Review Summary: i'm 14 and this is deep
As It Is might just be the posterboys for the importance of bands and musicians to have distinct social media presences. While I listened to much better/more respectable/gooderer music during my early teens, the Patty Walters fronted pop punk outfit’s excellently parasocial online approach has ensured that I am jumping to the defense of the decidedly not-very-great
I Went to Hell and Back some nine years after all the Instagram posts, update videos, and boyish bangers.
Following 2018’s painfully tryhard
heavy and dark “concept” album
The Great Depression, the As It Is of 2022 are down several members and trying to appease everyone at once. As such,
IWTHAB comprises three categories of songs: firstly, tracks like ‘ILY, HOW ARE YOU?’ and ‘I’D RATHER DIE’ try to progress the sound of the band by prominently implementing trap beats, apathetic vocals, and rather unremarkable melodies. It’s not exactly a winning formula; as these songs feel completely void of energy, its hooks (or lack thereof) fail to propel the record forward. The three-way collaboration with Set It Off and JordyPurp ‘IN THREES’ (get it??) might just be the worst offender: it tries its hand at
edgy darkness by way of, sigh, Imagine Dragons-esque rhythms and falls flatter than a tourist cycling through Amsterdam. Moreover, it absolutely ruins any hint of flow to the album as ‘IN THREES’ follows an excellent punk-infused banger: the second category of songs to be found here.
This category is easily the most surprising: while Walters’ screams on As It Is’ previous record mostly sounded like a middle aged woman’s reaction to her son losing a football match, the more minimalistic production of
IWTHAB enhances his voice’s ferocity. While opener ‘IDGAF’ packages aggression in an addictively catchy number, the immense ‘I WANT TO SEE GOD’ forms the album’s incredibly brief highlight. The song channels all of the band’s anger into an exhilarating scremscrem-hardcorey two minutes, while retaining all the memorability that defines the very best of As It Is. Elsewhere, while ‘I CAN’T FEEL A THING’ is the most blatant Bring Me The Horizon ripoff since
bad omens and fittingly features fellow stale mates The Word Alive, it does end up forming a nice canvas for some of the band’s most competent performances.
Lastly,
IWTHAB features several songs that try to recapture the magic of “vintage” pop punk As It Is. This category is a bit of a mixed bag; while ‘I LIE TO ME’ and ‘IDC, I CAN’T TAKE IT’ are too repetitive for their own good, ‘I’M GONE’ comprises a wonderfully nostalgic chorus that’ll send familiar listeners right back to the golden days of, uh, 2015. Moreover, these tracks most efficiently display
IWTHAB’s mission through its admittedly shaky lyricism. While prominent choruses like “
I don’t want to be right / But I know that it’s true / I’m dead inside / I hate me too” and “
Sick and tired as the world keeps spinning around / Am I losing my head?” aren’t exactly profound or in need of any interpretation whatsoever, they are highly capable of opening up conversations about mental health among
the target demographic of trap-infused pop punk. While it’s a shame that As It Is have proven incapable of maturing alongside their audience, their attempts at destigmatising such topics haven’t changed either.
Simply put,
IWTHAB is a collection of songs that suck, rule, or simply exist, without any regards for cohesion or flow. It’s a perfect fit for streaming platform logic and clearly caters to
tHe NeW gEnErAtiOn. Nonetheless, its infectious moments are more than enough to convince old, weakened fans (hi) that it’s not absolute dog***. While As It Is may have changed for the worse/more immature/less good, their message has not, and that is a commendable thing.
