One-X - Three Days Grace

Mon 14th Aug, 2006 in Music Reviews

We probably should have seen this album coming from Three Days Grace.  They had a nu-metal hit back in 2003 with ‘I Hate Everything About You’ and a ‘rest of an album’ that wore out in broken relationships, broken homes and crappy writing, so it was a bit of a roll of the dice when it came to their sophomore effort as to where it would take them.

From the cover onwards, it already looks like they’ve improved.  The black paper dolls look cute, but don’t let them fool you into thinking the album’s a mature step forward for the band. Instead, they just cram as many hooks as they can into twelve songs about anything and everything, and find themselves lost in the sickening over production. Even if ‘Home’ from the album before was just the Canadian band’s idea of trying to act out gothic metal, at least it’s nothing as boring and fake as ‘Pain’ or ‘Riot.’  On the second of those songs, you actually get the lead singer growling ‘Let’s start a riot!’ and you feel as though you could laugh.

Not that hooks are a bad thing; it’s just that on One-X they allow Three Days Grace to become sucked up with all the other post-grunge bands on radio that don’t really have a sound. The guitars and urgency in the dark and interestingly titled ‘Animal I Have Become’ are good for a few listens even though it’s totally overproduced, and the record at least keeps a consistent level of energy running through a couple of numbers, when the tempos aren’t slowed down and the acoustic guitars aren’t pulled out in tracks like ‘Over and Over’ and ‘Gone Forever,’ which whine about a failed hook-up in the most cheesy way possible and don’t have much of a tune.

Not that One-X is anywhere near the worst album of the year, its just it knows its targets too well when Three Days Grace should have been looking on for better things. Hooks still need tunes, which at least need a bit of credibility to them, guys. Maybe album three’s for that.