Review Summary: Silence, mortal. The crab has returned.
For lack of a better term,
Attack Attack!, known chiefly for inventing the microgenre (or whatever the hell it's called) called "crabcore", can charitably be described as "divisive". Scene kids loved them, while others thought they were the final nail in the coffin for all that is good in the world. While time has been quite forgiving to their pre-breakup albums, especially
Someday Came Suddenly (although
This Means War deserves just as much credit for literally being proto-Beartooth), the reaction to their material following their surprise reunion in 2020 has been...underwhelming, to say the least, with many feeling as if they were shedding the crabbiness that made them the arguable innovators of what would become electronicore in favor of the generic pop-core that seemingly every band is doing.
Fortunately, however, the crab has returned for real this time on
Attack Attack! II; it just takes a bit for it to come out. Album opener "One Hit Wonder" is more or less a continuation of the last two EPs (
Dark Waves and
Disaster), and while it's a fine track in its own right, it's not really what people have come to expect from Attack Attack. Fortunately, the Will Ramos-powered "Dance!" brings the crab back in full force, with an unholy mash of electronica, crab, and even deathcore thrown into the mix (which shouldn't be too surprising given who the feature is). "Chainless" sees the band take a stab at what can only be called "WWE crabcore" in the sense that it would be a hell of a wrestling pay-per-view theme, but with the band's signature flair lying within alongside some minor industrial-ish influence. Other highlights include happy hardcore-tinged "Karmageddon", the obligatory "f**k you" to anyone who thinks that this hot s**t isn't crab enough fittingly titled "i complain on r/metalcore", "Big Booty Britches", which gives us the sound of what happened if Rob Swire decided to have Knife Party and Pendulum have hate-sex, and the dubstep ballad "Without You", which, despite the cheesiness, brings in some of the most memorable parts of the album precisely because of said cheese.
What
Attack Attack! II really lacks in is the sort of stuff Attack Attack! were always lacking in: good lyrics and production. While this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone considering this is obstensibly the same group that gave us gems such as "What Happens If I Can't Check My MySpace When We Get There?" and "Turbo Swag", it should be noted that it feels like these were written in 2012 at the height of MLG #420blazeit memes with genius such as "War never changes, it's all simulation, I lock and load / Rack 'em and tag 'em and bag 'em and stack 'em like dominoes" and "Yippee ki-yay, yippee, yippee ki-yay / Leave me on read, mama, drive me insane / Yippee ki-yay, yippee, yippee ki-yay / Leave me on dead, pourin' shots on my grave". As for production, yes the bass is still non-existent and it's still hypercompressed to all hell because at the end of the day, it's crabcore we're talking about. The reason you're here, assuming you don't have the intelligence of a brick, isn't for Mozart-level tonal musicality. No, you are here for the crab. And
Attack Attack! II does indeed bring us the crab. Get your claws ready, kids.
