Review Summary: The only reason this didn't get a 1.5 is because of "Bishop's Knife Trick".
This is Fall Out Boy's worst album. Everyone who said "Folie a Deux" sucked needs to 1) move on, because that album was a masterpiece and 2) should jump on this one instead.
MANIA's first single, "Young and Menace", is almost completely unrecognizable as a FOB song. With its pitch shifts and vocal effects, it's impossible to sing along to (which is one of my main requirements for what makes a "good" song) and features almost no real instruments. And not only does it stand out in FOB's discography as some sort of weird anomaly, it also stands out on MANIA's own tracklist. That was our first indication that this was not going to be one of their better albums ("Save Rock and Roll", "From Under The Cork Tree", "Infinity on High", etc).
MANIA's main problem is that there's no core, underlying theme or message. I didn't come away from this album with anything new, or any real poignant emotion. Taylor Swift's "Red" was a breakup album, as was "Take This To Your Grave". My Chemical Romance's "The Black Parade" was an extravagant exploration of death. I do not know what MANIA is. I can't even really say what it tries to be.
And the songwriting is... not anything to be desired. We have stunners here like "Are you smelling that ***? Eau de résistance" (which in French actually means "water resistance", according to a French-speaking friend I asked) from "Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea", and pretty much all of "Champion", which has only 17 lines of song that isn't some variation on the phrase "if I can live through this, I can do anything".
I wish I could offer up some witty repartee about this, but there's just nothing to give. I thought it was a decent album when it came out (I was a die-hard fan of FOB in 2018), but now that I'm looking at it again, it can't hold up with the rest of FOB's discography. It's a confused mess of styles and ideas, none of them actually coming to anything resembling coherency. But even if coherency and theme aren't requirements for you, this album will still disappoint you with just how lackluster the lyrics are. It's simply not anywhere near their best work, and I frankly expected more from them.
The best song on MANIA, in my opinion, is "Bishop's Knife Trick". "Church", and, arguably, "The Last of the Real Ones", follow as runners-up. You could also make a case for "Wilson (Expensive Mistakes)". The worst have to be "Young and Menace" and "Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea". And everything else is entirely forgettable.
