SEVENTEEN DAYS
3 DOORS DOWN have carved out a nice niche for themselves with radio-friendly hits like "Kryptonite", "Here Without You", and "When I'm Gone", so I was a little surprised when they opened up their new disc
Seventeen Days with the southern crunch-rock track, "Right Where I Belong". It's not like they totally shifted gears, but it's refreshing to know these guys didn't forget how to play while they were catering to masses of female fans with their pop hits.
Outside of opening up with a far more rock-oriented track, the band isn't taking too many chances on
Seventeen Days, because the mellow, radio-friendly songs are in abundance on this disc. They know their formula for success, and how to replicate it. "Let Me Go", the first single from the disc, is an example of said formula. Clean guitars, catchy melody, big, fat, dirty guitar driven hooky chorus that radio is sure to eat up.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to draw this conclusion, but 3 Doors Down could very easily cross over into country music, because songs like "Be Somebody" fit well into the storytelling mode that country songs fit into. The same holds true for "Landing In London", the proverbial band-on-the-road song that deals with loneliness and the grind of travelling all over the world, waking up in a new city every day.
Whether or not
Seventeen Days is going to replicate the exact success that the band's previous two discs remains to be seen (I mean, let's be honest - keying into the soldiers in Iraq with the "When I'm Gone" video was genius marketing...very timely)....but you'll definitely keep hearing these guys on the radio for some time.
