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Infinity On High - Island Records
The prospect of a new Fall Out Boy album left me feeling both anticipation and ambivalent; it could be good, but at the same time, it could fail horribly. Then with Pete Wentz calling the leakage of his new album the “worst leak in the history of music” and blaming it on a minimum wage worker in a pressing plant I just scoffed and no longer had any interest in hearing the album. But the album still came, and right from the beginning my feelings of anticipation and ambivalence returned to me.
It starts off with an interesting shout out to the band from Jay-Z, which right away attracts your attention; and while something like that could potentially ruin the opening track completely, Thriller is a surprisingly good opener. In fact, it’s by far the best track on the album, which got me thinking right away that “damn, this could be a good CD.” Sadly, it pretty much all goes downhill from there.
Yes, there are a few good tracks amongst the fourteen cuts, but those good tracks are few and far between, leaving Infinity On High in a state of disarray and blandness. Thriller opened up with a solid melody and catchy vocals, the rest of the album seems to follow a fairly simple structure (other than a select few, like the R&B inspired single This Ain’t A Scene, It’s A God Damn Arms Race, the piano driven ballad Golden or the gospel-choir on Hum Hallelujah). The songs all merge into one another and constantly follow the same format, making most of the songs easily predictable and not very enjoyable. On top of that, Andrew Stump’s vocals seem to have taking a hit here too. They are still strong, but not nearly as diverse or memorable as on earlier releases. They seem to have followed the lead of the music and fallen into the background instead of taking to the forefront like they used to.
The biggest problem about this album though is just how incredibly serious it is. Pop-punk is supposed to be fun and entertaining, but Fall Out Boy have delivered a self-indulged album in an attempt to be the next big thing; and it just doesn’t work for me.
When it comes down to it, Fall Out Boy have just delivered an album that is simply too bland and monotonous to be worthy of all the praise it will undoubtedly get. There’s no diversity, but even that could be overlooked; but the fact that it’s neither fun nor catchy really that really hurts the pop-punk album. A few good tunes, but they’re drowning in a sea of mediocrity.
Plus, I tend to always have little faith in albums after I hear the band members themselves claiming to be the biggest band in rock music. And hey, in today’s age, if your CD didn’t leak early, wouldn’t that be an insult to your music?