The Fall of Troy – In the Unlikely Event

READ: This is a lengthy review, so if you just want a summary, skip to the bottom of the post.

It's no secret that The Fall of Troy are among my favorite bands; I wear my fanaticism for them on my sleeve. In fact, I'm wearing one of my Fall of Troy shirts as I sit and write this review. From the Ghostship demos straight up to Phantom on the Horizon, I've bought and drooled over every piece of work the trio has put out. So when I heard that they were releasing a new album, I was ecstatic. A full summer lay ahead of me, but October 6th was circled in red on my calendar...not literally, I don't own a calendar, but you know what I'm getting at.

Well, October 6th came, and I took my first listen to In the Unlikely Event. It was good. Refreshing. New. The last song ended, and I wanted some more. But with class bright and early the next day, sleep was on my mind.

October 7th, I got home from class at 10 pm, I put it on again, and it was still good. It was still refreshing. But it was no longer new. It lost a little luster.

October 8th, I gave it another shot while studying. It was still good. But now it wasn't refreshing nor was it new. It lost even more luster.

October 10th, I had a pretty long drive in front of me, so I loaded it up on my iPod, and queued up the first song as I pulled out of my driveway. Well, if you followed the pattern, you probably guessed that it was no longer good, it wasn't refreshing, and it was definitely not new at this point. Suffice it to say I listened to three select songs, and switched over to Metallica and Modest Mouse.

Cats and kittens, this is a completely new Fall of Troy. Their sound has lost its grit, the aggression has been stripped from Thomas Erak, and to be honest, the creativity well seems to have dried up. Some people might say, “But Kevin! Each album has been different, the band has progressed with each new installment!” That is a valid point in some ways, but each proceeding album up until now was more of a twist on the band's core formula, not a full on new sound. This album is a total overhaul. Listen to “Empty the Clip, the King Has Been Slain” and tell me it sounds ANYTHING like any other Fall of Troy song. It just doesn't.

Again, people might say, “But Kevin! Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad!” I agree with that statement 100%. Coheed and Cambria on Second Stage Turbine Blade and Coheed and Cambria on Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV: No World for Tomorrow are completely different, but both are amazing. The Fall of Troy have failed in this aspect. I don't enjoy this album because the different sound doesn't work for me. There are a couple reasons for that:

1.Thomas Erak cannot sing. This has never been a point of contention, and has never been a problem in the past. Erak would either scream, which doesn't bother me too much, or would let his guitar work take the forefront and dominate the aural landscape. But with this album, the guitar work has been been pushed out of the limelight, replaced with Erak's whiny voice, which makes my ears bleed. It's like Chris Cornell after he stopped smoking; it doesn't work. Although, the singing is actually great at the beginning of “Dirty Pillow Talk”. At the beginning of the song, the vocals sound different than all the other songs, in a very, very good way...of course, I then found out the beginning is actually sung by Rody Walker of Protest the Hero, a band I can't stand, and yet he is singing better than Erak...Also, The Fall of Troy have never had great lyrics, but I could never understand them because of the screaming, so I was blissfully ignorant to them. Now, with Erak actually singing, I can hear every awful line loud and clear. The [sarcasm] emotionally charged [/sarcasm] lyric “nobody is perfect” comes to mind...really? I've read Berenstein Bears books with more substance than that. I had a 4-piece Thomas the Tank Engine puzzle that was more intellectually stimulating. Is this the kind of shit he has been screaming about the whole time?

2.Like I said earlier, the grit and the creativity has come off this band. True, the grit walked out the door with Manipulator, but the studio effects that they added on that album amped up the creativity level quite a bit in compensation. This album is almost obnoxiously polished for this kind of band, and there is no added benefit in creativity. Just listen to “Webs”; it bores me to death, and it has zero gritty charm. It's really just a step down from Nickelback radio-rock, which begs the question, is that really the sound they were going for? And in response, I'll quote Kanye: “Yo, Thomas Erak, I'm really happy for you, and Imma let you finish, but Nickelback still makes the most uninspired music of all time!” Although, whoever writes the music for Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana or whichever insidious alter ego sings “Party in the U.S.A”) is definitely in that conversation.

3.There isn't any coherence to the album at all. There is no song progression or anything. The entire thing feels hastily slapped together, with no thought to album flow. No pacing, no theme contiguity, no similar sounding songs placed together, nothing. It's almost like they just put the songs in an iTunes playlist (although that probably took about 9 days considering the system memory iTunes chews up) and hit shuffle, and that was the track listing. Doppelganger is one of the best examples of a paced album in my mind, so I know the band is capable of putting songs together. This might seem trivial to some people who feel an album should be judged on how good the individual songs are, but in this case the songs are awful. The songs don't work together, and they don't sound great on their own...What's left? Also, where was the epic ending track on this album? There has ALWAYS been an amazing, 6 minute plus, brain-melting song at the end of each of their albums...and this time we get “Nature vs Nurture”. Again, it's something different from what I'm used to, but that isn't even the reason I'm not digging it as an ending song. It just doesn't feel like an outro song to me. True, it's one of the longer songs on the album, and it has some decent parts in it, but what happened to the inspired, off-the-wall song structures? Where is the epicness? Also, it's like someone gave this band a horse tranquillizer or something. They've slowed down more than Han in frozen carbonite...Don't knock my Star Wars jokes...

4.Okay, I know how silly this might sound to anyone who knows The Fall of Troy, but this album feels so contrived that I can literally picture Erak sitting with a pen and paper plotting out sections for songs with a level of calculation only matched by Deep Blue. I realize that “A Man. A Plan. A Canal. Panama.” was obviously planned down to the last note. But it still turned out amazing! It doesn't flow or sound natural, but it sounds good and it works. Take a listen to the spoken word part in “Nature vs Nurture” or the end of “Battleship Graveyard”, and you'll understand exactly what I mean. It's contrived to the point of being corny. You can “see the stitching” so to speak.

The album has its moments. “Battleship Graveyard” and “Straight Jacket Keel-Hauled” are decent songs that hearken back to the band's earlier days. “Dirty Pillow Talk” is probably the best showing of creativity on the album, but it just doesn't live up to the band's earlier work.

In summation (you dirty cheaters that skipped my Pulitzer worthy review are lucky I only took an hour to write this), the album comes up short...very short. The creativity is gone, the new sound doesn't work, Thomas Erak can't sing, the songs don't work well as an album or individually, and everything sounds forced.

Overall album score: 2.25/5. This is why I shouldn't pre-order stuff...

Song breakdown:

Panic Attack: 3/5. Cool guitar, nice open, but there are some parts I hate, and again...the singing...

Straight Jacket Keel-Hauled: 4/5. One of those classic two and a half minute burners. I never thought screaming would be so refreshing...Easily the best song on the album. The stupid wailing siren thing in the middle is dumb though, makes the song feel like a joke. Good thing the song “recovers”. And the guitar at the end? Can we get some more of that on the rest of the album please?

Battleship Graveyard: 3.5/5. The singing in this song isn't as bad as on the other songs, but still isn't great. I just sit there and imagine if it were just instrumentals, it'd be so much better. I like all the different directions the song goes in, too. THIS should have been the album ender. It isn't 6 minutes, and it isn't nearly as sweet as prior album enders, but it's the closest thing this album has. The end part where he goes “Just. Maybe.” is stupid, and I can't put my finger on why...taking himself a little too seriously? Too corny? I'm not sure...all I know is wish I could get that screaming back so I wouldn't be able to understand it.

A Classic Case of Transference: 1.5/5. There are some pretty original guitar parts in here, but the singing sucks, the majority of the guitar licks suck. This just sucks.

Single: 2.5/5. This is at least a decent attempt at something different. It's definitely a completely new direction for them, but again, that damned singing. I cannot get into it. The song itself actually has a somewhat Minus the Bear feel that I like...wonder what it would sound like with their singer...

Empty the Clip, the King Has Been Slain: 1/5. Bad. This is the most uninspired piece this band has ever “created”.

People and Their Lives: 2.5/5. Feels pretty badass, singing doesn't suck, at least at the beginning. Inconsistency is this song's middle name. The highs are high, the lows are low. Pity.

Dirty Pillow Talk: 2.75/5. I love the guitar effect. It's pretty out of the ordinary. And the singing in the beginning is real good. But the majority of the song don't involve either of those...

Nobody's Perfect: 1.5/5. It's like some weird mix of a pop song and a Fall of Troy song, that suddenly shifts into a bad Fall of Troy song. The really quick strumming bit is cool, and I actually like that part a lot, but the rest is pretty awful. The lyrics are terrible, and I'm pretty sure Erak had an aneurysm trying to hit some of those hit notes.

Webs: 1.5/5. Sooooooooooo slow. Bad lyrics. Incredibly boring. Same old story.

Walk of Fame: 3/5. This song actually has some great guitar work in it, and has a feel that reminds me at least somewhat of older Fall of Troy. It lacks creative song structure, but at least it's got some well placed tempo changes, and I feel like the singing is at least sharing the stage with the instrumentals. That is, until he starts saying trash like, “You don't know what I am capable of.”

Nature vs Nurture: 2/5. It's not as bad as some of the other stuff on the album. It's got some interesting things going on, but all the “whoa whoa”-ing is a bit annoying, and much too loud. I can vaguely hear some neat guitar work going on underneath it, but the normal singing and the “whoa whoas” combine to drown everything else out. It's just very...repetitive. And if there was one thing The Fall of Troy weren't, it was repetitive. And that spoken part is really silly. This doesn't cut it for me. No thank you.