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Panic! At The Disco

Pray For The Wicked

Written by: PP on 07/01/2019 18:02:19

So, hands up who listened to the original Panic! At The Disco record and is still a fan today? I would guess the vast majority of their early fans, including the undersigned, have jumped off this ship ages ago because aside from Fall Out Boy, these guys are the essential band that embodies the phrase selling out sound wise. Curious as to how they sound a few albums down the line since I lost all interest (that was on "Pretty. Odd." for the record), I decided to give "Pray for The Wicked" a chance. Unsurprisingly, the band are still repulsively far away from the indie punk of their debut, in a theatrical, overtly dramatic world of pop music where all interesting melodies are squashed in favour of expensive effects, arbitrarily inflated soundscapes and a totally unnecessary single-use, throwaway pop vibe that plagues almost all mainstream music today with few exceptions.

If anything, "Pray For The Wicked" is a similar vessel for Brendan Urie to show-off his (admittedly great) vocal range and toy with various sampled effects that would make modern pop/R'n'B artists proud as Fall Out Boy is for Patrick Stump. It's a pompous, annoyingly arrogant display of look at me, look at me from start to finish that completely lacks any dignity, integrity, and honesty of the releases that we typically hold in high regard here at Rockfreaks.net. The absurd amount of polished production tricks, the pop-laden, trendy songwriting simply means that while songs like "High Hopes" and "One Of The Drunks" are catchy on first listen, chances are you won't even remember them by this time next year because of the almost complete lack of depth found within them. They are your typical pop hits that get forgotten as soon as the next flavour of pop hit comes along, being no match to stuff like Michael Jackson and others who wrote songs that were simply timeless. That is certainly not an adjective attributable to a track like "Hey Look Ma, I Made It".

That said, the record isn't entirely terrible. It's decent background music while driving around in a car and such with people not normally accustomed to rock music. It's just not exactly targeted for the music enthusiast given its shallow pop style. So take this review with a grain of salt if you're into mainstream music in general, but it's unlikely many of our readers think Panic! At The Disco are all the rage today anyway, so you'll probably agree with me in the end. Forgettable pop drivel, skip this one.

Download: Old Fashioned, High Hopes, One Of The Drunks, Hey Look Ma I Made It
For the fans of: Fall Out Boy, Don Broco, fun.
Listen: Facebook

Release date 22.06.2018
Fueled By Ramen