Lead Sails Paper Anchor
It’s an old story and it was bound to happen with
Atreyu. Band signs to major label, band softens up a great deal and claims that “This is how we always wanted to sound anyway”. Right. Once you found out that Hollywood Records wanted to sign you. The end result isn’t so bad here on
Lead Sails Paper Anchor, but it is certainly a mixed bag. These metalcore titans have kept only some of their old tricks, but only in the slightest degree (vocalist Alex Varkatzas only screams occasionally, there’s a small amount of breakdowns). The band has always worn glam band shirts, but only now do we know for sure that it wasn’t done out of irony, but genuine respect. These influences lead to such awful songs as “Falling Down” which features horns, and it just doesn’t fit.
Most of the songs are just decent (“Doomsday”, “Becoming the Bull”), but never do they really shine too brightly, which is kind of disappointing since they were going for something so different. Drummer Brandon Saller still lends his melodic vocals on all of the songs, but now Alex pitches in with more of an understandable shout and clean vocals. Their dynamic works together best on “When Two Are One”. There’s the mandatory, anti-Iraq war song “Can’t Happen Here”; it’s good, but why does everyone feel the need to write a song about it, especially bands whose lyrics mostly deal with the well-worn ground of ex-girlfriends and backstabbing friends? “Blow” features Buckcherry mouthpiece Josh Todd and it is a straight-up rocker, and the band pulls it off quite well. Never would I guess that he would ever do a guest spot on a Atreyu album. “Lead Sails And A Paper Anchor” is the ballad that closes out the album, and
Brandon’s vocal is what saves this song. An unnecessary cover of Faith No More’s “Epic” is included as a bonus track and Alex’s vocals on the verses are cringe-inducing. I guess in case you didn’t know that they wanted to be seen differently, this song is the exclamation point that says, WE’RE NOT METALCORE ANYMORE Give this a listen, but if these guys want to outlive metalcore, they need to start sounding more sure of themselves.
