Review Summary: The most innovative generic album ever!
It is a difficult task for bands with any intentions of being original to go over well with the mainstream audience. Most popular bands sound the same as other artists in whatever genre they play, but to most of them, that’s no problem when that sound is what’s selling. Up goes the album sales, down goes originality. Of course that is a generalization and there are exceptions; enter Chiodos, a gimmicky post hardcore band that tried to be one of those exceptions with the release of
All’s Well That Ends Well.
Before I heard the band, I remember reading an interview with them where one of the band members said something along the lines of “We stay away from verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus song structures...actually we try not to have any structure at all.” Of course what he really was saying was “We are so original ”. And to some extent, I agree with him: Imagine a post hardcore band with a high pitched and pre-pubescent sounding vocalist, lots of keys and soft piano parts, metalcore-esque breakdowns and generic screaming. I’m sure you all know how they sound by now, but the point is the band attempted to throw in elements not normally found in popular post hardcore, with success in the sense they do sound different, but failure in the sense they still are very generic. Contradiction? Let me elaborate.
The album opens with the sound of waves crashing against a beach with piano being played over it. The first real song “All Nereids Beware” opens with an in your face metal riff only to change to a quirky bass driven beat. Then Craig Owens opens his mouth. First with generic screaming, then with honestly terribly executed cleans. His off-key cleans sound like they’re coming from a homosexual 14 year old. I’m not trying to take stabs at his voice; it’s honestly the best comparison I can give. The song just kind of goes everywhere with no structure, which is what the band wanted to do. Remember the interview? The problem is every song kind of goes everywhere with no structure. Going off that statement exclusively wouldn’t make you think this is such a generic record, but every song ends up having a structure because of it; some screaming, some clean vocals, some chugging, some piano, generic but solid drumming and a breakdown that usually follows a super soft part with piano and Owens crooning. Every song does these things in a different order, of course; you can’t be too obvious you’re such a generic band.
With that said, the album is admittedly entertaining to listen to. If a mucic-only copy existed, I would listen to it all the time. I wouldn’t even care it’s so generic because it’s so fun to listen to. Unfortunately, my copy has vocals, and Owens’ off-key whining ruins the fun more often than not. Every song, despite being generic like I described earlier, is flat out a good time and pleasing to the ears, but that’s ignoring the vocals; the screams are bad but not as bad as the cleans, so if the cleans were executed better and actually on key, I could overlook the vocals as a whole.
My biggest problem with this album is I’m always waiting until the music is good enough to compensate for the vocals. It happens on a couple occasions, like the entirety of “The Words ‘Best Friend’ Become Redefined”. The song is perfect musically, and all the elements the band throw in every song, at least on this album are there, but it is on this song that they don’t seem to be there for the sake of being there; they work. I also don’t have this problem with the interludes because Owens doesn’t sing on them (lol).
Chiodos take a cookie cutter post hardcore recipe and mix in some random ingredients with varying results. They try so hard not to be generic and end up having a generic sound because they take a few gimmicks and beat them to death. If you’ve heard one song on this album you’ve heard it all. Except the interludes and “The Words ‘Best Friend’ Become Redefined”; download those. In the end, the band make a sound easy to grasp for the majority of the mainstream audience, so maybe all’s well that ends well for Chiodos.
