Review Summary: Stadium rock that will stay in club venues.
Back in my scene days (which is to say, present day), I never really got the hype of Asking Alexandria. They had nothing to differentiate themselves from the crowd; repetitive songwriting, boring vocals, and just an overall sense of care, or lack thereof. So to say I’ve been out of the loop with the band is an understatement. So what better way to re-introduce myself than with their new outing,
Asking Alexandria. Surely things have changed since all of those years ago?
They have, but I wish they hadn’t.
Okay, maybe I wouldn’t go so far as to say they should have stayed that bland, repetitive mess they were all those years ago. Rather, I wish they would have just faded into obscurity. Remained a blurry memory, like that one conversation you have while drunk and you
may have heard something you shouldn’t have. That regret is exactly this self-titled. It hurts to think about, and you’d rather just forget. Thankfully, just like that memory, you forget about it pretty quick.
Asking Alexandria is an album that struggles to find its feet, perpetually stumbling over and over. Just like Bring Me The Horizon’s new album tried (and somewhat succeeded) to implement a far larger, stadium-rock sound, Asking Alexandria completely miss the mark. It lingers between old and new sounds at times, doing neither well, particularly on ‘Where Did It Go?’. The fast-paced verses are destroyed by the painful lyrics; “There is only one throne and I’m not done with it/Still shitting, sleeping, eating, breathing it”, and are not helped by the equally painful chorus; “You’re all so fucking outrageous/I can’t take it”. These lyrics, coupled with empty production, leave songs feeling hollow and lacking the power that much of their contemporaries provide. Boring riffs, non-existent bass and a vocalist that, sure, has the lungs to provide at least
some reason to come back, but doesn’t do enough to convince the listener that this is the
essential AA album.
Even without these shortcomings, the songs are just incredibly vapid for stadium rock. ‘When The Lights Come On’ sounds like a
slightly heavier Fall Out Boy b-side or even a Shinedown main single, aiming for the stadiums and stumbling at the club venues. It lacks the power that much of FOB’s big singles do, and its blatant attempt at a huge track results in its downfall; the instrumentation is reduced even further to allow Danny Worsnop his spotlight, but his lyrics lack anything interesting to warrant such a reduction. Elsewhere, ‘Eve’, by far the heaviest track on the album, is still bogged down by the epic sound AA are trying, and struggling, to maintain. The mundane lyrics (“ask yourself how being free is being locked inside these walls”) continually ruin what little hope remains for the rest of the album, and the electronic implementations leave the song feeling lost. By far the worst offender, however, is ‘Empire’. Featuring rapper Bingx, it further proves that ‘metal’ really shouldn’t try to mix in rap vocals. The track struggles to match the tempo of his vocals, and further leaves the record confused as to what it wants to be. Does it want to be stadium rock? Then a track like ‘Eve’ wouldn’t be listed. What about heavy? No, otherwise this album wouldn’t exist. It’s a constant back and forth that isn’t helped when the listener is struggling to maintain interest as the ‘heavy’ hidden track ‘Explicit’ rears its ugly head at the end; “You don’t even have a skateboard/You still have a PS3”. ‘Explicit’ results in an attempt at humour that results in an even more bitter taste than what was already present.
It’s tough to listen through
Asking Alexandria and not think that at least they
tried. It does, at times, succeed at being half-decent stadium rock when on its own. When compared to other artists however, it’s a bland, uninteresting mess that wishes it could be so much more. Instead of perhaps embracing their heavier past, they do away with it, completely transforming into something that will disappoint past fans and struggle to find a new fanbase nearly twelve years into their career.
Bring Me The Horizon did it better, and that’s saying something.
1.4/5
