Review Summary: Hit or Miss? Miss for the most part.
Three Days Grace has always been a neither great or terrible band. They seem to fall on the line right between both, easily stated as average. The band hasn't done anything revolutionary or interesting with their sound as Transit of Venus promised, but the overall sound is still good in a manner. The album feels very over hyped and doesn't live up to all of the band's promises. While the vocal work is decent, mainly lyrical quality and replayability suffer. Transit of Venus is the band's 4th release, and certainly not it's best.
After Life Starts Now we all assumed this band was going to ***, we were right for the most part. There are few standout tracks on the album, and the lyrical quality is dreadful. Prime example of the terrible lyrical quality is "Operate" which also stands as the bands worst song to date in my opinion. However the following track is one of the band's most brilliant songs to date "Anonymous". The high points of the album however don't seem to last long. For example, the into to "Sign Of The Times" showed so much potential for the song, but then you will find Adam pointlessly saying "I'll Give you what you need" which is very irrelevant to the meaning of the song, and feels like it was thrown it at last minute.
One of the things the band bragged about is the new electronic sounding instrumentals, and to be honest their not that special.
There seems to be more computer work, then hard instrumental work which is not present in any of the songs. Especially in the overly simple riff "Misery Loves My Company" which also suffers from bad lyrics. The instrumental work stands out most in what is also the album's best song, "Unbreakable Heart". You can actually hear the strumming of guitars in this one, which is great. After a short bridge there is also a hard hitting chorus, with a powerful instrumental which serves as a perfect outro for the album.
Sign of the times- 2/5
Chalk Outline- 2.5/5
The High Road- 3/5
Operate-1/5
Anonymous-4.5/5
Misery Loves My Company- 1.5/5
Give In To Me- 3.5/5
Happiness- 2/5
Give Me A Reason- 2.9/5
Time That Remains- 2.5/5
Expectations- 3.5/5
Broken Glass- 1.5/5
Unbreakable Heart- 5/5
Average: 2.7
