Review Summary: You're on your own now. Run faster.
Sitting down to review
Fangs!, the fifth effort from loosely termed “alternative rock” band Falling Up, I actually cringed a little bit for the first time in the entire journey through their discography. Even after the aural torture in
Crashings I was optimistic, figuring it couldn’t get much worse, and that was rewarded with the enjoyable but still flawed effort of
Dawn Escapes. I even enjoyed the remix album
Exit Lights. It was the band’s fourth effort
Captiva that shocked and disappointed me. Not only was it weaker than the previous two releases, but it was almost as bad as
Crashings. It was boring and honestly came off as a little pretentious, similar to the Rivers Cuomo syndrome displayed in later Weezer albums. Honestly, a part of me just lost interest in the rest of the band’s discography, admittedly the larger part of me. However, a smaller part won out, a part that decided that maybe, just maybe, the next effort would raise its head at least a little more.
Well, Jesse is back to being annoyingly high pitched, arguably even worse than the band’s first effort. He had gotten bearable and even enjoyable on
Dawn Escapes and
Captiva, but here, he almost ruins the songs and is hard to listen to. Oh, and the screams do make a return, here in the bridge of “Lotus and The Langlorious”. And they absolutely ruin the only salvageable part of the song. There’s actually some cool riffing, one of the only instances on the record, but that distorted screaming affect just garbles over it. I’ve said it before with this band, I’ll say it again: IF YOU WANT TO HAVE SCREAMING IN YOUR MUSIC, THEN DO NOT EDIT IT OUT SO IT’S QUIET AND NEAR UNBEARABLE TO LISTEN TO! Speaking of guitars, the guitars that always leant a nice edge and sometimes even saved moments on Falling Up records, guitars that were even present on the best of the band’s fourth release? They are here, arguably more than Captiva, but they are used so generically (for the most part) they aren’t worth speaking of, mainly contributing Drop D power chords. And when the guitars do actually stand out a little-other than the aforementioned track- they are literally edited out to the point they lose all heaviness or staying power. I’m serious. Take “The Moonn and Sixpence”. There’s some really good detuned riffing in the beginning, but it loses all punch due to having a silenced tone. It’s similar to the screaming. If you want heavy guitar riffs, for the love of God, go all out on them and don’t EDIT THEM OUT! Bass gets about half a nod more than previous, because although it plays much more of a role and shows up on tracks like “Lotus” and “Magician Reversed”, it’s near impossible to enjoy due to Jesse’s childlike crooning. Drums are the exact same on any Falling Up record, they stand out occasionally but are not groundbreaking and are essentially monotone. And those electronics. They are WAY overdone. It’s beyond industrial metal or alternative metal or experimental rock or whatever you wanna call it: it’s just bad. A rock band should not be this dependent on glitzy electronics that sound so cheesy and generic it isn’t even funny. I don’t mind if electronics are inserted tastefully, such as RED’s
Release The Panic, Linkin Park’s
Hybrid Theory, both Blue Stahli records, and even some of Korn’s material , but this is just embarrassingly bad.
You know those moments I mentioned above? Yeah those are the best parts of the album on a good day. On a bad day, this record is so boring. So so boring. It reeks of pretentious ambition from frontman Jesse Ribordy whom I wish I could give the benefit of the doubt but for God’s sakes dude, just start your own solo project and do this kind of crap. Maybe it will sound better. And before you accuse me of being someone who just doesn’t like longer albums, stop right there. I have Tool’s
Aenima at a 5. It’s fourteen songs long. I have RED’s
Of Beauty And Rage at a 5. It’s fifteen songs long. Nine Inch Nails’
The Downward Spiral takes quite awhile to listen to and manages to actually keep me engaged the entire time for the purpose of more than writing a review.
Lyrically, this is just going too far. I’m all for clever imagery and wordplay, and while most of the bands I listen to are Christian in some way, I’d much prefer ambiguity in lyrics with an underlying Christian theme because that makes them more relatable. But there’s a big difference between cleverly snaking ambiguity and having absolutely no idea what the album you’ve purchased is about. And even if you figure it out, how is it relatable? I can’t find anything relatable or noteworthy lyrically here other than the fact that half of this is just weird stuff that even FANS OF THE RECORD don’t understand. Again, I’m not saying you have to be Nickelback or Needtobreathe or every Top 40 artist spouting out dumbed down lines, but for God’s sake, know that enough is enough. It’s rumored that this album was based off of a screenplay. THEN MAKE A MOVIE! It will make MUCH MORE SENSE as a movie. It doesn’t even have to be a movie. It can be a music video. Or a series of them. Bands like RED and Nine Lashes and even Tool have told fantastic stories through their music videos that seriously enriched the narrative, but maybe the difference in these songs actually had some value in them in the first place.
This is so disappointing and way too far out of left field. Honestly this is worse than
Crashings because at least
Crashings had a decent blend of ambiguity and down-to-earth lyrics and the vocals weren’t this bad. I cannot appreciate this album in any way. I don’t understand why it gets this much praise and I don’t understand why the band members allowed Jesse to take his ambition and simply run too far in the wrong vehicle.
