Faint - Doom Abuse

by Adrian Janes

published: 7 / 5 / 2014

Label: SQE Music
Format: CD

Energetic but formulaic and indistinctive pop punk on seventh album from Nebraska-based indie act, the Faint

Review

With its crazed guitar intro, swiftly overtaken by storming drums and keyboards and intercut with random electronic spurts, ‘Help in the Head’ is a really exciting start to this album. It’s a sound that blends an American take on late ‘70s New Wave with ‘80s synth-pop, like an encapsulated alternative musical history to what actually happened, where the paths diverged towards either the hardcore of Black Flag and Bad Brains or the wholesale adoption of synths and drum machines by bands like Depeche Mode and the Human League. Unfortunately, the later songs don’t live up to this standard. Most of them are taken at a fast pace (the main thing New Wave American bands seemed to take from UK punk rather than anything political), especially ‘Salt My Doom’ and the trio of ‘Dress Code’, ‘Scapegoat’ and ‘Your Stranger’. It’s chiefly the high energy that might well make these songs work best live and distract from the fact that ultimately this is not very substantial stuff. ‘Lesson from the Darkness’, with its insistent low keyboard notes and jerky rhythm, is at least more compelling. One other problem is the rather generic voice of Todd Fink, that could fit as well with the likes of Linkin Park, Green Day, etc. Not actually bad, but it’s a style with most of the rough edges (i.e. distinctiveness) removed. The lyrics are said to have been largely improvised - again, this makes for passable pop-rock if you don’t think about them too much. Thus ‘Animal Needs’, which starts off as seeming like a quite potent attack on consumerism, declines into an incoherent (anti) shopping-list. The album’s closer, ‘Damage Control’, is also its only slow song. This seems to give the band a bit more time and space to be inventive so that, in its own way, it’s almost as good as ‘Help in the Head’. Fink’s voice is echoed and pitched lower in his regret for “A million things I should have said” over entwined synths that are harsh and dark. Bookended by two very different but stirring songs, ‘Doom Abuse’ for the most part is a kind of pop-punk. Although the Faint aren’t as wild and crazy as they seemingly think they are, at least they might entice some of the more adventurous beyond the dread clutches of One Direction.

Track Listing:-

1 Help in the Head
2 Mental Radio
3 Evil Voices
4 Salt My Doom
5 Animal Needs
6 Loss of Head
7 Dress Code
8 Scapegoat
9 Scapegoat
10 Lesson from the Darkness
11 Unseen Hand
12 Damage Control