Review Summary: Where Gerard's punk went
The Aftermath: Part II
While Gerard was off ripping off britpop and David Bowie, his former band-mate Frank Iero was dealing with his own demons. What resulted was a new band and some of the best music of his career. In an interview with AP magazine, Iero revealed that much of the music for this project was borne in 2012 and 2013 while he was suffering intense pain from digestive issues. He became a recluse, living, writing, and recording in his basement, crafting the music on this record. Frank emerged from the trial with an intense artistic statement to convey, and it's that he's pissed off and in pain.
While this album lacks the hooks and sugary goodness of "Hesitant Alien", it more than makes up for it with energy, passion, and distortion, amounting to the best old-school punk imitation Iero, or any other member of MCR has ever done, or ever will do. Short, brutal torrents of hardcore riffs and shouted gang vocals are entrenched in most tracks of the LP, such as opener "All I want is Nothing", and mid-album jams "Tragician" and "Neverenders" . The two ballads, "She's the Prettiest Girl.." and "Stage 4 Fear of Trying" are spectacular, intimate moments on the records, and that's completely ignoring the lyrics. The Passionate vocals, the gently strummed electric guitar chords and the suprisingly gifted songwriting of Iero is incredibly refreshing, especially in an increasingly stale punk climate. Even in the more vicious tracks, the passion is still present, married to the anger and distorted riffing that not only avoids entirely generic chugs, but keeps a level of energy and punk dissonance that only the best hardcore bands can maintain.
However, as refreshing it is to hear consistent lo-fi hardcore, that very same production value and consistency hinders the album's impact somewhat. The constant static-ky distortion creates an atmosphere that added to the little variations in each song becomes difficult to sit through the whole 40 minutes or so of the album's runtime, and makes some of the songs even run together. The two aforementioned slower songs would have benefitted from a tenderer production that would have added to the intimacy of the subject matter. However, despite this sometimes glaring aspect, the record's songwriting and performance more than makes up for it.
No matter how good this record is, it will always be compared to past work and the work of Frank's former bandmate. To be honest, it holds up as easily the best of the two so far. It edges out due to the fact that Frank still wholeheartedly devotes himself to his punk attitude. On the other hand, Gerard completely rejects his all of his punk-cred and for a different approach, and suffers somewhat because of it. While both records are very good, Stomachaches is edgier and simply more rambunctiously fun than Hesitant Alien is. Now all that's left to do is wait for Ray Toro's and Mikey Way's responses to their more artistically active competitors.
