Review Summary: Starting over.
By now there’s no doubt “Human” is the album that will define Three Days Grace as the kind of band they want to be. After Adam Gontier’s departure in 2013, many fans exploded against the decision to have Matt Walst (My Darkest Days frontman) as his replacement. After all, Matt hadn’t made a good impression based on his work with MDD. The question is: has his work on Three Days Grace paid off? Well, yes and no.
Before starting to listen the album, people need to realize that even though 3DG claims their purpose on this album was to go back to their earlier style, this is a new band, with a new purpose. No longer is the man who wrote decent lyrics and had a catchy voice. With Matt Walst, the band has coated themselves with a new layer of youth, for better and worse. Walst brings a different type of dynamic to the songs that are presented here, leaning more towards pumped up and “wreak-everything-and-live-your-life” theme that is present on bands like Adelitas Way.
As for the album? When it comes to Walst, credit has to be given where it’s due, as this man is not the same singer that joined Three Days Grace back in 2013, or even the singer from My Darkest Days for that matter. Walst has done excellent training to add grit to his voice, and this pays off on tracks like “I am Machine”, “Tell Me Why”, and “Painkiller”. When this album works, tracks like those mentioned before make an enjoyable fun for the listener. On tracks “Fallen Angel” and “The Real You”, the band attempts at delivering power ballads and mostly succeed, if not for a few moments that stop them from achieving the effect that songs like “Never Too Late” have.
However, the album suffers from a heavy dose of repetition, both in lyrics and instrumentation.
“Human Race” shows promise at its beginning, but Walst’s continuous “yeah” shows that this man still has a long way to go into becoming a competent lyricist, as well as jarring transitions in verses that make the song feel incomplete. Shame, since the end of the song shows a decent solo from Barry Stock. Speaking of guitar work, for undisclosed reasons, Three Days Grace have decided to ditch the two-guitar dynamic and leave Stock as the sole guitarist, which makes no sense since Walst has already done guitar work back in MDD. Tracks like “One Too Many”, “Car Crash”, and “So What” demonstrate the need for someone to back up Stock; Gontier made his best effort to avoid this problem when he was the sole guitarist in their self-titled album. Brad Walst and Neil Gontier make serviceable work on this album on bass and drums respectively, but nothing special, especially when compared to their work on “One-X” and “Life Starts Now”.
Overall, Three Days Grace attempted to reinvent themselves and target a younger audience with “Human”, and they mostly succeed at it. This is a band that peaked with “Life Starts Now” and started the transition on “Transit of Venus” towards the band they are now: a full-on generic mainstream band, and that right now is something they need. Frontman Walst stood up to the difficult task of replacing Gontier, and knowing that he would't be able to exceed previous standards, made the right choice in changing the band’s dynamic. This album will no doubt drive away many fans that hoped 3DG would make a decent comeback; however, it will also gain them a good amount of new fans located in the mainstream rock scene, and right now, this is what Three Days Grace plans and needs to do.
