‘Forever Alive’ offers us a very dramatic beginning, and easily something that could be heard on the BVB record. It gives us heavy drums and a classic rock sound that I wasn’t entirely expecting to hear on this album. This song is a mash up of more classical influences and radio friendly pop, which is something that I was expecting.
‘After the Storm’ offers us the drums as the starring role, which is an interesting change, given that the opening track was fast paced guitars. However, in terms of themes and lyricism, these first two songs didn’t really grab me, which was worrying; as the first two songs are usually the songs that give you a taste as to what the rest of the album will have to offer. ‘I’ll Find My Own Way’, offers us a drastic change of pace, and what is, undoubtedly my favourite song on the record. It give us a relaxing, melancholic piano intro, and it makes it less intense and in your face than the songs preceding it. It’s a sweet song about loving someone so much that you’re tied to one another, and no matter what happens, you’ll always find your way back to one another. My only criticism of it would be the length-though it’s a nice sweet song with no other faults, there was very little reason for it to be over five minutes long, when I felt as though it said everything it wanted to say at the three minute mark.
‘Crazy Ex’ is kind of where the album started going downhill for me. It gives us an immediate change of pace. It’s heavier, peppier and tonally, quite confusing, to put it bluntly. This song left me feeling confused about its place on the record, not just tonally, but in terms of themes too, as it’s lumped straight after a sweet love ode, whereas this song seems to do nothing more than to perpetuate the unhealthy relationship tropes that we’re trying so hard to remove. The song deals with, well, a ‘crazy ex’, who refuses to let go of someone who no longer loves her, and claims that she’ll destroy his entire life if she can’t have him. Call me an SJW if you will, but I found this song confusing, and not to mention damaging as it encourages toxic and abusive relationships, and it’s 2019, I think we’re a little above and beyond that sort of thing. Not to mention that it has a strange EDM breakdown near the end, which didn’t really fit with the rest of the song. And, it did occur to me that perhaps, this song was meant to be satirical, but at the end of it, I wasn’t quite convinced that was the case.
‘#instamood’ on the other hand, is through and through satire. Focusing heavily on our dependency on social media, it follows the narrative of a young girl who can’t see past the end of her phone screen and is consequently obsessed with finding the perfect filter and the perfect angle for her photo. However, I am sorry to say that it didn’t feel as though this track brought anything new to the table that we haven’t already heard from countless parody artists. Unfortunately, if you want to listen to a scathing satirical social commentary, I’d recommend Neck Deep’s ‘Happy Judgement Day’ and even The Pretty Reckless’ ‘Why’d You Bring A Shotgun to the Party’.
So what’s the verdict? This album has really good elements to it, and I’m not bashing the fact that they put together the entire album by themselves, it’s always admirable when artists do that, and in this case, it’s no exception. However, though the instrumentation is worth enjoying, and the guitars and drums are stellar; the album seems to have little direction in terms of lyricism and themes. I personally, found it confusing, misleading and just in general, a little lost, and I’m very sorry to say that this was an album that just wasn’t for me.
Written by
Asya Kardzhaliyska
