Review Summary: Falling in Reverse provide little to praise here. An immature, boring, and uninspired album, topped off with lyrics that can only be winced at.
I wish I was the Astronaut on the front cover of this album so that there was a small chance I could thrust myself into the Sun at astonishing speed, eliminating the possibility of ever having to hear this again. Normally I give a bit of a brief background on the band I'm reviewing, but you probably all know who this band are, and if by some divine grace you don't, you owe it to yourself to keep it that way. I'll be honest with you, Sputnik, I didn't have high hopes going into this. I've always found this band radically underwhelming, and Ronnie Radke's deplorable behaviour out of the studio is enough for me to avoid giving them my time. However, learning that Falling in Reverse were releasing new music caught my attention, mostly because I was shocked Ronnie wasn't in prison, so I decided to grit my teeth and listen to it.
This is a pretty well produced album, for the most part. Everything sounds very clean and bright, and there's some fairly massive bass hits throughout which a decent set of headphones will reward. However, things sometimes get a bit lost among all that bass and it's hard to hear one element from another, the vocals get drowned out and the guitars are indistinguishable. Having such an over saturated piece of production so regularly really makes this an abrasive listen at the best of times. As far as this stands up to the band's previous releases, it's certainly different. That being said, Falling in Reverse have never seemed to be able to tell what they want to do. Their first record was overflowing with boring guitar solos, breakdowns and screamed vocals, then they did 'Fashionably Late', where Ronnie was going through his rap phase which really didn't have any redeemable factors, and after that I really stopped paying attention if I'm honest. Coming Home is a weird transition into pop punk, interlaced with some sorry sounding emo influences in the vocal phrasing and melodies, with the occasional uninteresting guitar solo. I would say that this sounded like the band had matured, however the same can't be said for Radke.
The major let down here is the vocals. There are so many instances throughout this album where Ronnie's whiny croons make me question whether there were better takes and the producer just used the ones here as a joke. He's always had a very unique voice which I can only chalk up to being an acquired taste, but this on the whole is not a good vocal performance. Radke sounds like he's really straining himself to reach some of these notes. I'm a vocalist myself, and I feel as though trying to imitate the things Ronnie does on this record would injure me. Ronnie utilizes pitched screams on a number of songs, but they don't sound clean at all, whereas someone like Sam Carter of Architects has honed and nails that style consistently. I cannot stress enough that Ronnie sounds like he's really pushing himself too far, the things he's attempting are too ambitious and will not translate well to a live act that tours so rigorously. This is likely due to a lack of understanding of his own range, and whilst I appreciate his desire to try something new, he's fallen short and it makes listening to the vocals very uncomfortable.
The lyrics on this album are by far the worst I've heard from this scene in 2017. They downright made me cringe, causing me to take a break from listening to this for half an hour or so, several times. This record sounds like it was ghost written by a middle schooler with no self awareness, except it wasn't, it was written by a 33 year old man. I wasn't exactly expecting Morrisey with track titles like ''I'm Bad At Life'' or ''I Hate Everyone'' but this is next level trash, for want of a better term. There's a couple of bonus tracks on this album, one being called 'Right Now', and the other 'Paparazzi'. 'Right Now' has taken the number one spot as the worst set of lyrics I've ever heard, there's honestly not a single likable line on that whole track, it's nearly laughable, and the rest of the album isn't much better.
I can't really recommend listening to this album for any reason other than to feel good on a bad day and have the opportunity to say to yourself, ''hey, at least I'm not in Falling in Reverse.'' This is not worth listening to whatsoever, but if you feel like laughing at something you could do worse than to look up the lyrics to this. I can't pick any tracks on here that I particularly liked either. This just isn't good, it's immature, it's boring, and it's uninspired, which in turn makes it hard to take it seriously. Not feeling this one at all. Go listen to the new Kendrick Lamar tracks instead.
