Artist: Angels and Airwaves
Album: Love
Genre: Rock
Label: Self-released

When Blink 182 initially split, I, of course, sided with Mark and Travis. However, as the side projects began to swirl, I gave in to Tom and checked out the first AvA record because regardless of what had happened, he was still a member in one of the most critical bands in my development as a music fan. It was nothing like I thought it would be, but I could handle it because it was still Tom making music. Unfortunately, eventually the extremely overblown I Empire came out and I simply couldn’t stand by his side any longer. The band then announced their recently self-released [for FREE] third record Love and I, in typical glutton for punishment style, got instantly excited once again.

Having learned my lessons from I Empire, I approached Love with the lowest expectations I can possibly hold for music [to be even .01% better than Brokencyde]. I know it seems a bit over the top, but I felt it necessary to not be too harsh on the record.

Seemingly the same, yet slightly tweaked outer space style synth work greets us as “Et Ducit Mundum Per Luce” begins and you instantly know, no matter what they claim in terms of evolution, this is the same AvA. How many bands today have been able to create a new “cliche” sound for every album like AvA? Just over two and a half minutes of this atmospheric buildup leads to nothing more than more buildup as “The Flight of Apollo,” the first of many promising, but ultimately letdown tracks, begins. The verses are solid, but Delonge’s awkward enunciation and randomly occurring British like accent continuously appear and drag down the track. On top of this, we have very lyric driven verses followed by an overly simplistic, echo-chamber flooded, chorus that’s meant to create an anthem-like sound an ultimately just kills the excitement. This is a re-occuring theme on the record actually, solid song progression that leads to these expansive hooks and bridges that simply come across as trying too hard.

If it’s not the depth lacking expansive sound bringing down Angels and Airwaves, it’s the redundancy of their sound overall. “Shove,” for instance, has a pretty solid flow to it, but beckons a lot melodic memories of “Rites of Spring” from the first record and a hook that feels ripped from “Everything is Magic.” I guess there’s only so many space based synth loops out there, but why not stop using them instead of recycling them at different speeds?

However, there is one truly momentous track on Love that does a lot to save the record. “Letters To God pt. 2,” an apparent sequel to the Box Car Racer song, finds the band sticking to their signature sound, but with Delonge using his vocals in a style more reminiscent of his work in Blink and Box Car and it actually fits better that the odd way he projects on most AvA tracks. The hook is great, though a bit familiar sounding, and really shows that Delonge still knows how to write a catchy song that’s also under 5 minutes in length.

I find it hard to imagine anyone falling in Love with the new Angels and Airwaves record [to easy?]. Fans of the band have heard nearly every chord progression, drum fill, and synth loop on the record twice before and little has been done to improve on that. While Delonge has come a long way in terms of songwriting overall, his consistent desire to slow everything down for gigantic, yet ultimately dull hooks and numbingly excessive use of references to space, stars, love, and the sky simply over-stayed their welcome and it’s apparent early on. Much like I Empire and We Don’t Need To Whisper, Love attempts to be the biggest thing we’ve ever heard, but there’s never enough depth to evoke or reason the grandiose feel of the record.

I’m all for being epic, but what’s the point of turning heads if you have nothing new to say?

Score: 4.5/10
Review written by: James Shotwell

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James Shotwell

James Shotwell is the founder of Under The Gun Review. He loves writing about music and movies almost as much as he loves his two fat cats. He's also the co-founder of Antique Records and the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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