A couple of points worth noting after first hearing ‘Conviction’:
1 – No matter what I say, this will end up in the charts and sell hundreds of thousands of copies
2 – Where’s the screaming?
3 – Why the change of sound towards a more pop direction?
4 – Have AFI sued for ripping them off?
No matter how hard I try, I just cannot slate this album to the extent we have on previous records. Taking it on face value and not comparing it to anything else, the songs are catchy and WiL’s vocals are as melodic as ever. There’s a Davey Havok-esque slant, granted, but the band sound pretty good and I’m sure the radio will be all over tracks like ‘Hurt Me’.
But on the flipside this is just a ridiculous play at cashing in on mainstream success. There’s no aggression, no passion, no screaming – the band are unrecognisable from their last two records and, having built up a name for themselves, have just seen the $$$ signs flashing in front of them and written a straight up pop record which will sell by the bucketload. And that’s fine if you’ve no artistic integrity and are quite happy to play the numbers game, but if I was an Aiden fan from day one I’d find their complete sound change a bit disgusting. Sure, the songs aren’t horrendous, but they’ve taken out the Misfits-esque aggression and just watered everything down, leaving the cynics like me to think their gothic look is nothing more than a manufactured attempt at cornering the dissafected youth market.
But then what do I know about the kids of today? They’ll sell a load of records with ‘Conviction’ so I guess Aiden win regardless.