*Excuse the 1st person, I just needed it badly here.*
I like New Found Glory quite a bit. I’m not ashamed to be a child of the pop punk generation. It conveniently corresponded with my junior high/high school years, and NFG were one of my favorite bands not only in the genre, but in general. I understand that many folks do not like the band largely due to singer Jordan Pundik’s high pitched vocals, which you either dug or reminded you of nails on a chalkboard. I fell into the former category. Long story short, I pretty much loved NFG.
All that said, I hate their 2006 release Coming Home. Hate, HATE, HATE it. Loathe it. Want to destroy it’s soul. It is, without a doubt, the worst album I ever paid for.
Where to begin? Let’s go with the general problems.
I truly have no idea what this album was trying to achieve. I believe it had to be one of the following things:
1. A miserable last effort to achieve mainstream success by making their sound as generic and horrible as they possibly could. Basically sucking at trying to sell-out.
2. It was an attempt to create a more grown up/mature sound. But instead of experimenting with their sound (à la Blink-182′s last self-titled album), they decided to just take off all their edge and bite.
3. An attempt to put the nail in the coffin for pop punk by making the first album in the genre without a hint of energy or fun.
The opening riff is basically all you need to listen to in order to comprehend Coming Home. It’s a slow chunky (in a bad way; mucky like peanut butter) drive. It’s a huge faceplant thud to start things off. It sets the tone, quite literally, for the album. The guitar tones found here are inexplainably bad, especially considering the tones on NFG album prior to this one, Catalyst, were arguably the best part of that record.
The whole mix is a muddled mess. Nothing is crisp or enthusiastic. Pundik’s vocals are in a much lower range than on previous efforts, but this only exasperates the problem because the lower register does not allow him to express any energy. None. There is an excess of reverb drenched background vocals that seem to do nothing but crowd the sound.
On top of all of that, the lyrics are terrible. Some times they don’t even bother to rhyme, and without rhyme pop punk cannot work. It simply can’t. Then there are some lines that are just leave the listener in shock. One of the often repeated lines in the song “Hold My Hand” is, “You smell like how angels oughta smell.” Well the angels probably smell considerably worse after hearing that barf-educing line Mr. Pundik.
I’d get into details on each song, but there is essentially only one song here. It’s a really terrible and generic song and it is repeated 13 excruciating times.
Coming Home is just so putrid. I literally became sick to my stomach while listening to it (really, no joke). Please, please, please never subject yourself to this torturous album. Excuse me while I go listen to Sticks and Stones to detox my system…
Review Score: 0.3
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