Widow7 - Our New Doomsday

Alright, i've been avoiding it for months, but i have to review Our New Doomsday from Widow7. Why have i been avoiding it? For good or bad i don't lie, it's because i'm not going to like this album. I'm not happy that i won't like it, but i didn't give Sevendust's Next a thumbs up, nor Fire From The Gods, nor Volbeat, nor The Pretty Reckless, nor any of the other bands implied by this closing elipsis....

The truth of the matter is that no matter how intentional you try to make it, a collection of potential radio singles does not an album make. Now, yes you can argue that Our New Doomsday is a completely appropriate concept for a list of things that aren't awesome, and that those things do not in any way need to add up to anything coherent, but actually listening to that kind of garbled gripe ramble is incredibly unpleasant for me, especially when there's absolutely no obvious reason why the next song starts after the previous song just finished other than "and another thing that grinds my gears is...."

Next, Widow7 is a Des Moines band, and i don't know if you're aware just how heavy an onus Slipknot is for bands from Des Moines to carry. You have to sound like Slipknot, but be different from Slipknot, while still appealing to both fans and haters of Slipknot. Even i'm susceptibly guilty of forcing that incomprehensible stigma upon them. Nobody can win that shell game.

That sucks, i actually love these guys, they have a gorgeous late 90s Alt/Industrial Rock undertone in spite of being essentially 3rd-Wave Nu-Metal. Every single track is enjoyable in isolation, amongst their peers on a playlist, or as an example of what Widow7 is as a great band, but please don't make me listen to randomly selected 8 of them in a row.

That sucks, it's not fair to either of us, i just end up saying you did a great job of making the exact type of album i detest. Maybe that doesn't make sense to anyone else, i'm the weirdo who claims that the album exists in abstract-independence from its contents. But for me it does. Our New Doomsday walks into my office, spreads itself out all over the other stuff on my desk and knocks all my crayons on the floor, then demands i select the next single they upload to this week's twittergram contest, and i don't like it. I'm the wrong guy to ask, it doesn't sound like you made an album called Our New Doomsday, it sounds like that's just what you decided to call it because for some completely arbitrary reason i don't understand it had to have a title. 

I guess in that respect it's exactly on par with something like Incubus's A Crow Left Of The Murder, an album i also don't like in spite of completely enjoying the band's music. 

So there you go, a great local band made an album i'm predisposed to not like. Go check it out, remembering that i'm of the opinion that my own opinion is crap on this occasion, but that i'd be lying if i didn't tell you what it is.