Let’s face it, Misery was shit.
Sounding like a mish-mash of Memphis May Fire and Beartooth meets Imagine Dragons and Bring Me The Horizon, The Amity Affliction’s sixth album raised the brows of several fans, praying they weren’t going for the same pie that BMTH were after. It was too pop for metal fans and too metal for pop fans. Simply put, the band face planted hard and fans were worried that they would never recover.
Let me rest assure you that they did recover.
On Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them, the band are still on their pop-metal vibes, but they turned it down a notch and pumped up the heaviness. They finally found the perfect balance. So yes, Everyone Loves You… > Misery.
Recruiting Misery producer Matt Squire (All Time Low, Underoath, The Wild & Free,) the Australian metalcore quartet try and correct their errors by making a record that’s actually presentable. The Amity Affliction sing about suicide, drug abuse, bipolar disorder, death, and sadness, while teetering between pop rock and metalcore.
Immediately you can tell that things sound a whole lot better with the nearly two minute long intro “Coffin.” The track reminds me of killer intros like Asking Alexandria’s “Alerion” and blessthefall’s “2.0.” Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them continues the heavy streak with tracks like “Forever,” “All My Friends Are Dead,” and the album’s closing number “Catatonia.”
But there are some songs that throw the heaviness off-kilter like “Aloneliness,” a track that deals with bipolar depression that gets mixed up in the poppiness, “Fever Dream,” which feels like a discount Linkin Park song, and “Just Like Me,” the heaviest song Imagine Dragons ever made. And that fucking chorus, and the whistling, the whistling.
Overall, Everyone Loves You… Once You Leave Them bounces around the place, being good one moment and subpar the next. For a band that used to create fantastic metalcore albums, Everyone Loves You… makes you long for the old days.
Punk Goes Prenatt 