Review Summary: There's nothing ambitious about "Ambitions", the sound of this album is infact ambiguous at best.
The modern day pop-punk scene has shown several signs of fizzling out. While many bands are leaning towards pop, several others have embraced modern metal influences to abandon their softer side. Either way, very few bands have managed to maintain the right balance between "pop" and "punk".
One Ok Rock, for the better part of their career, have managed to maintain this so called balance. They have also managed to seamlessly switch between genres with every release. Their latest release, however, sees them struggle with a sound, which completely abandons their roots. While every previous release by One Ok Rock has exhibited diverse influences, the band's inherent sound was still at the heart of the music. With Ambitions, it seems that too much was compromised in favor of going fully mainstream.
"Ambitions", the first track kicks off the album, it's a decent post-rock instrumental. But right after the intro, one generic song after the other, plague the album with monotony. Songs like "Bombs Away" and "Taking Off" are decent songs with nothing going against them, but there's nothing interesting either. Things get a somewhat interesting with the choir intro on the song "We Are", but the rest of the song falls flat, cheesy lyrics specifically ruin an otherwise decent song. "One way ticket", "American Girls", "I Was King" are all standard pop-punk songs with the occasional intriguing intro, let down by cringeworthy lyrics and weak musicianship. "Hard to Love", however, is a catchy acoustic tune that shows a totally different side of OOR, the vocals from Takahiro are absolutely on point here.
The collaborations with artists like
Avril Lavigne and 5SOS are again hit or miss. "Jaded" feat. Alex Gaskarth starts with a promising intro and surprisingly stands out as one of the better songs, sadly it ends with a rather cringy EDM outro. "Take what you want" feat.
5 Seconds Of Summer is another catchy song with an infectious chorus. "Listen" feat. Avril Lavigne is sadly a forgettable affair. It's not a bad song per se, it's infact consistent with the album's confused yet overall generic sound.
Ironically, there's nothing ambitious about "Ambitions", the sound of this album is infact ambiguous at best.
Recommended tracks :
Take what you want
Jaded
Hard To Love
