Angels And Airwaves - I-Empire
Rating
RIYL
Blink-182Sum 41
U2 rip-offs
Tracklist
1. Call To Arms2. Everything's Magic
3. Breathe
4. Love Like Rockets
5. Sirens
6. Secret Crowds
7. Star Of Bethlehem
8. True Love
9. Lifeline
10. Jumping Rooftops
11. Rite Of Spring
12. Heaven
Users Rating |
Your RatingCreate an account or log in to rate this album |
Recent Ratings |
|
|
|
Angels and Airwaves put too much pressure on themselves. Last year (under the influence of narcotics apparently), lead singer Tom Delonge declared We Don’t Need to Whisper one of the best albums of the last twenty years, and the praise that he put on their latest release, I-Empire, while not as huge as before, still left a lot for the album to live up to. While the album is better in almost every way to its predecessor, it in no way meets the kind of importance or magnitude that Delonge wants it to. And maybe that’s part of the problem with the album, is that Delonge himself tries so hard to get the music to meet expectation that it fails almost completely.
Every song meanders around a repetitive, sometimes interesting, but ultimately dull melody, that offers a structure for Delonge to stumble through his lyrics. The songs are concerned too much with the build up, making it feel like some moment of catharsis or some kind of musical climax is coming, however, the songs end before anything can be resolved effectively. This can be attributed to Delonge’s ambition. The songs want to come to some earth shattering moment where everything comes together, but either because he doesn’t know how he wants to do it, or simply can’t do it, Delonge fails to bring the music to any such rapture, making the record for all its moments of greatness, boring.
In comparing Angels and Airwaves to +44 (and it’s almost impossible not to), it seems that each part of the Blink-182 split took what the other needed. While +44 can write effective, catchy pop-punk, they do it in such a serious, clinical matter that their songs have almost no emotional core despite the dark lyrics. Angels and Airwaves have a kind of unrelenting spirit that makes their music compelling, but don’t have the music to make it enduringly listenable. Each band keeps trying to recapture the point that Blink-182 got to at the end of their career, but fail to recognize the other’s necessary contribution to the band that made Blink-182 work, and that's partially why the two debuts from +44 and Angels and Airwaves are so hollow and disappointing.
This sense of longing for the past is most evident in the most complete song on I-Empire, “Rite of Spring,” which sounds like a b-side from the self-titled, final Blink-182 record. Delonge sings, “With a skateboard and a shit guitar / I’d dream all day that they would get me far,” while sounding the most immature, actually turns out to be the most introspective, grown-up song on the album. However, the line is presented in such a rambling fashion, the song never sounds as genuine as anything Blink-182 ever played, making it feel like Delonge is just reading off of someone else’s lyrics sheet. With Angels and Airwaves it feels like he’s straying too far from what he should be playing.
--Matt McGraw
Comments
Forbidden.
New Jersey
when i see it in your eyes
i just want to go blind
Oklahoma
Cincinnati
still...can't be as ridiculous as the new Nonpoint cover
I could give crayons to my 5 year old cousin and he could come up
with something better....
Atlanta
but the new Nonpoint is waaaaaaaaay better than this.
That was hilarious, also, the fact that two songs on the album were in his top 5 of the year.
Atascadero, CA
Decoymusic.com (CEO/Founder)
Blue Reef Design Studios (Web Development)
http://aarontroy.tumblr.com
Haleiwa, HI / Carlsbad, CA