Alienation is the name of the latest effort of alternative metal staple Three Days Grace. The album marks an important turning point on the Canadian band’s career with the return of Adam Gontier and thus becoming a band with two singers. With this new line-up, the album combines the nostalgia of Gontier’s era with the more modern approach of Matt Walst’s, all of it sparkled with a more modern metal production.
The first single on the album, “Mayday” used the same bass tone and intro structure as “Animal I Have Become” to quickly capture the old listener's ears, and features a breakdown that leans heavily on ambience and synthesizers for a more modern metal vibe. This philosophy is found throughout all the songs featured in the album.
The opening track is called “Dominate” and is driven by a lead synth and a bouncy guitar riff, turning down the intensity to just bass drums and voices for the verses, following it we have "Apologies", a softer song with darker, edgier lyrics and an explosive chorus. This second track had an interesting animated music video following the same themes as the lyrics.
Coming third on the album we have Mayday, the lead single that we previously described as being the song that perfectly encapsulates the artistic intention of the album. For the fourth track we must once again step back in intensity for a softer, more intimate track that chooses to use both acoustic and electric guitars on the chorus.
We recover the pacing for another electric guitar driven song “In Waves”, with the same hunting clean guitars on the verses that Adam Gontier’s era Three Days Grace showed us time after time, this song has a taste reminiscent of One-X and Life Starts Now. Glitchy ambience and distorted samples will now take a step forward for the title track, with an epic half-tempo chorus on top of everything. Lyrically, rejection and acceptance has always been a recurring theme in Three Days Grace’s music, present in both “Alienation” and the seventh track “Never Ordinary”, which presents a string ensemble that makes it stand out.
“Deathwish” has a heavy guitar riff that triggers the One-X nostalgia again and an outstanding guitar solo. “Don’t Wanna Go Home Tonight” is next and it’s a beautiful ballad, where the main protagonists are the acoustic guitars and the beautiful vocal duet of Walst and Gontier. “In Cold Blood” keeps the more intimate lyrics and the slower pace of the previous song but with a heavier guitar tone.
On the final stretch of the album, we find “The Power” and “Another Relapse” the first one being on the line of what we have already stablished as the tone of the album and the closing one leaning on a more modern heavier side with a pitch-shifted down bone-crushing breakdown that finishes off the album.
The band performed a special show to celebrate the release of their new album at Toronto's Mod Club with a killer setlist of both new songs and classics.
Alienation is out now via RCA Records.
