Review Summary: Believe me, this is nothing you want to inhale.
Thousand Foot Krutch has been around for a while now. In fact, this is their 7th album. They've been a big force in the hard rock world (well, the Christian hard rock world anyway)--and reached a huge peak with Welcome to the Masquerade, an excellent hard rock record.
Now could they be headed for a big downturn?
Sure seems that way, after listening to this album. Let's remind everybody of what happened *after* the greatness that was Welcome to the Masquerade. They went independent--and the first album that was released during that time was The End Is Where We Begin--which was flawed at times, but still a pretty decent album.
Now when you listen to this album, you'll likely ask yourself... what the heck happened?
First off, much of the album isn't even hard rock. Let's see... there are 10 tracks, and only 4 of them can even be considered hard rock--"Like a Machine," "Untraveled Road," "Born This Way," and "Give It to Me." And to be honest, "Like a Machine" and Born This Way" are rather horrible. The quality of these two songs make it seem like the band isn't even trying anymore.
And the rest of the six songs? All ballads and slower songs. "Set Me On Fire" is the only one that even works, and it still has its flaws. So basically, the entire second half of the album is a complete boredom fest. By the time you get to "Oxygen" and "Glow," you've pretty much fallen asleep--it's that bad.
"Untraveled Road" and "Give it to Me" are the only two songs (besides "Set Me On Fire") that are that decent at all. "Give It To Me" is probably the winner because it admittedly has some excellent guitar work on it. "Untraveled Road," on the other hand, even though it's decent, starts off as a complete rip-off of Linkin Park's "Bleed It Out," then once it gets out of that, you're left with awkward lyrics--which is a prominent theme on this album.
Perhaps they should've stayed with Tooth & Nail Records--I wouldn't say no to another Welcome to the Masquerade or even another Flame In All Of Us. Despite the fact that I can handle multiple musical genres, I'd rather hear the same type of album from a band twice than hear them go in a direction that just doesn't work for them.
