Review Summary: Watery
It’s needless to say that there was considerable hype surrounding Anberlin’s latest release. The band announced that it would be “darker” and “less poppy,” a shot heard ‘round the world for the legions of Cities fans disgruntled with the “mainstream” approach of New Surrender. The just-as-numerous supporters of the band’s new direction were also excited by the news. Later quotes began to say things like “we’re on the brink of something” and “magnum opus,” suggesting great things for the forthcoming release. Now, with the release well past, the reaction has generally been supportive of these claims. Which, quite frankly, I don’t understand. Dark Is The Way, Light Is A Place is not a poor album by any means, but it just feels like there is something important missing.
Quite simply the album is just too straightforward for its own good. Lyrical depth is hard to find, aggression and character are nearly totally absent, and creativity is lacking. With first listen you catch every riff and word and in the long run you are left with nothing but a good listen. The few examples of any aggression are poor, such as the excruciatingly forced chorus of “We Owe This To Ourselves” and the cheesiness of “To The Wolves”, which stands out awkwardly with a totally different sound than the rest of the album akin to a b-side from Never Take Friendship Personal. But the biggest fault of the rest of the album is just the lack of any real musical substance. Erik Bailey said it best perhaps with “Goes down like water... really, really filtered clean water.” Much of the time Dark Is The Way… is quite frankly boring and uninteresting. While a few mildly stronger tracks like “Impossible”, “Pray Tell”, and “Art of War” prevent the album from being a total failure, they remain the weakest highlights of any Anberlin release.
Billed as an album of friction between love and life, it’s easy to expect some heavy hitting lyrics, or at least something beautifully figurative like “Paper Thin Hymn”. But such is not true. In fact, for much of the album, the lyrics are either completely ambiguous in their meaning or purpose, or just plain simple. Album closer “Depraved” simply chants, “are you depraved, or are you deceived? / excuses aside, stop saying please / you’re not a slave, so get off your knees.” Any meaningful interpretation is beyond me, unless it’s some crude and out of place sexual remark. Most of the songs dance around relationships in various ways, never really making any significant points. And lines like “because of you I’ll never write another love song” never feel very meaningful when a few tracks before they said “you belong here / you were meant for me / you belong here / you belong here with me / you were meant to be with me.” While Anberlin has never really been known for particularly brilliant lyrics, they have never been a weakness by any means. And with so much of Anberlin’s appeal revolving around Stephen Christian’s vocals (which remain spectacular, thank goodness), the lack of
anything worthwhile being said is immensely disappointing.
All in all, Dark Is The Way, Light Is A Place is perhaps the weakest release from a band that, apparently,
can do wrong. Hopefully Anberlin can recover and find an album within them for their next release that is more up to the high standards they have set for themselves. Now they
really owe it to themselves.
