Okay look. All the reviews for this album have come out already, and they’ve already said pretty much everything else I wanted to say here. I love this album. I had a falling out with Against Me! with the release of White Crosses, which really wasn’t a great album, but if you’ve been holding out for an AM! disc that sounds like Reinventing Axl Rose or Searching For A Former Clarity, this is probably the closest thing they’ve done since then.
The only real issue on this album that I can even complain about is the production quality. It is… bad. Like, not punk-bad, but actual-bad. The kind of bad that doesn’t leave you nostalgic for house shows and bad basement recordings, but that makes you want to just sit in silence for a while while your ears reacquaint themselves with how things should sound. Volume levels jump, the bass is higher in some areas than others, if you listen to the album on a stereo you lose the vocal tracks, that kind of thing.
That said, Laura Jane Grace’s voice is stronger on this album than it’s been in years, and despite the musical chairs involving the peripheral bandmembers (Atom Willard taking over for Jay Weinberg, Andrew Seward leaving and Fat Mike/Inge Johansson (Refused, (International) Noise Conspiracy) taking over), musically this is the best album AM! has put out since Searching.
Okay that’s enough talking, go fucking buy this.
Score: 8/10