Review Summary: You'd have to be geeked on Alex Jones supplements to find this listenable.
You can smell the Axe body spray seeping through every note. Brantley Gilbert's brand of country rock is a facsimile of Jason Aldean, and considering they have routinely collaborated over the years, that's no accident. Like Aldean, the man has such limited capabilities as a vocalist, and even less charisma. He can't be chuffed to actually
mean what he 'sings' about, he sort of just brays into the abyss. But with a hearty mix of electric guitars and arena histrionics that are loud just for the sake of being loud, he's no doubt carved out a niche among those who listen to Five Finger Death Punch and think that music like this somehow makes their palette diverse. Gilbert hasn't had a solo hit at radio in a decade and I don't expect his recently released
Sins Of The Father, which failed to chart across the board, will change that.
How the f*ck did this guy become a mildly consistent presence at radio in the 2010s? Actually, don't answer that question. I'm just glad this archetype of bro country has so evidently aged long past its expiration date that trends have finally started to reflect as such. If you have any familiarity with Gilbert's material, you'll find absolutely nothing new, aside from a few laughably horrid creative detours. The guitars and arena rock influences are still prominent, but now Gilbert is laying down GreatValue hip-hop beats as a foundational layer. It didn't work fifteen years ago when Aldean first tried it, and it certainly doesn't work here on tracks such as "Good Damn." But these woefully misguided tendencies don't even make for the biggest offenders on the album. "F*cked Me Up" is presented as some type of expression of gratitude to Gilbert's wife for steering him through and out of a struggle with alcohol abuse. While I can definitely appreciate and commend the effort to get sober and put down the bottle, I still have to dock points for making the woman in the lyric completely devoid of personhood, existing solely to be the protagonist's aid. Gilbert pours on the profanity to an unchecked degree, turning what genuinely could have been a moderately resonant message and blunts any shred of intimacy with the vocabulary of a middle schooler who's just learned how to swear. His vocals don't help anything, either; Gilbert sounds like he's gargling nails as he croaks his way through the track.
"Good Ol' Boys" might be the worst song to hit the country format this year, and that's morbidly impressive when you think about how much dross we've talked about in recent weeks. My goodness, what a disaster this one is. Is it the creepy "Try That In A Small Town"-esque messaging that I can't stand? The obnoxiously booming rock composition that has absolutely nothing discernibly 'country' going for it whatsoever? The overly self-serious and tryhard persona Gilbert portrays in the lyric? All of these ills can be applied to every other song on the album, but this track stands out as a major misfire in particular. Gilbert assaults the English language on "Small Townin'" and subjects us to another torturous serving of Jelly Roll no one asked for on "Begging For Change," and listening to this slop has depleted the brain cells necessary for me to litigate in detail why it sucks so much ass.
In summary, this is another one of those albums that enters a packed crowd of AIDS in music form and manages to stick out like a sore thumb. This right here is the reason why people use country music as a dartboard and sh*t, I can't blame 'em.
Sins Of The Father is an almost deliberately ugly caricature of everything that is wrong with modern country music, namely because you'd have to be geeked on Alex Jones supplements to think that this is 'country' music. It's not, at least not what it should be. It represents a hideous beast, because it
is a hideous beast.
Sins Of The Father is overwhelmingly
awful.
