I Didn't Miss You" is honestly not great and I'm surprised it made the cut tbh Everything else is great to amazing.
This is getting lost in the shuffle of all of the recent releases so I’m putting a pin here to make sure I return to this next week
I'm here to defend I didn't miss you. I thought High School Friend was the worst song on Hello Exile in the early days, because it seemed too Menzingers-by-numbers, midtempo, lacking urgency etc. Now it's in my top 3. Because after a while I stopped caring if it was a little formulaic and just sang along. And it got more and more enjoyable. I didn't miss you is shaping up to have the same effect for me. I far prefer it to High Low which I think is the album's low point, and I like it more than Take It To Heart as well because the verse melody is a little grating and the chorus is repetitive without being terribly catchy. I could see I didn't miss you climbing my rankings further except the album is so consistent I'm not sure what it could leapfrog. Good song imo
Interesting. I adore High School friend and think it’s a far superior song to I didn’t miss you, but that’s cool!