i did not like the teens of denial re-release. I’m confused by the decision to remove all the profanity, and the lyrics chosen to replace it don’t flow well, and in many cases significantly change the meaning of the song. (i.e. in drunk drivers, the line “that voice in your head/giving you shit again” was changed to “that voice in your head/playing that song again,” making the subsequent lines “you know he loves you/he doesn’t mean to cause you pain” lose a lot of their weight. Many of the substitutions just made me cringe. Like in joe gets kicked out of school the line was changed to “just another malicious witness…” bro another what?? deeply weird choice. And he also censored “piss??” Baffled because the album is about some very intense subject matter but Toledo seems to think “piss” is taking things too far? It feels like a disservice to the spirit of the original album. Also the fact that they didn’t re-record the whole thing and just shoehorned in new vocals in places makes me feel like this project was not an inspired creative undertaking and more a cash grab for the 10 year anniversary (?)
Censorship aside, I thought all of the new tracks added were very mid and didn’t contribute anything meaningful to the album. I get that Will’s Thing is concept albums now, and this reads as a half-assed attempt to retroactively make the record into a concept album. The tracks themselves sound exactly like they came off The Scholars, and have none of the spirit, sound, or energy that makes Teens of Denial great. (and i didn’t hate the scholars! even though I really dislike concept albums! (particularly concept albums put out late into a band’s career, cause to me they often read as the band Running Out of Ideas (cough cough Smashing Pumpkins Rock Opera cough cough)). Overall just disappointed by what this indicates for the direction the band is taking. I think (the original) Teens of Denial is one of their best albums, it has all the anger and energy of Toledo’s early work and is just full of great tracks. And the re-release of Twin Fantasy (mirror to mirror) was so well done! I had high hopes that this would be good, very disappointed.
pixelskylines
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
2087
tangentwithtanner
