Review Summary: Why?
I believe it’s fair to say that Asking Alexandria have had flashes of brilliance over the years and whole lot of really mediocre material strewn between those flashes. Each record, I go in holding my breath not knowing if I’ll get some yee-haw country radio rock, some base-level edgier alternative metal or some full on rawr-rawr drop c metalcore. The odds for a bit of strong songwriting seems to be stacked against Asking Alexandria at this point with their last couple outings being hit or miss to be gentle. In reference to these last few releases, I thought their self-titled record was pretty decent with a fair share of bops and a few head-scratchers. The only record featuring Denis Stoff on vocals, “The Black” I thought was a nice return to roots with some decently solid songwriting and good performances all around. Then we have that final pre-Denis album with returned vocalist Danny Worsnop “From Death to Destiny” which is a real head-scratcher front-to-back with barely a moment worthy of admiration. I’d also like to preface the rest of the review by saying that I appreciate when bands take risks, make changes or try new things but with that comes the territory of possible alienation, failure or career suicide as well as the chance to widen your audience. Unfortunately, Asking Alexandria find themselves on the brink of career suicide with this one.
“Like a House on Fire” was long prefaced with the popular single “The Violence” which features a big hooky riff, some really stompy grooves and big sing-along chorus. I honestly found it to be a song riddled with cliches, generic and repetitive as any other radio wannabe band and paid very little attention to it when it came out. As other singles began rolling out in preparation for the album drop, I started noticing an upsetting trend that seems to plague most bands that look for radio success after initially being a heavy-hitting metal band. While Asking Alexandria are certainly not the first band to be guilty of relying heavily on formula, they definitely make it their approach with practically every song on here. Each of the singles seems to feature a sort of edgy, heavy guitar riff followed by a quieter verse that eventually carries into a big hooky chorus with cheap vocal melodies that have been so over-done for the last 20 years. I guess the issue isn’t with the formula because some bands do it extremely effectively, it’s just that each song seems so lazily put together.
The opening track “House on Fire” is the highlight of the album for me because it does follow the formula but it’s interesting enough and the hook is strong enough that it allows me to look past the simplicity of it. It’s all downhill from there with “They Don’t Want What We Want (And They Don’t Care)” just sounding downright silly lyrically the everything musically is just so bland and uninspired. Aside from the tracks themselves being extremely boring and predictable, the song titles are just insanely banal. Like really? “Take Some Time,” “Here’s to Starting Over,” “It’s Not Me (It’s You)”? Like did a four-year-old boy write these down on his Blue’s Clues handy-dandy notebook? The lyrical content mimics the absurdly dumb song titles with lyrical passages such as “I’m sick of tryna be something that I’m never gonna be/Tryna fit in a mold that wasn’t meant for me/I just wanna be free to let my mind do its thing” on the song “Here’s to Starting Over.” The think one of the silliest lyrics is on the song “Give You Up” which reads “I wasted to so much time on wasting time” which in fact, becomes the hook of the chorus and if that isn’t stupid, I don’t know what is.
All the instrumentals are benign for the most part but really don’t have unique characteristics that help them standout from their contemporaries. There are attempts to incorporate elements of electronic rock and pop rock in the middle section of the album but those are utter desperate failures. The risks taken are just so mind-boggling and ineffective, it’s hard to imagine that someone in the recording studio okay-ed this nonsense. Danny is a fairly solid vocalist and while he's basically abandoned the possibility of doing harsh or growled vocals anymore, his clean voice can be just as effective and versatile. Unfortunately, these songs, lyrics and melodies do him no favors as his vocals just become a monotonous vessel for mediocrity. Each chorus blending together, each verse having no discernable qualities, it’s rather unfortunate because there is talent in his voice, but it’s absolutely squandered.
If you enjoyed this record, more power to you. It was a hefty disaster in my eyes and while the follow up album “See What’s on The Inside” is an improvement, it’s still falls very flat. I do hope Asking Alexandria can pull themselves out of this poor songwriting slump and act on the obvious talent they have as a band.
Top Track(s):
“House On Fire”
“Down To Hell”
