Three Days Grace

Explosions

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Genre: Rock.
Released: 06/05/2022
Via RCA Recoords

Album Review: Three Days Grace – Explosions

Three Days Grace are back with their new album titled ‘Explosions’. This will be the band’s first full-length release since 2018’s ‘Outsider’ which saw a lot of eyes return to the ever-changing rock band. With the hype surrounding the new release, I just had to give the record a spin for myself. Here are my thoughts on Three Days Grace’s ‘Explosions’!

Opening the album is ‘So Called Life’, an explosive track that utilizes a lot of synthetic sounds to create diversity. Unsurprisingly, the track relies heavily on its climactic chorus with the verses coming and going rather quickly. For me, the song is a bit too repetitive and leaves a lot to be desired. As for ‘I Am The Weapon’, I just can’t really get behind it. It comes off as very uninspired and just sounds quite generic to me. It’s quite a weak start to the album, unfortunately!

As the album progresses the quality sadly doesn’t. ‘Neurotic’ is bland to the core with very little reason to relisten. ‘Lifetime’ suffers from being way too generic as it just comes across as if it could almost be a template for an “Edgy emotional song” while ‘Scar Is Born’ has a tiny glimmer of enjoyment buried under a lot of overdubbed vocal effects and over distorted guitar riffs. Thankfully, ‘Souvenirs’ offers a little more personality. The concept behind the song is decent and the only thing really holding it back is the overuse of vocal effects. Continuing down the album and ‘No Tomorrow’ is more what fans of the band would expect. Unique progression mixed with a unique instrumental will send you back to the “my space” rock era.

‘Redemption’ will instantly catch your attention with the acoustic opening which sounds a bit too familiar. This is probably the song that stood out the most for me as it screams Three Days Grace. It’s a shame there isn’t more of this style of song on the record. Unfortunately ‘Heart Of A Champion’ just sounds a bit off. The song itself is okay however the choice of effects gives the song a robotic feel that comes across as synthetic.

Nearing the end of the album now and ‘Chain Of Abuse’ comes out swinging. A track shining a light on an important matter deserves to be a decent listen. Thankfully this is one of the better releases from this album. A beefy instrumental combined with meaningful lyrics is almost exactly what you’d expect from the band and this is why this track works so well for them. ‘Someone To Talk To’ continues down a similar vein lyrically and musically, the delicate nature of the song works surprisingly well. This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea however, those who can relate to the lyrics will undoubtedly fall in love with this track. Unfortunately, the title track ‘Explosions’ misses the mark for me. Unmemorable lyrics matched with quite a mundane and simplistic instrumental isn’t the type of song you’d expect to close out an album and for that reason, I can’t recommend this song.

As you’d probably have guessed by now, I am not a big fan of this album. Despite having a few moments that impressed me, I can’t look over the odd choices when mixing this record. I hope others are able to enjoy this album more than I have but for now, I have to admit that this may be one of the band’s weakest albums to date.