Four Year Strong are an American Pop Punk band that take a strong influence from the hardcore scene. Whilst their sound is by no means hardcore, it definitely takes on a heavier and edgier approach at times than most Pop Punk music out there. The band come from Massachusetts and in February it was announced that they had signed to Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy’s personal record label Decaydance Records.
On this album the band start off bright eyed and bushy tailed, and for the first few tracks I found this album to be greatly enjoyable. After a while however you start to realise that in this album it sounds like the band are playing the same track over and over. Never do they seem to deviate at all from their formula, it is a hard edged Pop Punk sound and always it seems to take the same form. There will be the occasional breakdown of heaviness in each of their tracks, and the rest will be seemingly the same upbeat pop heavy sound. Vocally this band sound like a lot of other bands out there, they sound like Fall Out Boy at times, Brand New at others, quite like New Found Glory on the odd occasion, but never do they sound like themselves. Always it sounds like Four Year Strong are trying to replicate the formula of already successful artists, scared of trying their hand at their own approach to music. Their sound is pretty decent, but there is no depth to it whatsoever and it therefore quickly becomes tiresome.
Listening to a whole album of music that entirely lacks distinction and differentiation is a greatly difficult matter, the few moments of hardcore spirit that each track possesses is not nearly enough to add energy and excitement to the sound. The most annoying thing about this band is that when they start the album with the track ‘The Take Over’, I actually thought that I was going to be in for a great treat with Four Year Strong. It is fast, fun and frantic and as the band progress their way through this one they always sound full of life and as though they will have plenty to offer with this album. They are just too happy and upbeat throughout the entirety of ‘Rise or Die Trying’ and you can therefore only listen to so much before seriously wanting to hurt them. Fall Out Boy are a similar sort of band to Four Year Strong, granted their music doesn’t contain the hardcore bursts that this does but it is really much the same. The main difference between Four Year Strong and Fall Out Boy and the reason why the latter will always be a far more successful band is that in each Fall Out Boy album is contained a great deal of variation; a number of different sounds comes across on the album and they therefore stand out strongly as a band. Fall Out Boy also have greatly catchy chorus that help separate them from the pack, with the music of Four Year Strong it is all so upbeat and of the same tempo that you really don’t know where the verse ends and the chorus begins. The music is all on the same level and it is this that means that their music quickly becomes really very irritating.
Eleven tracks are included on the ‘Rise or Die Trying’ album and if you’ve heard one then really you’ve heard them all. They may as well not name their tracks here, if you were to hand me this album and ask me to name the tracks out of their listed order purely from listening to them then I would not be able to at all. The only difference between ‘Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Hell’, ‘Beatdown In The Key Of Happy’ or ‘Heroes Get Remembered, Legends Never Die’ is their titles, and the same can be said of all eleven of these tracks. Bands often stick to a basic formula in their music but it is quite rare to hear an album in which each and every track is a near on carbon copy of both the next and last.
For the first few minutes of its play ‘Rise Or Die Trying’ is an absolutely excellent album, it is only when the album begins to get into full swing however that you realise that every track is exactly the same and that Four Year Strong only seem to have one idea. Since 2001 this band have been going, it would seem however that they’ve not managed too much in their years and although the one track they have written is a good one, hearing it eleven times on one album is not a greatly rewarding listening experience. Whether or not the band realise their lack of musical depth is debatable, I’m sure I’ll not be the only person in the world that notices it however. This is exactly the kind of music I usually love, what I don’t love however is albums in which the tracks are all too similar and samey and ‘Rise Or Die Trying’ as an album is the worst culprit of this that I have perhaps ever heard. As a listener and great fan of Pop Punk I refuse to be treated like an idiot, and when a band push out a whole album of tracks that all sound the same I find this simply unacceptable. With the band having recently signed to Decaydance Records, this album will no doubt be heard by a lot of people and I hate to think how many will buy this insipid album of sound alike songs. Download one song from this album, any song; it simply doesn’t matter, whichever one you choose it will pretty much be the same song anyway. If you want to get the same effect as you’d get from listening to this album then simply listen to it eleven times straight and prepare to become angered by the relentlessly upbeat nature of Four Year Strong, otherwise listen to the track once and once only and you’ll probably actually be really quite impressed.
Label: Hassle Records
Release Date: 28th April 2008
Rating:
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.
