Review Summary: What a time to be alive
Canadian rockers
Three Days Grace have been going down the toilet in the eye of quality and stability ever since the departure of frontman Adam Gontier and introduction of noted poseur and ex-My Darkest Days frontman Matt Walst. Singlehandedly gone was the charm of the band's first three albums, and in its place was at best a passable faker, and at worst, the ultimate epitome of butt rock (hell, Matt's biggest hit pre-TDG was literally a song called "Porn Star Dancing"). They limped along for the mediocrity of 2015's
Human and the catchy-but-forgettable
Outsider in 2018. And for the first time ever, the band has broken away from its three-year album cycle break to give themselves another year for what has finally been released to the world, the sadly-not-directed-by-Michael-Bay album
Explosions.
I'm not expecting Matt Walst to hit it out of the park like Adam was able to, but opener "So Called Life", while taking a bit to get used to, ultimately opens the album with a bang and hints that maybe, just
maybe, the extra year was exactly what the doctor ordered. It's far from original, but it's extremely catchy and fun, which is exactly the sort of content that i've come to expect from this band. Unfortunately, considering Walst is STILL at the helm, there's bound to be missteps: "I Am The Weapon" is a forgettable affair of nothingness, and Lukas Rossi's feature on "Neurotic" sounds like Walst came in with the flu and just half-assed the vocal take. Surprisingly enough, however, these are the exceptions rather than the rule: "Lifetime" is the best ballad the band's put out in
years, "No Tomorrow" continues "So Called Life"'s throwing of synths into the mix to great effect, and "Champion" makes for an incredibly fitting WWE/AEW theme song. The biggest disappointment is Apocalyptica collaboration "Someone To Talk To", even though it could have theoretically been the second part of "I Don't Care"; unfortunately, however, Matt didn't even bother to consider that. "Explosions" ends the album on a fine note and does a decent enough job of washing off the disappointment of "Someone To Talk To", and with that closes perhaps the quartet's best album since
Life Starts Now.
The biggest issues with
Explosions, truthfully, are Matt Walst's lyricism and the production (and the tracks "I Am The Weapon" and "Neurotic"). He hasn't improved much in the four years since
Outsider came out, instead choosing to focus on properly trying to convey emotion and energy through his vocals. While he's never going to be as good as Gontier was, on
Explosions he comes perhaps the closest he'll ever come to doing so. The production is nothing to write home about; we still have ungodly levels of compression typical of generic radio rock, but again, this is Three Days Grace we're talking about. They'll never be able to reach the heights of
One-X again, but
Explosions proves that there's indeed hope for this strange, porn star fetishist-led era of TDG.
