In their latest album, "The Constant," Story of the Year, the hard rock band from St. Louis, mixes different sounds in their music ranging from punk-rock, punk-pop, hard rock and screamo.
The band sounds like it was trying too hard to come up with new material for "The Constant." Although the songs are catchy, they are also mediocre and the entire album lacks a No. 1 hit. Fans who have anticipated the release of this album will be disappointed, since the songs are just not that good.
"I'm Alive," which has a punk-pop, almost ballad-like sound, is the best song on the album by far. It's a shame that the rest of the album doesn't have the same sound or originality to it.
To be fair, some of the songs sound like the band put in some effort to create a new sound and add in different techniques, to try to give meaning to the songs.
Even the songs that have potential have cheesy, forced lyrics. For instance, "The Children Sing" starts off predictably with children singing.
The theme of the album is life and death, which is evident from three out of 11 titles of songs on their album: "The Ghost Of You And I," "I'm Alive" and "To The Burial." In most, if not all the songs, there are many words suggesting death, which makes the entire album sound morbid. The other song titles and lyrics all follow the same death or emo theme as well.
Two of the album's songs, "Remember A Time" and "Time Goes On," deal with how time has changed things, so did the band really need to write two nearly identical songs?
"The Constant" also offers some lighter rock in the songs "The Dream Is Over," "Holding Onto You," and "Ten Years Down."
Aside from each song having a "twin" on the album, the songs are not terrible to listen to separately.
Apparently, Story of the Year ran out of ideas for song titles, meanings and chords for "The Constant." Most of the songs sound like they have the same introduction. It's as though Story of the Year found one good chord progression, could not stop playing it and decided to add it to the beginning of every song.
Patrice Kubik can be reached at patrice.kubik@student.shu.edu.
