The Used - Artwork Review - DecoyMusic.com

The Used - Artwork

Rating

RIYL

Taking Back Sunday
Fall Out Boy
My Chemical Romance
From First To Last

Release Date

09/01/2009

Label

Warner Bros.

Tracklist

1. Blood On My Hands
2. Empty With You
3. Born To Quit
4. Kissing You Goodbye
5. Sold My Soul
6. Watered Down
7. On The Cross
8. Come Undone
9. Meant To Die
10. The Best Of Me
11. Men Are All The Same

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The Used's eponymous début album was a kind of a guilty pleasure for many. The good far outweighed the bad; and Bert's melodramatic emo crooning was somewhat tolerable split with his screams, and he and the band did seem to display some genuine conviction. Over the years, the band has slowly merged from a post-hardcore sound as evidenced on their début, to a more streamlined and polished pop rock outfit, largely ditching the screams and diluting their sound with each release and also picking up legions of teenage fans in the process. With Artwork, the band's fourth LP, they seem to have taken all they've learnt from their last nine years and placed it on one disc.

Artwork is the band's first release to not feature a production job from Goldfinger's John Feldman, but instead they chose Matt Squire to man the helm. Nothing much seems to have changed on the production front, however, but one thing that is noticeable is that The Used seem to stick to the same polished record-selling formula every time. At over 40-ish minutes, you get a couple of decent lead single sing-a-long tracks (“Blood on My Hands” & “Born to Quit”), a couple of slow-paced emo pop ballads (“Kissing You Goodbye” & “Watered Down”), a few great post-hardcore rockers (“Sold My Soul”, “The Best of Me”, & “Come Undone”), and then a couple of throw-away fillers (“On The Cross” & “Men Are All the Same”).

The atmospheric post-hardcore squealers of “Sold My Soul”, “Come Undone”, and “The Best of Me” are the obvious stand-outs and seem to channel some of the emotion and aggressiveness the band exhibited on their début, but it's the cringe-worthy ballads like “Kissing You Goodbye” that are really off-putting. The aforementioned track starts off as a simple piano ballad, as it slowly builds up into some My Chemical Romance Black Parade-style pomp rock, even going as far as to featuring a Slash-styled classic rock solo.

While Artwork is still hit-and-miss, there is more good than bad to be found here, and Artwork does seem to be a step in the right direction for the band – especially considering their last two lacklustre efforts. I guess it's only a matter of time before The Used achieve the super-stardom crossover of such acts as My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, but only if they can get their act together and push their song-writing, as I definitely think they have the potential in them to make a commercially successful genre-straddling album which can comfortably sit between the mainstream and alternative communities. At the moment, however, The Used seem to be neither here nor there and are stuck in a no-man's land of mediocrity and confusion.

--Rich Taylor

Author

Rich

Last updated: 09/29/2009 09:04PM

Comments

Bill Lohr

09/22/2009

07:23AM

Age: 27

Location
Lehigh Valley, PA

I refuse to even listen to this. I hate this band and will never be open-minded to their music.

Mike Duchnowsky

09/22/2009

07:35AM

Age: 27

Location
West Haven, CT

Bill Lohr

I refuse to even listen to this. I hate this band and will never be open-minded to their music.

Me too.

The Cityscape Burns Brighter By The Hour.

Rick Gebhardt

09/22/2009

07:59AM

Age: 30

Location
Minnesota

Bill Lohr

I refuse to even listen to this. I hate this band and will never be open-minded to their music.

Same here.

Find me EVERYWHERE:

Bill Lohr

09/22/2009

08:20AM

Age: 27

Location
Lehigh Valley, PA

Ha SWEET! This album is off to a good rating.

Dante

09/22/2009

10:20AM

Age: 21

Location
Fort Bragg, CA

Haha if you haven't listened to it why are you rating it!? Seems a tad unfair. I don't mind this album, but don't find myself listening to it all too much anymore. In Love and Death was a pretty good album, but many would disagree. In fact, I didn't even really enjoy their debut all too much. In Love and Death and Lies for the Liars were the albums I enjoyed most of them. I'm basically the opposite of every Used fan.