The short review reads – ‘great pop-punk record which will be lapped up by all those fans who loved the first album, but not the step up you’d kind of hope for’.
The longer review is slightly, well, longer. With the release of ‘So Wrong It’s Right’ All Time Low shot to prominence as pop-punk’s new poster boys, replacing Blink 182 as a group of potty-mouthed kids who wrote super-catchy songs about heartbreak and lost loves. That debut album was squeaky clean and super slick and spawned a band that took their mainstream brand of punk to thousands of kids worldwide. They got magazine covers and radio airplay and so the hype leading up to album number two was pretty high. Most fans of the band won’t be disappointed by ‘Nothing Personal’. It’s catchy, it’s poppy and it ticks all the right boxed. But, truth be told, there’s nothing new here at all. The band haven’t really progressed one iota – this could easily have been written at the same time as the last record. It’s a straight up sequel.
So what I hear you ask? Yes, I take note that pop-punk bands aren’t usually famed for the way in which they approach songwriting. But look at the best bands in the genre – Blink 182 couldn’t have written three different albums when they released ‘Dude Ranch’, ‘Enema…’ and then ‘Take Off Your Pants…’ New Found Glory amended and refined their sound too. Ditto The Starting Line. Fenix Tx. Green Day. MxPx. Sum 41. You get the idea.
So while this record is loaded with catchy songs – and there really are plenty of singalongs and hooks – it all sounds a bit samey and ‘heard-it-all-before’ before too long. ‘Hello Brooklyn’ is a good song (even if it sounds a little Metro Station-ish), while ‘Weightless’ and ‘Damned If Ya Do’ will have you singing along. There are also a couple of really sappy, slower songs, such as ‘Sick Little Games’, which are horrible and bring the album down a little.
Ultimately this record doesn’t strike me in the same way as New Found Glory‘s self-titled album or ‘Enema of the State’ by Blink 182. It’s a good record – certainly a soundtrack for the summer – but it’s not going to be a genre classic. I doubt that will stop the legions of kids from making ATL one of the bands of 2009, but I was kind of hoping for a little bit more from ‘Nothing Personal’ and the band haven’t quite delivered.