Originally Posted by symbeline

I’ll bite

4/10

I had a friend call me über excited because she had managed to get hold of the leaked album. I’m a bitchy person but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I couldn't care less, so we had a listening party (yay! I guess….). Let’s say that the snippets were a fair representation of the whole songs (which I had fully expected so no surprises here) and 80% of the album still did nothing for me. I don’t hate it, it’s not WAN-levels of hair pulling, I’ll re-listen and might give it a 5-5.5 or even a 6 because it’s not a horrible album and there are some decent efforts but it’s just… the lyrics don’t do it for me and none of the songs grabbed me in the same way some of the songs from THINFS did.

The good ones are nothing we haven’t heard before, some could fit the Crush/Bounce demos era and that’s ****ing-tastic but the rest are just incredibly dull and forgettable, it’s like Burning Bridges on steroids without all the goodies. I listened to "Lower the Flag" 3 times and every single time I forgot immediately how it sounded. I still remember parts of Work for the Working Man and I only had to suffer it once so I’m not sure if having dull instead of shitty songs is a huge improvement.



1. "Limitless" - Bubblegum pop rock but at least I want to sing along - 6/10
2. "Do What You Can" - I’LL BE GRATEFUL IF I DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS STUPID SONG EVER AGAIN 0/10
3. "American Reckoning" - I’ll give it a 1 for the harmonica, it was really beautiful. The rest is a hard pass 1/10
4. "Beautiful Drug" - Ok-ish 6/10
5. "Story of Love" - Fathers love daughters like mothers love sons deserves a -10000/10 and the ending was a huge mess. Absolutely hated both parts, but it was grittier than I imagined and got stuck in my head so… dunno... 4/10
6. "Let It Rain" - Sounded like something out of The Circle which is… well... not my favorite album 5/10
7. "Lower the Flag" - Snoozefest 2/10
8. "Blood in the Water" Very undecided, it tries VERY VERY HARD and I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing. It seemed like it was going somewhere but then it didn’t and I still don't know. Well it “quoted*” The Usual Suspects which is one of my favorites movies ever so it gets brownie points for that 7?8?/10
9. "Brothers in Arms" Me likes 8/10
10. "Unbroken" Within the boundaries of the documentary it was written for is not a bad song, it just feels forced out of context, it looses gravitas. So 8/10 for the purpose it was written and 5/10 in the album… I think it’s fair to give it a 6/10

I felt way more connected to THINFS, still do. I don't think this one is a grower but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

*That's obvs a joke before somebody points it out