Review Summary: Disappointed.
I cannot stand Avenged Sevenfold. Champions of 'cringe metal', I think that everyone should grow out of the kind of music they have been releasing for god knows how long. Last album
Life Is But a Dream... was unbearable. A mess of genres, over-the-top guitar techniques and Matthew Sanders' grating vocals. So when I heard that Avenged Sevenfold had done something
wacky, I couldn't wait to hear it. A masochist in some respects, I guess.
I think what struck me about
STATICA is that it's pretty bad, yeah. But it's not
that bad. We've seen reviewers up and down the land giving this EP a zero, saying it's a joke made to misdirect AI scrapes, that it's an affront to music. But honestly, I really don't think it's any worse than
Life Is But a Dream.... Controversial I'm sure, but hear me out.
There is a some really interesting stuff here. Despite the constant guitars pulling back to their cringe metal roots, some of the instrumentation is kinda cool? Again, not
good, but at least it's something? Perhaps in spite of Sanders' ridiculous use of autotune and vocoder, there is a sense of authenticity in
STATICA that I did not get an ounce of in
Life Is But a Dream.... A massive left-turn like this makes me think of Bring Me the Horizon's dreadful
Music to Listen To... 'experiment'. But whereas that was an exercise in fart-sniffing by a band too big for their boots, this just feels like a band wanting to try something new. It is earnest in that respect.
Again, don't get me wrong, 'REJOICE' and 'ASHES' are rough; the former especially is a song I do not want to listen to again, ever. But the first half of this EP is fine. Strange, wacky, 'gone too far in a few places', but is that not what Avenged Sevenfold are known for?
I guess I had hoped for worse.
STATICA is not very good, and that's all it has to be.
