Lies for the Liars

I'm not quite sure that I should share this, in case someone from the band is reading and it goes to their head (see previous post and the comment on it for explanation). But the new album from the Used, "Lies for the Liars", is quite good.

I bought their first album when it came out in about 2002 I think, after hearing "A Box Full of Sharp Objects". It was a decent debut, in fact the first four or five songs were great (if you like punk music with liberal amounts of screaming), although the rest of the CD was kind of average.

The next one was a CD/DVD with live versions of the first few songs from their first album ie the good ones, and some filler. Still good, but you're expecting a bit more at this stage.

The next album, "In Love and Death" really sucked. It was at about this point that it became impossible to walk down Rundle Mall in the middle of the day without tripping over freakish punk/emo/goth kids. Mainly because for some reason they like sitting on the ground (often outside bookstores), talking about death and My Chemical Romance (at least I think they do). Anyway these kids love bands like The Used, so I kind of stopped listening to them, scared that maybe one day I'd decide to dye my hair black, get full length arm tattoos and insert a small hockey puck in my earlobe.

After this album, they brought out another CD/DVD package, with live versions of the crappy songs from their last crappy album. Awesome.

Their new album came out a few weeks ago and I thought I'd check it out by downloading it. I was surprised to find out that it was actually a retun to their first CD - a bit heavier, with less of the ballady type stuff on the last album. It seems really rare for bands to actually revert to their previous form - once they start to suck, it's a slippery slope that's not easy to climb back up (also see Smashing Pumpkins, The). Somehow though these guys managed to recapture the feel of their first album without coming out with a carbon copy of it.

This kind of music isn't everyone's thing - actually I can probably only think of one or two of my friends who may possibly like this - but if you think you might be interested perhaps download "The Bird and the Worm", "Paralyzed" or "Wake the Dead". Or just watch this video where Bert pretends to be Kurt Cobain.