Review Summary: They were born like this
Let’s finish debut month and the Three Days Grace trilogy by looking at a flawed but convincing first attempt at the 3DG formula that would be perfected on “One X”. Basically, my opinion about this album is similar to my opinion about “Hybrid Theory”, but I have to say that “Three Days Grace” is a very interesting album, better than its follow-ups in some ways. It’s still an album I really need to talk about.
Let’s try to put ourselves back to a time where nobody had ever heard of Three Days Grace and the post-grunge wave wasn’t what it would end up being. What’s our first impression of this album? Opening track, “Burn” has a catchy riff, kind of a heavy but accessible grungy riff. The first verse is sung in a somewhat awkward, not particularly catchy melody, the chorus is nice but doesn’t really soar, but there’s something about Adam Gontier’s deep voice, a sort of implied threat. Come all the way down, I’ll watch you burn. It’s not a perfect song, but it does grab your attention and sets the mood for the album.
The riff is good, and there’s a short guitar solo. Other songs have even better riffs. “I Hate everything About You”, the song that made this band famous, begins with a dark-sounding, repeated guitar melody that will get stuck in your head forever, and also feels full of implied cruelty. You could sing about all sorts of creepy stuff over this, and it would work. The verses and chorus are pretty repetitive, but you can feel Adam Gontier’s anguish as he wonders how you can love someone despite hating everything about them. That’s the question indeed. Again, you’ll either find this too melodramatic, or you’ll be fascinated by the album’s dark and angsty lyrics. Similarly, you may find “Now or Never” pretentious and “fake-deep”, but I kind of enjoy those lyrics about how humans must get better and make a better world, but we don’t know how. The song is also incredibly catchy.
“Just Like You” begins with a great riff, instantly memorable and full of attitude. The lyrics are a list of why the subject of the song is such a terrible person (with generic descriptions like mean, angry, cold), and the chorus proudly proclaims “You’re wrong if you think that I’ll be just like you!”. The chorus can seem very juvenile, it feels very much like the first song you’ve ever written. But part of growing up is building your own identity, and sometimes you have to become the exact opposite of all the bullies and abusive authorities figure around you, not become what they expect you to be.
“Home”, with its heavier and darker riff and angry vocal performance, is much more clearly about being trapped in an abusive home. Lines like “This house is not a home” and “I’m better off alone” will stick with you, especially the part where Adam screams “I’m better off alone!” with some kind of echo. “Drown” is another heavier song about an abusive relationship, with a chorus that really soars, talking about how much you’ve hurt the narrator. “Take me Under” goes even farther, with some of the album’s darkest and heaviest riffs and depressing lyrics that basically mean “Kill me now”.
But while “Wake Up” has a similar dysfunctional relationship theme, it starts with a nice, catchy acoustic melody, and remains much more upbeat than the rest of the album, which makes its angry and self-loathing lyrics stick even more. You feel both the narrator’s pain at how bad his relationship is going, but also understand that he may be somewhat guilty too, with lines like “I’m not the man I was before” and “I swear I won’t hurt you anymore”. This song really feels like a predecessor to a lot of One X tracks.
“Overrated” is another really heavy song, but doesn’t really fit in with the others. The lyrics also feel somewhat adolescent because they seem to blame the older generations for current “problems that will never go away”, but they’re pretty vague otherwise. Because of the title, it could also be about older, overrated artists that once spoke to young listeners and offered something new and interesting, but are now completely out of touch. You can debate if this ended up happening to Three Days Grace as well, but at least the mean riff and the “Go away” growled part are enjoyable.
Then you get my favorite parts of the album: the weirder and darker songs. “Scared” has another punchy riff that immediately grabs you and a raspy vocal performance, but I’m still not sure what the song is about. As far as I know, it seems to be about a camping trip gone wrong, or maybe a friendship gone wrong: “And then I hear it creeping, I’ll never sleep here anymore… It’s all because of you, I wish you’d never told me”. “Let You Down” has some nice drumming and another eerie riff, and lyrics that I still don’t understand, including a chorus where he repeats that he’ll let you down in a weird, cultish way, even growling at some point.
But the best of those would be the gloriously weird “Born Like This”. It begins with this chorus about how “It’s not what I gave to you, it’s not what I saw, we are born like this”, in Adam’s deepest and raspiest tone. Then the song gets heavier, adding sort of vague lyrics about being an outcast and having your revenge on the whole world, again, from what I understand. The song is hard to follow but there’s always a sort of strange creepiness in the background. That’s what makes it so great. Well, that and this almost soaring bridge about how “Somewhere, you’re not living, we are”, before it goes back to the chorus sung in a low and raspy voice. Whatever you may think of Three Days Grace, you don’t hear songs like that every day.
This album has ideas, it tries things and plays around to see what sticks. Some of those ideas feel clumsy, but when they work, they give us an unforgettable album full of anger, sadness and hope, a dark but accessible sound with catchy melodies and simple lyrics about expressing your pain and trying to find your place in this world. This album clearly laid out all the foundations for “One X”. And yet, because of its directness, messiness and rage, something about it feels rawer than anything Three Days Grace made afterwards. There’s a specific vibe to this album that you’ll rarely find anywhere else. This is the kind of debut that may not be “perfect”, if you will, but there’s something special to make up for it. If you ask me what is my favorite 3DG album, it’s a tie between this and “One X”.
