Review Summary: This album is like having sex in an 80's movie; you decide for yourself what that means.
Do you remember those awkward preteen years when your body was changing and your parents would sit you down and have “the talk” with you? The Faint remembers. Do you remember when you first got that funny feeling in your pants? The Faint remembers. Do you remember in high school when you were so paranoid about losing your virginity? The Faint remembers; and their fourth full-length album
Wet From Birth is the spawn of those memories. If it could not already be assume,
Wet From Birth is a concept album of life, literally the beginning with step one of the initial conception and ending with those anti-glorious teen years.
On
Wet From Birth The Faint makes no dramatic sound change, they keep their easily recognizable sound of new wave, 80’s revival that they delivered on their previous album,
Danse Macabre. Already holding a sound that is an acquired taste, The Faint are in an awkward position with this album, they can keep their same fan base and most likely not reach mainstream success, or they could completely rewrite their style to become more accessible. Obviously, they chose the first of those options. The album begins with the short violin intro of “Desperate Guys” until it quickly goes into the danceable electronic beat and robotic vocals actually showing more range than Todd Fink usually does. The song, deathly catchy as it is, does not expand much and gets somewhat old quickly, the best parts are when the violins reappear every so often in the song, and the rest of the album as a matter of fact. The violins used are one of the most stand out additions to this album that was not on any of the previous, this is most powerful on “Southern Belles in London Sing,” a primarily violin driven song. The quick and upbeat violin intro is a vast improvement over “Desperate Guys, and might be the only violin solo that you could party to. This of course does not stop the electronic synthesizers from coming in. The combination of this plus the strings makes for a very interesting song as a whole.
Then it gets a little sexual…
The next song, “Erection” is about….erections. The song is actually very awkward to listen too, not because of the songs subject matter, but because it has yet to be determined if The Faint is being funny or not. “Erection” is oddly the darkest song on the album with its creepy chorus, “Oh uh oh, erection,” the listener is just left scratching their heads. Although the songs beat is catchy, it seemed the band was trying too much to ‘shock’ the listener with such odd lyrics. Unfortunately, they failed. Things improve with the next song though, “Paranoiattack” draws very close similarities to
Danse Macabre’s lead single “Agenda Suicide,” debatably the bands best song to date. The grinding industrial sound makes a unique bend in genera that could be compared to ‘Trent Reznor Meets The 80’s’. The next song “Drop Kick the Punks” is a very decent song, but it is extremely out of place in context with the album. With this, Todd Fink drops his robotic vocal act and picks up an strange Jonny Rotten sound-alike tone to his voice as the band tries, and succeeds in making an straight-forward punk song. But this punk flair has no welcome on
Wet From Birth and was probably only included due to its allusion to ‘rebellious teens,’ a phase in the cycle that The Faint is discussing on this album in a very unsubtle way. The albums best though is the closing song “Birth,” the epic description of conception to birth all in three minutes, losing the 80’s vibe once more this song is just sheer guitar power instead of overproduced synthesizers. “Birth” starts out slow and monotone but quickly builds into this loud rhythmic anthem of the gift of life, thus providing a wonderful conclusion to a decent new wave album, but there is much more room for improvement that could have been displayed here.
