Review Summary: You don't wanna see the monster I become
Radio rock, for all its flaws, has its audience, and the bands that lie within are smart to play to it. There’s many subdivisions for any fan that’ll scour their local rock FM radio station, or more likely in 2023, the Sirius XM Octane stations, for new music. You’ve got bands like Three Days Grace that coast off their success from writing accessible, catchy, and surprisingly well-written music in the 2000s, and just as many that built their name off of mindless dumb-fun jumpda***up riffs and equally mindless lyrics (see: Limp Bizkit). But there’s also the new bands that are breaking in, especially with the nu-metal revival. From Ashes to New wears their influences on their sleeve, owing more to Linkin Park and Papa Roach than they do Bizkit and
(groans…) Crazy Town, and they’re better off for it.
Blackout isn’t here to make some super profound statement, but what it is here for is a great time. It’s the type of unabashed fun that isn’t afraid to pay homage and bring the feeling of nostalgic yesteryear nu-metal to a new audience. While sure, it’s not going to surpass albums like
Meteora, From Ashes to New have been refining their style and this is pretty much the most fully-realized iteration of their sound. The vocals lean more towards singer Danny Case’s anthemic hooks than rapper Matt Brandyberry’s verses, but the rapping isn’t all gone; opener “Heartache”, “Armageddon” and “Monster In Me” have some solid Linkin Park-esque verses. Brandyberry isn’t Mike Shinoda as one might have already figured out by now, but he’s got a solid enough foundation.
The anthemic alt-metal takes more of a center stage here than in previous albums; “Hate Me Too” has an infectious chorus that’s an easy earworm, for instance. It gets said a lot about many albums, but
Blackout feels like it was tailor-made for live-shows. The hooks are so catchy that it wouldn’t feel out of place for thousands of fans at an arena to scream out every last word. Danny’s vocals are at their peak, Matt’s rapping is improved, and the instrumentation complements them very well. Many tracks feel like they could fit as a pay-per-view theme for a professional wrestling program as well. It’s essentially WWEcore at its core, but it’s played so convincingly and with enough energy that one can just turn their brain off, not go in expecting
OK Computer or some immensely innovative piece of music and have a plenty good time.
