Review Summary: The Three Days Grace fan's replacement for Human
The world of radio rock is licking its wounds after the inevitable downfall of Three Days Grace. With awful choruses, bland production, and a new vocalist who’s weaker than dry spaghetti,
Human ended up being arguably one of the worst albums of the year. Meanwhile fans of their older material began searching for another band to help feed their inner, angtsy teenager. Thankfully for them, their savior Adam Gontier hasn’t disappeared from their lives yet. After two years of his departure of the band, Gontier has now returned with his new supergroup, Saint Asonia, and their self-titled debut album. However, it seems as if Gontier has learned almost nothing since then, and that Saint Asonia is here only as a stand-in.
It’s incredibly difficult not to compare Saint Asonia to Three Days Grace simply because there’s almost no difference between the two groups. The lyrical content, the production, the instrumentation, and the vocal work are all exactly the same as the pre-
Transit of Venus days. Some may argue that the guitar work is slightly better, but if that’s true then it’s to a point where it doesn’t matter because practically every rock band out there can perform the exact same riffs and solos (or lack thereof) on this album. Lead single ‘Better Place’ is a perfect example of this due to its incredibly basic instrumentation. The riffs are repetitive and the drumming poorly executed while Gontier, to his credit, literally carries the entire song through its runtime, while ‘Live My Life’ attempts to borrow the catchy guitar melodies and rhythms that have been ever present in so many radio rock songs for over fifteen years. Regardless of possible improvement, the guitar work and drumming are so generic and bland that they'll likely the put you to sleep. That being said, there’s nothing on here that’s particularly awful due to Gontier’s vocal performance. Even if he hasn’t changed over the years, he is the one and only star in this album and for what it’s worth he does a good job of preventing most of this album from at least staying in the ‘mediocre’ territory. He has more of a soulful voice compared to most other popular mainstream acts, which in turn makes him stand above the crowd (heh heh). ‘Dying Slowly’ and ‘Trying to Catch Up With the World’, the latter probably being the best song on the album, are good examples of this as they are ultimately saved by Gontier’s performance. However, even with that in mind, it’s doesn’t necessarily make the album any better as a whole.
Let’s face it; the only people that are going to be attracted to this album are angtsy teenage fans of
One-X and
Life Starts Now. If anything,
Saint Asonia is nothing more than a B-side album of rejected Three Days Grace songs rather than a different approach to an already dead genre. While it’s not complete garbage, the result is an ultimate waste of time for those who are looking for something more unique and interesting. However, to those aforementioned, you are going to have one hell of a nostalgia trip.
