Anberlin – Never Take Friendship Personal

Anberlin made great steps with their debut album, Blueprints For The Black Market, back in 2003 on Tooth & Nail Records, but it never really struck me. But like most bands, Anberlin found themselves on multiple compilations over the last few years, and each time the songs stood out more and more. Never too outstanding, but they were slowly starting to grow on me.

Now they are back with their new album, Never Take Friendship Personal, and when I first got it, I wasn’t that impressed. I really didn’t want to listen to it the entire way through, it was juts quite boring. Around a week later I threw it into my CD player once again to give it another try, and although it still wasn’t spectacular, it had grown on me. Like they did over the past two years on various compilations,Anberlin once again started to grow on me. The little things they did right started popping up, and I soon found myself singing along on a few tracks.

Now that’s not saying that this CD is in anyway perfect, but it is better then I originally thought. It features very slick, smooth, radio friendly guitar riffs and solid vocals, sounds a little too polished. Its too clean shaven and smooth, there’s not enough grit to make it stand out in anyway. Aside from that slight production fault, it is still possible to sit through and listen to it the entire way without dropping into convulsions. It features some very catchy Christian rock tracks that could easily be compared to many of the well known bands flooding the radio these days. Unfortunately, this works against them as there is nothing extremely ground breaking or original about it, nothing that will help it last the test of time.

Although Never Take Friendship Personal possess many different qualities the the band’s debut, it does has quite a few resemblances too. I really doubt it will find its way into many people’s CD player six months from now. There are a few tracks, Stationary Stationery and A Day Late are some of them, which will find their ways on to compilations over the next few years and will successively bring back memories of the band. But as a CD on a whole, it is somewhat forgettable.