Review Summary: Although 'hymn' typically means a song of praise, it's very difficult to praise these songs.
Bloc Party is a band from England, and they’ve been going strong for the past ten years. Their debut full-length release, Silent Alarm, propelled them into the limelight. However, there’s something interesting about their discography. If we were to look at the average ratings for all their other albums on Sputnik, they get progressively worse. Silent Alarm had an average of 3.9, not too shabby at all. Their following releases A Weekend In The City, Intimacy, and Four had 3.4, 3.1, and 3.2 respectively. Not only that, but they also had a decreasing amount of how many people rated each one. Could this decreasing trend mean that Hymns, their latest effort, could be Bloc Party’s worst album? Unfortunately, yes. Hymns is terrible.
We start off this album with the song The Love Within. This intro is not that bad in itself. It has this revving synthesizer* with a kick drum increasing in volume. This would normally set the mood for an energetic album. Sadly, though, this song manages to vaporize any trace of action once the first verse finishes. That synthesizer is replaced with an out-of-place wobbly synth, and melancholy drums that really don’t help the groove of the song. That’s not the worst part of the song, however. That would be the lyrics. Lyrics like “
For I have learnt the way to pray/Like a missile growing tall now”. There’s something a little odd about those lyrics. This song mentions prayer, the Lord, and guiding your hand. These tie in with the lyrics on the next song, Only He Can Heal Me, especially since it’s disturbingly clear who ‘he’ is.
This album is some sort of gospel album, isn’t it? One would think that after looking at the album title, and other song titles like the aforementioned Only He Can Heal Me, along with The Good News and songs on the deluxe edition of this album, Eden and Paradiso. After trudging through some of the songs on the beginning, like The Love Within, we come across the 5th song, Fortress. Given the theme of previous songs on this album, could this be some sort of interesting message about how the word of God protects you like a fortress?
Not in the slightest. The “fortress” is bedsheets, in this case, because this song is a damn sex song. This song, however, brings you the best line on the entire album. The one that makes the listener cringe the hardest. “
And I'm a fool for the sight of all the gold between your thighs”. I have never listened to an album that had a lyric that made me audibly groan and cover my face in shame the first time I heard it, until I reached this line. I had to pause the album and eat a cinnamon roll. I had to feel good about myself again and forget that I ever had to listen to that one line. This song, Fortress, is chocked full of lines like that. It’s so cheesy and so unprofessional.
Even though no song on this album comes close to the putrid mess that is Fortress, nothing on the album stands out as being good. Hymns seems to go all over the place as well. Some songs have an overtly religious theme, while others deal with depression, heartbreak, and sex. These themes can be dealt with in a mature way, but that is not what Bloc Party chooses to do. Serious themes like depression and religion are accompanied by run-of-the-mill rhythms and melodies that add no flavor to the music whatsoever. At the end of the day, it’s all up to the listener’s musical taste, but I think a lot of the Bloc Party fans can agree that this tastes of spoiled meat.
*One tidbit I read pointed out that a lot of the synth-like sounds on this record are actually guitars with heaping amounts of effects added to them. So this sound might be a real guitar, instead of a synthesizer.
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