Review Summary: Stop whining and write about something interesting for a change.
Three Days Grace have always been one of those love it or hate it kind of bands. In fact, that's true for most of the hectic mess that is the Mainstream rock genre, but this Canadian quartet in particular. Perhaps it's because of their simplistic musicianship, maybe their overuse of power chords, maybe the fact that they rarely if ever vary their style or song structures. But this is one band that certainly seems to get almost as much hate as they do love. Personally, I'm kind of on the fence. There's a couple songs I don't mind and I think Adam Gontier has a pretty cool singing voice, but their songs have this tendancy to be either OK, annoying or just downright crap. So have things changed this album?
Basically-no. The musicianship has taken a big stride forward, as is evident from the start of the solo in the album opener Bitter Taste, and Adam's vocals are strong as always. But there are problems that plague this album which are far too big and
far too annoying to be ignored. The first of these lies within the lyrics. Ever since One-X was released Three Days Grace has grown a large following of generally depressive young teenagers who like to mope around listening to the album, talking about how it totally describes their feelings and how hard their life is, despite the fact that they really have nothing to be so upset about. It feels like Adam just decided to totally embrace that fact on this album. At least half the songs on here are about breakups and the rest mope about hard lives and bullying, but then after eleven tracks of complaint we get Life Starts Now, in which Adam says that you
shouldn't sit around moping and complaining about life and girls, which is exactly what he's just done for some 40 minutes.
The worst offender is Someone Who Cares. The lyrics in the chorus are so ridiculously cheesy and stupid it sounds like a parody of a Three Days Grace song, not an actual one. "Why is it so
hard to find someone who
cares about you/When it's
easy enough to find someone who looks down on you," Adam moans, and it's hard not to cringe as he does so. This has to be one of the reasons so many people despise the band.
The rest of the album consists of stereotypical break-up ballads (World So Cold, Last to Know, Without You, Lost In You), radio-ready singles (Break, The Good Life, Lost In You, World So Cold) and filler (Goin' Down, Bully, Someone Who Cares). Yet there are a couple signs of improvement thrown in the mix. Bitter Taste, the album opener, is pretty much your average TDG but with some improved musicianship in the form of an surprisingly good guitar solo. No More is probably the best ballad on here, certainly more interesting than the rest but it's still not that great. There are some catchy tunes as well but even this can't help pull the album into a higher rating.
All in all, I felt a Poor was a little harsh. Average certainly seemed more fitting for this album. It has it's better moments but all in all it's just the same thing we've been hearing on the radio for years, except in places the cliches feel even more swollen and distracting than ever. Basically, if this band steps up the musicianship consistently in every song, not just for one or two solos, tries to do something different for a change, and stops writing lyrics for angry teenagers people will take them more seriously. For God's sake Gontier, you're happily married with children, can you not write something a little more mature?
