New Found Glory - Resurrection (2014)
Sometime after their last studio album "Radiosurgery", guitarist Steve Klein was hitting up these 18+ webcam sites where you have to click to confirm that you're 18+ before you get in, and yeah, that isn't foolproof but whatever, you get the point. Steve Klein was being a pretty shitty person by recording the webcam footage of everyone he was masturbating with, and he's a real fucking shithead for that, because that is pretty fucking terrifying. Now, he and his girlfriend broke up after she discovered the footage or whatever, and reported it to the authorities because one of the girls looked underage. Steve Klein got kicked out of the band and into a shitload of legal issues, and that's what prompted the creation of this album: After all of the negative press that got associated with the band because of one complete fucktard in the band, they had to rise from the ashes like some kind of pop-punk phoenix, and despite the fact that Steve Klein wrote all of their lyrics beforehand, it's really not hard at all to write lyrics about not being able to leave a girl the fuck alone so don't even worry about that.
You know that one guy who you went to high school with, or maybe it's a relative, who is entirely stuck in culture from ten years ago? I mean, quoting Leeroy Jenkins, saying "pwn", etc, and you don't have the heart to say anything because you don't want to be a jackass? That's kind of like how this New Found Glory album is. With their previous albums, they'd -usually- introduce something new into the mix each time, like the easycore "Not Without a Fight", the alternative rock "Coming Home", or even just the fact that they went from sounding like a pretty okay local pop-punk to the great, super polished and incredibly catchy "Sticks and Stones", but this sounds exactly like what would come to mind if someone were to say "imagine a generic New Found Glory album", and that's not to say that there aren't some catchy tracks, but it all just feels so fucking done and tired by this point in their discography. Sure, "Ready and Willing" seems like it'd become a fan favorite (I haven't checked, mind you), and if you get "Resurrection: Ascension" then there's an awesome (if disjointed) version of it on there with a shitload of other pop-punk vocalists, with me personally fanboying upon hearing Chris DeMakes of Less Than Jake and Mark Hoppus of blink-182 on the same song, and there's a cool version of "Vicious Love" redone with Paramore's Hayley Williams, but just.. Fuck, switch it up, guys. Find -something- to put out other than some generic catchy pop-punk tunes. Throw a wrench into the machine and see what happens.
6/10
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