Review Summary: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--vkIZeLpM--/uvsbtmwcj54iagw9sjla.jpg
Every time a well past their prime core band releases a new album I like to ask myself, "Would I dig this if it came out when I frequented this sort of music?" My answer is almost always "ehh, probably not." but it's an exercise I keep futilely putting myself through. Although in From First To Last's case, I don't even need to ask such a question because they were already putting out albums I did not care for in that regrettable window of time when listened to mid 2000s core and chased after girls that looked strikingly similar to the dudes in From First To Last. After Sonny Moore AKA "Skrillex" AKA "a blemished face with a crooked nose" left the band From First To Last kept on trucking, and by kept on trucking I mean put out two not good albums with long time guitarist Matt Good on vocals that failed to draw much attention critically or commercially, and shortly after fizzled out. Well it's been five years and From First To Last are back with new material, a shiny new vocalist, a new drummer, and this time it's personal.
Musically,
Dead Trees is a joke. It's all the same nu-metal/djent/core/whatever generic and basic guitar work that was overplayed well before From First To Last even broke up. There isn't a single guitar riff that ventures above average, and I'm not trying to suggest FFTL were a top notch band from a guitar standpoint, but they used to have some decent bargain bin Thrice riffs; at least
Heroine had some cool unsettling atmospheric kind of stuff.
Dead Trees on the other hand is mostly bottom two string chug stuff that all blends into one big sloppy and unappealing chug. The songwriting as a whole is all the same: try hard "heavy" verses sporadically interrupted by try hard "catchy" choruses that often don't even match the rest of the song. Worst of all is the acoustic closer "I Don't Want To Live in The Real World" whose laughable attempt at edgy humor has the worst lyrics I've ever heard. No hyperbole, the lyrics to this one song are so bad I considered giving this entire album a one out of five.
Dead Trees is unoriginal, it's stale, and it's one of the worst post-hardcore albums in recent memory.
Clocking in at a miserably short 34 minutes,
Dead Trees proves that From First To Last are out of ideas and should have stayed dormant. It doesn't work as a comeback album, it doesn't work as a throwback album, and worst of all it doesn't even sound like From First To Last tried. Tacking on covers of songs from the band's two good albums as bonus tracks proves how desperate they are at attracting any sort of attention, and it mostly backfires because it makes the new material seem so much worse in comparison to what the band was once capable of.
Dead Trees is a miserable listen even by the low standards set by post-hardcore of late, and it has me pondering a new question: "Why come back if you have nothing new to offer?"
