Madina Lake - Attics to Eden

Overactive creativity enthusiasts, musical genius fundamentalists, genres renewal subscribers, musicians looking for new instrumental challenges, poets in need of inspiration: skip to the next review. If you have downloaded this record, disable your Last.fm plug-in. If you have listened to this record, don't panic and quickly insert your favorite album. If you have bought this record, swallow it. No harm, no foul. If you have been offered it, change your friends. If the band tours near you, check that you double-locked. And never, ever pronounce Madina Lake's name in your whole life.

Of course, I exaggerate, there is worse than Madina Lake. Even much worse. But honestly, on the unoriginality level, the four guys aren't ones to bother with niceties. Concept album? Yep. Threadbare alt-rock riffs? Affirmative. Over-production and sound effects left and right? Right. Ultra classical songs constructions? Sure. Clear vocals scattered with screams? Of course. As much vapid and trivial lyrics as possible? Check. Solitary ballad on the end of the record? Clearly. Ham and falsely romantic videos? Alas. Ridiculous haircuts and any type of faces? Si, señor. You won't discover anything that you wouldn't already know about the most throwaway part of the actual alternative rock scene with this second Madina Lake album. As much as on the previous one some tracks stood out of the crowd and let us get a glimpse of potential buried under a mountain of awful fuss, ostentations, effects, manners and other cheap rubbishes, on this one, any hope seems lost. The whole of the record is terribly cliche and already heard from the beginning to the end (an end hardly in sight). In concrete terms, on the musical level, it sounds like a forced marriage between Anberlin and Nine Inch Nails. And visibly, the honeymoon didn't go well.
The only track that we remember after a first (and last) listening is the single 'Never take us alive'. If you manage to face the lyrics for adolescents at the height of crisis ("Sometimes I feel like I'm from another world / And everything I want in life seems impossible [...] Cause people, they'll tear you apart if you are not like them / And we are different"), maybe will you appreciate the guitar parts and the "wa oh oh oh oh oh" a la 'Godspeed' of Anberlin. Beyond this first song, hard will be the fall. Certainly, David Bendeth's production (Paramore, All Time Low, Underoath) is perfect, but maybe a little too much. The whole is bland to the point that we have the impression to hear the same song from end to end.
There is much to bet that you will spend more time watching the cover than listening to the record.

2/5

Recommanded if you like:
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Hawthorne Heights, Halifax
Check also:
The Blank Theory, Elliot Minor, My American Heart

www.myspace.com/madinalake
(Roadrunner Records, 2009)

Rise Against & Anti-Flag - Split 7''

The two American mainstream punk-rock bands the most in vogue of the last years decided to collaborate in the greatest secrecy to offer their fans a split vinyl more than collector. The record is said to have only been pressed in 100 copies, sold on the specialized websites (Interpunk, SmartPunk) or distributed on their tour with the excellent Flobots. Each of the two four-pieces chose a b-side of their last album, so unfortunately nothing new for the fans who already own their complete discography.

'Sight unseen', Rise Against's song, unsurprisingly sounds like their last album 'Appeal to reason', more rock than punk, the track only soaring on the choruses. We will nevertheless notice Brandon Barnes's good drums playing and the short instrumental section right after the break that will easily make you nod the head. Lastly, Tim McIlrath's screams at the very end will make you regret the times when they were more numerous.
Anti-Flag's contribution is more interesting by the fact that the song stands out a little more with what the band has recently released. Very short (not even a minute), 'I'm so sick of you' returns on Pittsburgh quartet's older tracks. Way more straightforward than their last album 'The bright lights of America' full of orchestrations, the song avoids any fuss and bets on the energy of Chris#2's vocals. We yet perfectly hear him tickling his bass and the same is true for Justin Sane and Chris Head's in crescendo arpeggios.

Nothing very original in those two b-sides that are all the same listenable if you're an enthusiast listener of the two groups. Lyrically, it's still committed without necessarily suffocating the hearer with revolutionary ideas. In short, a split for collectors only, who already rushed on it as all the copies are from now on exhausted.

3/5

Recommanded if you like:
NOFX, Strike Anywhere, The Unseen
Check also:
Thought Riot, Red Lights Flash, The Sainte Catherines

www.myspace.com/riseagainst
www.myspace.com/antiflag
(Interscope, 2009)