one of the most underrated albums of the year
Aside from the lyrics, the best thing about this album is that it really is an album; it doesn't have one song that stands out above the rest; they are all equally good and as a result it makes for a great listen start to finish. i usually don't write on these things (im actually against it b/c who cares what other people think as long as you connect w/ it) but i thought i would write one about this cd just in case people were on the fence about it. So basically, if you don't consider yourself a "singles only" kind of person, this is the one for you. what else can i say except sample all the songs. . . you might like them all. .
so let down
Incredible! Very refreshing and original so of course I expected this record to be great. I loved their first record. I listened to it once. . . . and haven't since picked it up. I was that turned off! This is an extremly rare reaction for me. The record simply let me down. Nothing to hook me or even let me grasp on to.
A little disappointed after the adventurous "Humanistic"
The debut lp "Humanistic" was exciting and a little daring, combining Modern Rock with spacey production, bitter vocals, and atmospheric melodies. I've been waiting, like many fans, for up to 4 years for Abandoned Pools to give us something new.
For "Armed To The Teeth," the excitement, at least for me, was very sparse. The instrumentation, though very good, seemed very "more of the same" to me, nothing new outside of the Alterna-box. The songs all flowed together very well, though sometimes a little too closely to each other, like the album was one long rock-radio friendly ditty.
It's a good album, just not great, and not very interesting. These songs didn't grip me in like "Remedy," "Blood," "Seed," and most of the other songs on the first album.
It also seemed like songs like "Rabble" and "The Catalyst" would have been much better with different production aside from the scattershot guitars thrown in solely for the sake of guitars being thrown in. Even songs like "Hunting" which had a great piano melody, seems like it was covered up to give it more of an unneeded edge.
Overall: Good writing and performance, but there isn't much that shines and sticks out.
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Tommy's new sound: two thumbs up!
Every song was pretty much the same, structurally; but it was still light years ahead of any other mainstream release for its time. Humanistic was an interesting album in that half the songs were hard-edged rockers and the other half light-hearted pop numbers. Several years later, Tommy gives us something new: the Reverb EP and Armed to the Teeth LP. The new stuff is different than Humanistic, still I don't see how a fan of one album can dislike the other.
Whereas Humanistic contained two radically different styles of music (listen to Ruin Your Life immediately after LVBD), Armed to the Teeth is a product of mixing both styles into one. A bad thing? Certainly not. . . I believe the album deserves four solid stars.
The most important quality of the album though, is varying song structures. You'll still sense the occassional pop-like structure in the songs, but Tommy has made a giant leap in terms of songwriting. The album doesn't grow old on me the way Humanistic does.
Bad points of the album? Josh Freese is gone (not that Tommy's new drummer is bad. . . but c'mon, Josh is one of the best in the business). And the new version of Tighter Noose is about half as good as the one we downloaded years ago.
My favorite song: Sooner or Later. I love the structural progression and long(ish) instrumental segments scattered throughout. This song is a great example of Tommy's growth as a songwriter and musician, it's not just verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, as is the case for every song on Humanistic.
It's an extremely high-quality album, an incredible sophomore effort. It comes VERY close to a five-star rating, and possibly deserves one, but I like to save that rating for truly special albums.
Great potential, but...
Tommy Walter, whilst not quite being a lyrical mastermind, had produced a well composed, interesting, creative, united album. Don't get me wrong, I loved Humanistic from the second I heard it. The great thing about Humanistic is how natural everything sounds together - all of the songs complemented each other.
But with Armed to the Teeth, I feel like Tommy had a couple of dead on hits, maintaining a steady Abandoned Pools sound, whilst moving forward at the same time. And then there was everything else. Tighter Noose is the greatest example: the original version, released on the AP website some time ago, blew me away. I was very excited for the new album, but when I got to it, it spit out some overworked version of the song. In addition to making the rhythm slightly more ambiguous, Tommy changed the vocals to be more soft where they needed to be sharp, and turned to falsetto where it just wasn't needed. I think he tried to be a perfectionist with it, and ended up making things more complicated than they needed to be. Tighter Noose on the album just doesn't sound natural the way the old version did.
It wasn't just Tighter Noose though. There were a lot of things. Often the drums seemed a bit unnatural - they were too intense at the wrong moments, such as in Waiting to Panic, and Renegade. And in renegade, at the moment of explosion in the chorus, it really just seems like he was trying TOO hard. . . Often times it melds in with bits and pieces of, for lack of a better word, "cliches" in rock music.
I do take to the fact that Tommy tried to vary his vocals a little more on this record - a little more falsetto, in addition to other changes. But I think that Armed to the Teeth is a perfect example of individual limitation. Sure, it would've sounded great if he'd done it perfectly. But, either they didn't bother putting the time in to do so, or he just can't do it. I'd like to think that he can, and it certainly sounds like nobody bothered to make Tommy totally nail his vocal parts. If you don't believe me, listen closely to where he first enters in for Tighter Noose (very awkward sound that he makes). In addition to this, there are many other slip-ups including with actual intonation, and there is an example of that in Hunting (The Universe Breaks My Heart).
"But Nick, where are the positive remarks?" Well, believe it or not, I do have quite a few. I'll note that, despite its one little vocal flaw, Hunting (The Universe Breaks My Heart) is a great song, and well outside of old AP territory. Also, Lethal Killers and Armed to the Teeth are both great songs, even if they do lend themselves to old AP just a little. Rabble and The Catalyst, though, carry on their new sound much more, and, most importantly, connect Humanistic with Armed to the Teeth. Those are the [mostly] perfect, most natural sounding and unifying songs of the album. Everything else makes me question dear Mr. Tommy Walter, though, and I don't want to keep doing that.
And let me say that I too write music, and I know what it's like to overdo something, to under-work it in recording, and to generally make mistakes that threaten a song's integrity. And I think that that's partially where my dissatisfaction with Armed to the Teeth comes from - it's frustrating to hear an idol, someone I think of as one of those few masterful musicians, making the same mistakes as me.
You can see a complete list of all Abandoned Pools discography, or go back to the Abandoned Pools tabs
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