Review Summary: An experiment in epic results in a 15-track long display of pathetic.
Depending on how the music on it is written and played, an album can possess a certain attitude, an attitude that often affects a listener’s opinion of the album. For example, a typical hardcore album is raw, angry, and doesn’t really give a *** what you think about it. Although there are many exceptions, still, a large number of pop-punk albums have a very lighthearted attitude, even if the subject matter on the album isn’t necessarily happy, or lighthearted itself. But the most infamous album-attitude of them all is most likely the dreaded “pretentious.”
Now, I personally don’t care how pretentious or self-indulgent an album is, as long as it has well-written music to back it up. It doesn’t matter to me if an album demands my attention for an hour and a half, or if it asks me to follow a complicated storyline in order to completely absorb the album, as long as the music is consistently entertaining. But, if the album is consistently pretentious and
doesn’t have the well-thought out instrumentation to back it up, that my friends, is a recipe for disaster. And it’s also precisely what this album is plagued by for its entire duration.
On Frail Wings of Vanity and Wax tells some story about a man who has lost the love of his life, with some war imagery here and there and…to be honest, I don’t exactly know the story like the back of my hand. And to be even more honest, I don’t care. Why? Because the music on the album didn’t
make me care. It didn’t even make me
want to care.
Throughout the entire album, awful sing-scream harmonies, pseudo-epic crescendos and piano passages, and pseudo-poetic lyrics are all thrown together with the intention of telling a story of pseudo-relevance. And the worst part is that all these things are executed in such a way that it feels like they’re practically
expecting me to listen.
And the actual songwriting doesn’t save the album much, either. All the songs contain aspects of the same formula, they’re just played in different orders. You have the messy, scattered verses that are either screamed, sung, or both. You have the “catchy” refrain that is sung, high and whiny. And then you have the breakdowns, which are screamed. And the actual instrumentation behind all of these elements is just as messy and scatter-brained as the vocals they back up. It doesn’t exactly make want to hear more about the story that is being sung about.
The next time Alesana want to tell their listeners an epic tale of lost love or some other cliché, maybe they should try writing songs that structurally make sense, make sure the songs fit the story, and most importantly, don’t expect people to listen simply because they’re telling a story they think people should care about.
