New Release - Monty Are I "Break Through the Silence"

Admittedly, this is the first Monty Are I album that I've listened to. I figured this release was a debut album of what would be an excellent band, but some fans quickly informed me these guys have been around for a while now - they even have three other full-lengths. Nevertheless, I decided to give their latest release  Break Through the Silence a listen.

Let me first begin with what Break Through the Silence did right. Initially, what stood out to me was the lead singer's voice. He sounds very similar to Bert McCracken of The Used (albeit a bit more poppy), and while I'm not a fan of the band I think both vocalists have an excellent voice. A lot of these songs are set up with lots of focus on the vocalist, and he's good. While the guitar work on the album isn't outstanding, there are quite a few small, fun riffs every once in a while that are just pleasant to listen to. Whoever plays the keyboard does a fantastic job as well; while it's not always focused on I hear it in most songs and the little melodies that are repeated just blend perfectly.

But unfortunately that's where my praise ends. While I like the vocalist, the band is sometimes too poppy for their own good, and at points I wasn't quite sure if I was listening to a boy band or a rock group. The second track, "The Stand", is a great example. The lyrics for the chorus are, "Try and knock me down but I'm still standing. Try to knock me down but I'm still here. You'll fade away but I won't disappear because I'm not going anywhere." There are quite a few lines like this on the album that I'd like to forget I ever heard.

The previously mentioned chorus is also an example for my next pet-peeve: Monty Are I seem to love to take their song titles and make them into choruses. What I mean is that just about every other song on the album has a chorus with the name of the song in it. Some are slightly less guilty of this - in "Kaleidoscope", they only briefly mention at the end, "Like a kaleidoscope, when I give you a spin I'm in." However, in songs like "Making Sounds" and "One In a Million", the vocalist repeat the lines over and over: "Faced with a feeling I could never give up from the way we're making sounds, making sounds, sound, sounds, making sounds, making sounds, sounds, sounds..." I was looking for something more clever than that, and this album couldn't meet my expectations.

Stand out tracks on the album include "Break Through the Silence", "Kaleidoscope", and "Mirage" (guilty of the chorus problem), as well as the bonus track "The Patriarch" which I found to be the absolute best song on the album. "The Patriarch" sounds so much like the tracks on Forgive Durden's album "Razia's Shadow" in that it has similar orchestra instrumentals, as well as superb vocals and excellent lyrics. It really reminds me of "The Missing Piece". "The Patriarch" has me wondering if Monty Are I were using it as an experiment to see if fans like it - it definitely sounds different than the rest of the album, in a really, really good way.

I've said a lot of bad things about the album and it probably won't be my favorite release of the month, but I honestly did enjoy it. The band is too poppy for my tastes during a lot of the songs and almost every song has an extremely repetitive chorus, but the band does do a lot of things right. I can't say, "Go out and buy this album," and I won't tell you, "Avoid this at all costs," because some people are going to like it and some will hate it. Give a few songs a listen and go from there. Me - I think I'll just keep "The Patriarch" on repeat.