Serious Black not only lost their singer between their last album and this one, they've completely lost their way. Urban Breed can be a handful to work with, it appears by his track record of leaving bands, but he's not an idiot when it comes to songwriting. The rest of this band still needs to prove that of themselves. If you heard the singles leading up to the release of this album, you know what I'm talking about, but I'll explain it anyway. The first single to tease this new era of Serious Black.... was a cover. Not just a cover, but a cover of the Brandi Carlisle pop/rock song "The Story". Nothing says you're a creatively viable band like playing someone else's song a lot of your audience would never want to listen to in the first place.
It got worse when they finally released "Out Of The Ashes". That was the moment I told myself I wasn't going to talk about this album, because they didn't deserve the attention. But since I don't believe that 'all publicity is good publicity' talk, I'll throw my negativity into the mix. This song is utterly pathetic, and a disgusting illustration of what's wrong with metal culture. In it, the narrator of the song makes himself out to be a hero for 'saving' the woman from the life she was leading. When she leaves, he then calls her a drugged-out whore who isn't pretty without makeup. And since I can find no trace of irony or judgment against him, I can only assume whichever member of the band wrote those words believes in them.
But the worst part isn't that this group of middle-aged men hold backwards and demeaning attitudes toward women. No, the worst part is that at every step of the process, no one stopped this. Writing, recording, mixing, manufacturing, promotion; everyone who had a part in putting this record out heard this song and thought it was cool enough to write, record, put on the album, and MAKE A DAMN SINGLE. And this comes from the same label who not long ago had a band singing a song about being attracted to women who would be the same age as his own daughter. What the hell is going on? It's one step above the creepy incestuous undertones of that country song where the guy sings about hoping his daughter looks just like her mother, the person he's sexually attracted to, but being better than that isn't something you get a cookie for.
Elsewhere, we get an album opener dedicated to rocking, which fits into my rules that 99% of songs that have to tell us how much either we or they rock, do not, in fact rock. The song should prove its rock cred on its own, and you've utterly failed if it doesn't. More laughable is the song "Album Of Our Life" near the end of the record. In this song, the narrator is again mad at a woman, this time threatening to hunt her down for the rest of her life. Real mature there, dude. I prefer to think of the song's title as being more literal, as if it's about the album that defines the narrator's life, because that would be a prompt to go listen to something better than this.
I think I've made my point. Serious Black have become more generic than ever, and the few good melodies they came up with are ruined by an album with several pathetic lyrics I wouldn't have wasted my ink on when I was starting out in high school. I'm sick and tired of middle-aged men who speak like bratty teenagers, and Serious Black is just the latest band to be so embarrassing I'm sorry I've spent the time it took to write this review. Sure, I feel better getting this out of my system, but I'm afraid someone else is going to read this and want to listen to the album for themselves. Please don't.
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