Review Summary: Emo Quagmire is back with another atrocity.
New Attila albums are exciting for everyone. For fans of the group, it's another round of pizza, sex and trolls from "Atlanta's wildest crew." For me, it's a chance to boost those objectivity numbers. Having been exposed to this band in high school and struggling mightily to say anything good about them, to say my relationship with their music is tenuous would be a gross understatement. 2014's
Guilty Pleasure maintains its place as one of the worst albums of all time, while 2016's
Chaos and 2019's
Villain were embarrassingly marginal improvements. My most enduring contention with Attila is that frontman Chris Fronzak, who looks like what you'd get if Onision had never stopped pouring the kombucha, packaged
three consecutive full length albums with constant reminders that he "doesn't care about your opinion." He's also a creep, to the surprise of only those who still view
The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me and
Science Fiction as some kind of riveting allegories on depression and vulnerability. Nevertheless, Emo Quagmire persists and it's sure to be another magnum opus on this newest offering
Closure.
Album opener "Anxiety" almost had me. Following the same vein as previous surprise standouts like "Subhuman", Fronz feeds into themes of self loathing, mostly relying on guttural uncleans in the opening bars, backed by punishing instrumentals. Visions of a matured Attila going somewhere dark to bring these words to life sprung abound until Fronz let his creepy signature tonality take over in the second verse and promptly began promising "one day I'm gonna ****ing snap." On a dime, this one went from nominally interesting to downright petrifying. You can tell these guys are really shooting for the stars this time.
"Empty Clip" immediately dabbled into similar territory. I know Fronz and Frankie Palmeri are good buddies, and I'm guessing this was Fronz's way of proving he too can have a school shooter fetish. Stylistically, it plays like a
Chaos B-side, coupling the band's worst hip hop tendencies with laughable vocal delivery. Lyrically, these have to be the most ironic passages I've ever skimmed through. A man who groomed underage girls on his OnlyFans is out here threatening people with violence because "I got receipts." Settle down Chris, your Onision is showing. "Day Drinking" is...well, it's definitely a song. If Fronz crossdressing in the music video and trying his hand at
country music is what you're interested in, then you might actually enjoy a track that makes Florida Georgia Line look like modern day Socrates by comparison.
As
Closure trucks along, we're treated to even more thought provoking stanzas like "thick bitches, fit bitches, i don't give a *** bitches" and "I wanna take your flesh, I wanna wear your face." "Clarity" closes the album with Fronz reaffirming how out of touch the rest of us really are because "life is a celebration" and we'll "never be a part of it." I never thought Attila would make an album worse than
Guilty Pleasure, but God damn it, they did. I would almost prefer 2019's
Villain in contrast with its middling and unadventurous compositions.
Closure sees Attila trying
really hard to recapture what their previous four albums were already defined by, though this time with even cringier vocals and remarkably dumber lyrics. It's been an interesting senescence from offensive to boring to just embarrassing. How anyone can not laugh and ridicule these insufferable morons into submission is as remarkable as the fact that they somehow outdid even the worst of their back catalog.
Had A Day to Remember and Architects not tried to out-dad rock each other earlier this year, Attila would be taking home another coveted worst album of the year trophy. But I guess there's no shame in Fronz Bronze.
