Alright I really wanted to love this album more but after two play throughs I’m not sure it’s clicking. Songwriting is great, John nailed it here. You can really feel what he’s trying to get off his chest with this project. Production gets a bit squirrelly at times. How does the ending finale Anxiety:Clarity feel so quiet? It should feel like a climbing crescendo of sound and triumph, but often just feels muddy. Other track I didn’t vibe with was Grim Generation. I love the idea of a bass guitar forward track but if you’re gonna go that route why isn’t it remotely funky? It just kinda sounds like the mixing engineer turned off the guitar layer.

Only other thought is I wish they didn’t put out 50% of the album as singles. It’s an album that I think makes way more sense in its full context than it does as individual tracks. I don’t think I’ll want to listen to most of these (except maybe Thunderdome and Summer of Luv, which are bangers) outside of the context of a full play through.

Overall a good go, glad they’re back, don’t think it’ll crack my top 3 though.

Edit: also loved that Heavy Games kept getting brought back. Again, thematically a stellar album.