Brian Dimsdale
A Day to Remember has been around for a while. The band, whose humble beginnings date back to 2003, has put out three albums, including the band's latest, Homesick. They have toured relentlessly, creating a major following and making them a heavy contender in the alternative music scene. Over the years ADTR has tweaked their sound in order to combine catchy guitar riffs and an overall pop-punk sound with the signature metalcore voice of lead singer Jeremy McKinnon. Homesick proves that ADTR have finally reached the pinnacle of the pop-punk/hardcore sound that they have been striving for.
From the get go, Homesick grabs hold of your eardrums and doesn't let go. Consisting of amazing vocals, heart throbbing beats and a number of vocal guests including Mike Hranica from The Devil Wears Prada and Sierra Kusterbeck from Versa Emerge, this album keeps you hooked throughout the entire 40 minutes. The first track, "The Downfall of us All", sets the overall mood for this album with gang vocals followed by McKinnon screaming "Let's go!"‚ and a guitar riff that gets your blood flowing and adrenaline pumping. From that moment on, the album takes you through twelve tracks dealing with the band's inner turmoil of life on the road while missing their loved ones and the town they grew up in.
The album presses on with melodic tracks that have a catchy and pop-punk sound, such as "My Life for Hire"‚ and "I'm Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made of?", all the while intermingling McKinnon's powerful voice and the ear-busting guitar riffs that the band is known for. From there the album transitions straight into the track "Mr. Highway's Thinking About the End", which has a sound reminiscent to the likes of Underoath's Define The Great Line.
Midway through Homesick, the track "Have Faith in Me", a song about never wanting to leave a loved one, starts off to a beautiful guitar solo helping to slow down the tempo. McKinnon's soothing voice helps to bring the listener back out of the trance as the beat picks up with the lyrics "I said I'd never let you go, and I never did/I said I'd never let you fall, and I always meant it." Just as you think the album is going in one direction, the next track "Welcome to My Family" hits you like a ton of bricks. It wakes you up and shows that ADTR has gotten transitioning from pop-punk to metalcore down to a science.
Homesick is A Day to Remember's best album to date, intermingling what normally would be considered conflicting sounds into an alternative rock masterpiece. The band has bridged the gap for listeners on either side of the music spectrum and will continue to rule the pop-punk/hardcore scene, until they truly do become homesick, which hopefully won't be any time soon.
88.1 WKNC DJ Pick of the Week is published in every Tuesday print edition of the Technician, as well as online at technicianonline.com and wknc.org.
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