Review Summary: "Who is Gwen Stacy?" Well this answers the question.
Who is Gwen Stacy again? Hearing that name before was interesting, since it was several years ago. I was asking for albums to review, and this one was requested by someone on this site. Sure, Why not right? To be honest I had to do some research and give this album a good listen over before writing this review. A list was made of things I enjoyed, and things i found not so enjoyable. Still, that first question still lit in my mind.
Who is Gwen Stacy?
They were active between 2004-2010, and for any comic book fans like me, their band name derives from the Spider-man comics. This about The band though, not Peter Parker's dead girlfriend. They released
The Life I Know about a year prior to this one. I did not listen to that album only to go into this one with no expectations or comparisons. This was preferred to give me a un-objected opinion on the album. To be honest, going into the first few tracks, I had the "Same ole' generic pop-hardcore" feeling start to sink in. However, as the album pressed on, It seemed to slightly break out. This was a factor on giving this a 3.0 or a 3.5.
Time to get in detail with what my opinions are for this. With eleven tracks to offer, this album is a good 39 minute in length, and most of the songs on here do not feel like they run on. The starting tracks
The first words,
Profit motive, and
The dialogue All had a bit of a generic feel to it. The breakdowns were well-placed, and overall they caught some of my attention, mainly
Profit motive, but not all of it.
Creation and how i see it is were i started to take notice. It is just a straight-foward difference maker in changing the tone of this album, even if it was only slightly, it was enough.
Words of a new prophet continues on this trend. It is a very catchy song instrumentally speaking, but some of the lyrics just didn't work for me, such as
You'll eat your words, I swear you'll eat your words. Later on
Braveheart will also kinda clump into that category of "meh" Lyrics. All is not lost though. The sixth track,
Devil Devil, while it is kinda average, lyrically it is better and it still manages to hold up as a decent track. If there is one track that lyrically stuck out in this album, it would be
Addictionary. This as one could guess, deals with drug addiction, and the lyrics express that fully.
Braveheart, as i mentioned earlier, has some sub-par lyrics, and is kinda average compared to the other tracks. The last three songs to me are the centerpiece of this album.
The middle ground is just powerful in terms as it is well balanced song, both with its heavy and steady moments.
The making of has the an extremely catchy chorus, and the song placement after the previous track works so well. Finally, the last track,
The sound of letting go Starts in very soft with a minute of singing before in transitions into a loud clash. I mean loud clash in a good way. Though it did seem slightly like an
Underoath cover, it still worked and overall made me rethink in my rating of this album.
Now that the songs have been reviewed, time to give some criticisms outside the ones already made. While the latter tracks did help change my view on this album, it still sounded somewhat generic on a good number of tracks. the clean vocals themselves are well done a lot of times, but some songs they can be slightly whiney, which is , slightly annoying.The last thing would be some of the lyrics, which has already been said.
With all this in mind, I still consider this album a good listen. the moments where it felt a little less generic were there. Now a days, that isn't as easy to find compared to the thousands of generics out there. If anyone ever asked who
Gwen Stacy is, or was, This album would be a good answer.
Recommended tracks
-Profit Motive
-Addictionary
-The Making of
-The Middle Ground
