Review Summary: The band's best album to date, thanks to its masterful lyrics, with only a lack of musical diversity holding it back from being something truly masterful.
It's always unfortunate when a band never reaches their fullest potential.
3 Doors Down is a mainstream-rock band that has yet to reach their fullest potential. Mediocre albums, like Seventeen Days and their most recent self-titled effort, keep setting them back (quality-wise). But their sophomore album, Away From The Sun, is really quite good and showcases what the band is capable of. Away From The Sun sugarcoats subjects, like death by bullet to the head, with relative ease in the finest possible way.
Opening with the catchy "When I'm Gone" was a smart choice but, at the time, it was simply known as an overplayed radio-single. Listening to the track today, it really opens the album quite well and it showcases that this is an album that focuses mainly on its motivational lyrics over musical diversity. This is somewhat unfortunate because the band clearly has little confidence in their overall sound which makes the album sound repetitious once too often. Tracks like "I Feel You" and "The Road I'm On" sound too similar when the slow guitar, and light drum beats following, introduce the tracks. And yes, it is the intros that make the tracks sound so repetitive.
Besides the intros, the tracks themselves are all quite good overall; with the first-half of the album having the strongest tracks on the record itself. "Ticket To Heaven" is a great song that has a chorus which builds further and further as the song progresses and really shows how effective the lyrics are throughout the album: "All they gave me was this ticket to heaven / That ticket to heaven said to lie in the bed that you made / Now I'm restless and I'm running from everything / I'm running from everything / I'm afraid it's a little too late". Lyrics, like the one previously quoted, are both layered and thought-provoking.
Thought-provoking? You must be nuts, Jon!
Maybe, but I beg to differ. The lyrics throughout this album are masterful because they are honest and relate to the events that happen to individuals on a daily-basis. That is commendable.
If the lyrics were in the hands of a band like Sevendust, who are often criticized for having a wide musical-diversity but limited songwriting abilities, they would have an equally masterful album on their track-record. Unfortunately, as I stated before, 3 Doors Down isn't confident enough in the sound of their music to make a masterful album. The only defense to this claim would be the final "hidden track". This track, in my eyes, would've been titled "This Time" if it was actually listed on the case.
"This Time" plays out like a fallen hero anthem. The song's distorted vocals and guitar work during the intro give off a bleak atmosphere; which shows real potential for what could be a really strong future effort, if they would give this kind of well-written record another go. The track itself brings to mind such superhero movies as The Dark Knight and Watchmen (just as their recent "It's Not My Time" single brings to mind a fictional-hero like Spider-Man). "This Time" was a perfect way to end this album that could've used way more musical diversity to push it over the limit. However, what we're left with is an incredibly well-written album which holds up over repeat-listens.
Fingers crossed for the future, baby.
