Review Summary: Billy Talent by numbers is still pretty good.
One of the many changes which come with the ageing process is a desire for consistency, regularity and stability over innovation, adventurousness or experimentation. In the creative field, this tendency is no different – if anything, practitioners in fields where inspiration is required to remain at a high for extended periods of time are prone to reach this stage of their personal development
faster. That is the reason why, after starting their careers off strong as fresh-faced young upstarts ready to take on the world, so many actors, writers and musicians eventually settle for playing similar, typecast roles or writing the same book or album over and over again; after all, the older a human being gets, the more appealing the comfort zone becomes, and the less the desire to ever step out of it again.
This is the situation emo-punk veterans Billy Talent find themselves in early in 2022. After setting the scene on fire with their first two albums, succumbing to the inevitable experimental mis-step with their third, and adequately atoning for said fumble with their fourth, the Canadian four-piece was left with remarkably little to prove to anyone, and therefore free to settle into the comfortable veteran-band groove of bringing out another set of fair-to-middling set of songs every few years to justify another tour and keep their name relevant. 2016's
Afraid of Heights represented the first declared step towards that new status quo, but it is the band's latest album – their seventh as a band, and sixth under the Billy Talent moniker – which truly cements it.
In fact, the most immediate and striking aspect apparent on even a casual playthrough of
Crisis of Faith is just how firmly ensconced in their comfort zone the band are; despite some lip-service paid to a shift towards 'prog' (mainly represented by some Angels and Airwaves-level electronics and light use of horns and a saxophone on the second half of two-part opener
Redemption) there is hardly a note played, word sung or songwriting element employed across these thirty-seven minutes of music that deviates in any way from the template created on the now two-decade-old double salvo of masterpieces that kickstarted the group's career. Here are Ian D'Sa's playful, snaking guitar leads, here Ben Kowalewicz's tortured, adenoidal and unmistakable pitch and emotionally earnest lyrics, here the mostly mid-tempo songs which devolve smoothly into the occasional emotional ballad (
The Wolf). In other words, despite what the band and label want listeners to think, this is
not the band's
American Idiot or
The Black Parade, on the contrary - overall, everything remains more or less static (or, at the very least, predictable) in the Billy Talent realm. To be fair, however, even after the aforementioned two decades, nobody sounds
quite like these Canadians, either; and for a band which accustomed their fanbase to a fairly high standard of quality, unadventurous internal consistency ends up not being such a bad thing.
In fact, as the ten cuts on this album demonstrably show, not offering up more than what is expected does not necessarily equate to offering up a sub-standard product; for, safe and by-the-book though this new set of songs may be, even the most critical of Billy Talent fans would be hard-pressed to find an outright weak moment amongst them. Sure, most of these tracks sound like any number of their predecessors (
Reactor, is heavily reminiscent of
River Below,
Reckless Paradise liberally cribs from megahit
Devil In a Midnight Mass, and either of the three ballads inevitably brings to mind cuts like
Surrender or
Rusted From the Rain); and sure, nothing here is bound to be particularly exciting to a Billy Talent conoisseur - for the first time in the band's discography, no song stands head and shoulders above the rest as a clear and definite standout. The fact remains, however – even at its worst (
Judged, a sub-two-minute failed attempt by these aging men to show they can still get intense and angsty and rock out like when they were younger, which comes off as more than a bit phony, put-on and hackneyed) this album is never less than enjoyable - if never in any way remarkable, either.
Perhaps the problem is that placing the band's most progressive song(s) to date at the forefront of the album makes everything else feel like a downgrade; or perhaps it is the ever-so-slight front-loading of the album (with the notable exception of the irresistible
One Less Problem, tracks on the back half of the LP are noticeably less interesting than the first few, extraneous celebrity cameos notwithstanding); or it might have to do with the band's aforementioned unwillingness to ever leave their comfort zone. Whatever the case may be, however, the conclusion is always the same – while
Crisis of Faith is by no means an outstanding album, nor is it in any way a weak one (reports of this being the second coming of
III have been greatly exaggerated) and it is certainly as worthy as either of its two predecessors of standing shoulder to shoulder with
I and
II on a punk-rocker's increasingly virtual music shelf (or streaming playlist, as the case may be.)
In point of fact, as a comeback album, the Canadians' sixth effort is objectively better than many much-hyped, higher-profile, comeback efforts from big-name rock bands in the past few months (
Senjutsu being the most glaring example), and both validates the band's continued existence in the modern rock/punk/screamo scene and shows that perhaps there was really no reason for a
Crisis of Faith after all, as even Billy Talent by numbers is still pretty good.
Recommended Tracks
Forgiveness Pt. I and II
I Beg to Differ
The Wolf
One Less Problem
