Review Summary: The sin of banality should not be so easily forgiven.
With 2013’s
Release the Panic, Christian hard rock outfit Red decided that the time was right to ring the changes. Long-time collaborator Rob Graves was replaced by acclaimed producer Howard Benson. And with Graves' departure, the band’s original sound, complete with fervid orchestral fervor, all but disappeared along with him. But did this desire for change translate into much success?
Honestly, while there’s nothing here that’s outright terrible, far too many tracks suffer from one specific malady: banality. Songs like “Perfect Life” and “Same Disease” offer little beyond cliché lyricism and bland musicianship. Stripping their sound of symphonic excess only left a vacuum that, for the most part, is never filled throughout the album’s duration. With that gone, the real heft is left to pile on the shoulders of electronic textures not out of place on any given Spineshank record. But even these textures aren’t given ample enough time or space to leave a lasting impression. As a whole,
Release the Panic often feels barren and devoid of any discernible urgency. The industrial churning of “Damage” and the bouncy dance beats in “Die for You” do little to abate the banality. Too much is noticeably absent, and with nothing to fill the prominently empty space, the experience can only be summed up as severely underwhelming.
Thankfully, the album takes off about halfway through with the welcomed ballad “Hold Me Now”. It’s here that the orchestration begins to emerge, if only briefly, and I’m reminded of what made me like this band in the first place. Going forward, every track is more reminiscent of Red’s old theatrical and pathos-driven sound that the previous five tracks. In my mind, the first half of this album is Red trying to fit their sound within the mild and unoffending mold of generic radio rock music. Songs like “So Far Away” and “Glass House”, while not offering much original lyrical content, are perfectly serviceable and serve as counterpoint to how this album began. It’s almost as if half the record was written by another band entirely. In fact, the contrasting exemplary tracks in the latter half only accentuate the divide in quality. In other words, I have no idea why a flavorless song like “Perfect Life” was put on the record while much better, wholehearted material like “Love Will Leave a Mark” and “As You Go” were relegated to the later deluxe edition.
I do feel as if maybe I’m being too harsh on
Release the Panic, but I strongly feel that this album was simply wasted potential. I do applaud the lads in Red for choosing to try and forge a relatively new path with this record, but the result is distinctly haphazard. I’m thinking it would have been nicer if they left in more traits redolent of their early work but propound upon the more electronic approach they took with
Until We Have Faces. Instead, the album is full of far too many half-measures to fully overlook and exonerate.
Like I said, there isn’t anything here that’s dreadful or offensively bad, but it’s overall an average record. Uncomfortably average. And ultimately, that’s what makes this album’s banality all the more intolerable. For a band that left such an indelible imprint on my life with their passionate and unforgettable music, having them write such bland and forgettable songs makes the sin of banality even more baffling and disappointing.
