Review Summary: break your neck / with my hands on your throat
No one does it quite like I Prevail. There’s something to be said about a band capable of pleasing dudebro-core fans and “I-dig-Evanescence” mums alike. Unfortunately, the majority of that thing isn’t exactly positive. Everything I Prevail does is so predictable, so glossy, so
vapid that it’s easy to see why they aren’t exactly revered. Simultaneously, everything I Prevail does is so predictable, so glossy, so
listenable that it’s easy to see why the majority of their songs have accumulated well over ten million streams on Spotify. Three years after the highly successful and utterly disposable
Trauma, metalcore’s most slippery boys have returned with the brand new full length
True Power to please their legions of fans.
In all fairness, it must suck being an I Prevail fan. The band clearly don’t respect their fans - look no further than lyrical gems such as “
My power is limitless, you are like Icarus / You have been flying too close to the sun”. Ah, yeah, cheers for explaining that dudes, how else would I have known what an Icarus is? On “Judgement Day”, however, the band take a massive risk by leaving their use of the word “Armageddon” unexplained. How will listeners ever understand what this means? Are these geniuses seriously expecting their fans to read song titles and make
connections? Speaking of genius, I was highly relieved to see a specific website’s liner notes for the song “FWYTYK” revealing that “
the title “FWYTYK” is the acronym for “*** what you think you know” – the first line in the chorus”. Thank God for that (I am not actually thanking a higher power, but rather using the expression to indicate that I am thankful (although it is somewhat drenched in sarcasm)).
On top of this, “FWYTYK” also states
TRUE POWER’s mission rather bluntly: I Prevail are “pushing boundaries” and “not putting out the same ***”. Admittedly, the record isn’t as filled with, uh, trap beats and rap features as it could have been, yet approximately every single song wouldn’t sound out of place on either of the band’s previous albums. Cookie cutter metalcore riffs, buttery pop punk choruses, mind numbing repetition: it’s all still there. Sure, this time around things might be even more slick and maximalist, but that doesn’t exactly equate to progression or “pushing boundaries”. The only ones likely to perceive I Prevail as pushing boundaries are incredibly young or inexperienced music fans - and that’s fine. The band could definitely serve a purpose as a gateway act, which is cool. The music they put forth, however, is not.
While most elements of
True Power are perfectly listenable (outside of every single rapped verse), there’s hardly a single original idea to be found on the record. Moreover, certain songs are eerily similar to songs by other artists… with the exact same titles. ‘Choke’s intro is little more than a hi-fi version of Bury Tomorrow’s song of the same name. Elsewhere, ‘Body Bag’s decently ferocious verses are highly reminiscent of Beartooth’s song of, you guessed it, the same name.
True Power is a friendly reminder that overblown production can’t hide lazy songwriting, while reinstating that, at the end of the day, most people don’t really care.
