Puzzled by the hype this band is now seeing, thanks to a reunion, I decided to lend a critical ear to this record and see what it was about outside of the singles. People must forget these guys are more fabricated pop than metal I have never sat down and listened to this album, but I have heard enough of it to know these guys felt more like a boy band with guitars than the rest of the nu-metal scene. They write hooky enough songs but so did NSYNC's producers. The dual vocalist thing seemed foolish after all Chino does what both of Linkin Park's vocalists do, so why not just have one better singer. But "Papercuts" works for me and of course "One Step Closer" is a classic of the era, but what about the rest of the album? Two good songs do not make anyone a great band. It's an album's worth of great songs that make you a great band.
"Points of Authority" is more rapped, and has aggressive turntabling. The chorus is way too poppy to take seriously as a rock song. The rapping sounds very dated. But genres that live by technology die by it as well. The same could be said for. The big chorus is memorable as I remember I have heard it before but not that I want to hear it again. All the supposed angst feels very contrived. "Runaway" feels like they are just recycling the themes from the previous song. if this came out today we might think AI wrote the lyrics for them. They try to rip off Helmet on "By Myself" and the rapping gets worse each time it appears. It's hard to make it through this song it's so bad.
"In the End" finds the piano riff cluing me in on the fact I have heard this one before, it is one of their better songs I suppose. "A Place For My Head" might be a better song with different vocals. "Forgotten" sounds like 311 for method-out frat boys. 311 is a better band that is for certain. The sad boi emoting on the last song falls flat thanks to the lame chorus. I will give this a 7.5, so at the high end of mediocrity. Just over half the album is decent, with a few songs that are just listenable, then some that are hard to make it through, not my kind of pop music. Certainly not worth the hype they get.
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