3 Doors Down
“John, seriously, dude, slow down, come on…JOHN, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SLOW THE CAR DOWN!!!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” – Me
“MMMMMMMWWWWWWAH HAH HAH HAH HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!” – John
Albums Reviewed:
3 Doors Down is a band I’m reviewing for no good reason at all, other than my good buddy John likes them a lot, burned their two albums for me, told me to review them, and is a lot bigger than me. And, after listening to their two albums a bunch of times, I have come to the conclusion that they are just about the most distinctly average band I’ve ever heard in my life. They aren’t that good, but they EXCEL at not sucking, which is something a lot of other modern bands could try to do. They don’t have to be GOOD, you see, just not suck. That’s all I’m asking for. There’s a nice middle ground between being good and sucking ball juice, and 3 Doors Down have firmly entrenched themselves there, though, with their second album, they’ve shown signs of maybe busting down that barrier of mediocrity and becoming good! They’re close, methinks. Despite the fact that they are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very generic, some of their songs are pretty decent, and none of them smell of the putrid fecal waste of a diseased chinchilla monkey.
I really don’t know who anyone in the picture above is or who plays what, except that the guy in front sitting down and looking contemplative is the lead singer (and, according to the All Music Guide, drummer as well, though I assume they take another drummer on tour with them), since I’ve seen a video or two of theirs. Thus, from the All Music Guide as well, I deduce that his name is Brad Arnold. His voice is OK, I guess. Not much range or emotion there, but he’s better than most modern rock singers (I’m looking at YOU, Scott Fucking Stapp), and he sounds better than Geddy Lee as well. Then again, so does Gilbert Gottfried. The other three guys are Matt Roberts, Todd Harrell, and Chris Henderson, but I don’t know which is which. The guy in the back sure is ugly, though, huh?
And, onto the reviews!
The Better Life (2000)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Be Like That”
Well, I can certainly say this band is better than Creed, for starters, though that’s really no big whoop. The difference between the two is that, whereas Creed offends me, 3 Doors Down seems to do absolutely NOTHING for me. They have a lot of songs that aren’t good, but nothing on this album really SUCKS, so they got that going for them, which is nice. There are two songs on here, however, that, from an objective standpoint, I can say are good. The first is the pseudo-cheesy radio-ready ballad “Be Like That,” which I’m sort of ashamed to say I enjoy, but what are you gonna do? It’s nice. Then, the album opener, “Kryptonite,” is, like I said, objectively decent. I will NOW admit that, after listening to this album a bunch of times. However, for reasons COMPLETELY unrelated to the album in question, it SCARES THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME. Why, you ask? Well, let me tell you a story…
It’s about my friend John, the guy who burned these two albums for and commanded me to review them under penalty of severe beatdown. He’s a great guy, great guy. He’s also quite gregarious. He’s basically a stereotypical big, goofy redhead guy. I love him to death, but, one day, in high school, we were heading to Burger King after school (OK, during school…actually, probably during lunch…), and “Kryptonite” was playing on the car stereo. John was driving his big-ass mammoth Suburban, and I was sitting shotgun. I should mention our high school had a dress code (blazer, tie, whatnot). John had on a t-shirt, nice dress shirt, blazer, and zipper-less rain jacket thingy (in that order). Well, on the way there, John decided he felt like changing, which was a problem for several reasons. First, he was driving. Second, he was driving about 55 on a bumpy back road with a speed limit of about 30. Third, he was driving a fucking SUBURBAN. Finally, fourth, to top it all off, he had a hat on, which he decided to leave on his head during the whole process. So, basically, this giant tank car is going about 30 over the speed limit on a back road, and John takes off his rain jacket thing, his blazer, his dress shirt, AND his t-shirt ALL AT ONCE, OVER HIS HAT, WITHOUT TAKING OFF HIS HAT, then puts a different t-shirt on, still WITHOUT TAKING OFF HIS HAT, and does all of this without stopping the car at any point. The car was actually moving downhill and picking up speed, too, not that John noticed, because he had clothes covering his face for this whole thing. I was absolutely scared POOPLESS, and held onto the “oh shit bar” in the car for the whole time. “JOHN, DUDE, LOOK AT THE ROAD! OH, MAN, DO SOME SIT-UPS, JOHN!!!!!!!!!!!” All in all, it was a pretty scarring experience, and from that point on I haven’t been able to hear the song “Kryptonite” without picturing about four layers of clothes covering John’s face while the Suburban plows down this back road at like 60 MPH and I sit there FEARING FOR MY LIFE.
Good times.
Anyway, I still recognize that it’s the second-best song on the album. Even if it makes me pee in my pants. Whatever. The rest of the album just sort of passes by without doing anything for me. It has so little personality it’s sickening. But it’s clear the band isn’t a bunch of pompous ass-monger pricks like Creed, so I like them better. Plus, in the chorus of their songs, they play actual fucking riffs, instead of just sluggishly playing the same three chords OVER and OVER and OVER so that a goddamn toddler could play it. It shows they’re putting some effort into making the songs interesting. They don’t often succeed, and this album is so Formula it annoys me, but the songs themselves don’t annoy me, so whatever.
And there’s a song here called “Loser!” The chorus goes “I’m a loser!” THAT SONG ALREADY EXISTS! BECK DID IT! AND HE SINGS PART OF THE CHORUS IN SPANISH!!!!!!!
I wished they had mixed the drums differently, though, or played them differently, or something. It seems like the drummer is allergic to the hi-hat. In almost EVERY GODDAMN song he plays this bullshit *ping* ride cymbal that annoys the living crap out of me. I’m trying to listen to this nice, non-nausea-inducing, completely generic music, and this annoying *ping* *ping* *ping* *ping* *ping* keeps happening in one of the headphones (I mean, couldn’t they have mixed the cymbal IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMN HEADPHONES!!!!), and it switches depending on the song, and IT PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH, I WANNA GRAB WHOEVER MIXED THIS ALBUM AND PLUNGE MY FINGERS THROUGH HIS EYE SOCKETS INTO HIS SKULL, UNTIL HE BLEEDS OUT OF HIS ASS AND HIS DICK AND BEGS FOR MERCY FROM MY EVIL, BLACK SOUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Minor quibble, though. The album’s inoffensive, and the singer doesn’t sound like Eddie Vedder passing a stone, like SOMEONE I know.
Away From The Sun (2002)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Away From The Sun”
Hey, this one’s not bad! I thought for a bit about breaking out the 7 for it, but I decided against it, because it is SO Formula and has SO little variety that…eh. The band hasn’t advanced musically at ALL from their debut album, and they’re still taking great pains to make their songs NOT blow goats, which is nice (though they finally fail on “Sarah Yellin’,” though (that’s two “though”’s in less than a ten word span, by the way) I could name about fifteen or twenty Creed songs that suck more just off the top of my head), but, goshdarnit, they’re still not taking any chances! The songwriting’s improved, and the production is EONS better (fuller, fatter, and no more bullshit ride cymbal *ping* in only one headphone making me want to strangle myself with a phone cord), but…there’s still not all that much to grab onto.
There’s still more that the debut, ofcourse, though. By now, everyone’s heard the lead single “When I’m Gone” at least 5 gazillion times (I’ve actually heard it so far on FOUR DIFFERENT RADIO STATIONS, ALL WITH VASTLY DIFFERENT PLAYLISTS!!!), but it’s not a bad song, and the fact that it’s getting played on stations that avoid Creed, Staind, et al. like the plague shows its quality. More than that, the title track here is a song that I am COMPLETELY unashamed to enjoy, and if it’s not splattered all over radio stations everywhere in the country once “When I’m Gone” loses its steam, I’ll be SHOCKED. It has a creative riff! At least it strikes me as creative, and they manage to make a soft-rock-radio-bullshit-ready ballad sound not only NOT CHEESY, but make it GOOD, which is an accomplishment.
There is some more good stuff here, but, for the most part, like I said, the band is still sticking so close to Formula you lose a lot of enjoyment (at least my Kid A and Yes-loving mind does). The chord sequence in “The Road I’m On” strikes me as pretty original (it uses like 5 or 6, and one of them actually made me go “hey, where did that chord come from?” the first time I heard it). “Running Out Of Days” has another pretty neat riff, and it actually reminds me of Creed’s “Stand Here With Me,” one of like four or five Creed songs that doesn’t absolutely blow massive piles of large, virile penises. The untitled track at the end is probably the second best on the album, and it actually has a modicum of power and passion to it. I wish I knew what the fucking title was, though. I just have the copy John burned for me, and the All Music Guide just has a fucking asterisk next to track 12 on their page for this album. There’s a 30-second gap of silence before the song starts, too. Is it supposed to be like a “hidden track” or some shit? I dunno. It’s pretty good, though.
And there’s a song here called “Changes!” The chorus goes “I’m going through changes!” THAT SONG ALREADY EXISTS! DAVID BOWIE DID IT! AND HIS HAD RICK WAKEMAN PLAYING PIANO ON IT!!!!!!!!
No, his goes “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!” Then, um, THAT SONG ALREADY EXISTS! YES DID IT! AND THAT SONG HAS COMPLETELY LIFELESS EIGHTIES PRODUCTION AND STILL RULES ASS!!!!!!!!
No, that one goes “Change, changing pla-ces!” Then…um…oh yeah! THAT SONG ALREADY EXISTS! BLACK SABBATH DID IT! AND THAT ONE IS A PUSSY PIANO BALLAD!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, that one’s right.
Nothing else here really grabs you, but 3 Doors Down DO excel at making their songs NOT suck ass pimples, even if actually making them really good still seems to mostly be beyond them at this point, so nothing else is gonna offend you (unless you hate the vocal effect in “Sarah Yellin’” like I do, in which case, as I mentioned before, that will offend you). “Ticket To Heaven” starts out like it might be good, but the chorus doesn’t do it for me. The riff blows. But, once again, AT LEAST IT’S AN ACTUAL FUCKING RIFF!!!!!! “Here Without You” wants to be “Be Like That,” but it’s too fucking cheesy to pull it off. The rest of the album is just sort of “there,” although it’s a better-produced “there” than the debut album. “Dangerous Game” has a percussion break that I bet some people might find really neat, but to me it just sounds like the band listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Breaking The Girl” a bunch of times and then set out to make a percussion break about 1/100 as interesting as the one in that song. Blah, blah, sis-boom-bah.
I’d like to give 3 Doors Down their prize now. I mean, they deserve a prize for being so average! Not just ANYONE can be this good at making their songs NOT blow goats with ass pimples!
Seventeen Days (2005)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Right
Where I Belong”
More numbing adequacy combined with two or three really good, solid tunes (how nice of them!) means another 6 for a band I would never, ever, ever, ever consider listening to ever if one of my best friends weren’t a fan. See, you’ve gotta accept the whole Brad package. Want me to review Bob Dylan? Sure! Just let me sift thru the mediocre bands my friends and my sister like first. Then allow me to trash 80% of Green Day’s career just so I can write a three-page thesis on American Idiot (and you KNOW that’s coming). Then allow me to somehow become acquainted with all like 6,000 records he’s put out, including ALL the live ones, because I do have nearly every single one by this point. And considering how long it takes me to do a band with like 8 or 9 records, those Dylan reviews could start coming…oh…next Thanksgiving.
So here’s the thing with 3 Doors Down. They play music that belongs to the same genre as Creed, Nickelback, and Puddle of Mudd (a.k.a. generic bullshit music that sucks). Anyone who wants to claim they’re “southern rock” is only paying attention to the fact that they’re from Mississippi and not listening to the fact that 90% of their music sounds exactly like awful, generic bullshit MOR-whore “rock” music that sucks. They have no “twang,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Being from the south and occasionally tossing a bended acoustic note into the verse you always play before getting to the hard-hitting, lighter-waving chorus does not give you “twang.” What they are is simple: generic. However, I don’t mind them. Why? Well, first, their lead singer guy doesn’t try to sound like Scott Stapp or Kurt Cobain. That’s always nice. Second, when they get to their “hard-hitting, lighter-waving chorus,” they have a nice little habit of playing actual riffs, or at least reasonable facsimiles of them. Third, they don’t do any histrionics and come across as relatively humble, so their completely averagely generic songs do not fall below the level of completely averagely generic, unlike Creed, for instance, whose Jesus-posing made even their decent songs borderline intolerable. Fourth, they occasionally toss out a real winner! “Away From the Sun” from their last record was a really good song, with a lovely melody and creative riff and just a tasty time all around, and that one all the Nazi right-wing people probably liked that had the video on the army base was good, too, if you forget everything else involved with it. “Kryptonite” makes me break out in hives for reasons completely unrelated to the song, ofcourse, but you can read about that in the reviews above.
So what are the winners on this one? Well, despite the fact that this album is wayyy too ballad-heavy, the opening track, “Right Where I Belong,” is easily the hardest 3 Doors Down have ever rocked. It’s fast and it’s rough and the guitarists do all these cool trill and squeal and run things in the riff and it kicks my ass. Good song! The closer, “Here By Me” (whose title may or may not be a Jay-Z/Linkin Park-esque mash-up of two previous 3 Doors Down songs), is also a very nice tune, if only because it decides it doesn’t need to go “all big and shit” in the chorus and just layers a few string parts on top of the pretty plucking. Yeah, this may sound like it’s corny and terrible and bullshit, but that’s the thing about 3 Doors Down: they don’t do corny awfulness. They’re generic and they’re not the greatest songwriters in the world (hell, half their tunes sound like the same damn thing), but they’re always adequate. They create 5-worthy albums and then throw on two or three really good tunes, thus receiving solid 6’s on my rating system of love. Except for the other “ballad with strings without heavy guitars” and maybe one or two other “rockers” that annoyingly don’t rock as hard as “Right Where I Belong” (which, believe me, KICKS ASS), most everything left follows a pattern I probably don’t even need to describe to you: soft, contemplative verse with a few layered acoustic and/or non-distorted electric guitar plucking parts and the singer sounding heartfelt, followed by entrance of heavy guitars, more impassioned singing, repeat both, maybe toss in a bridge or guitar solo, repeat chorus again, end. Lots of ultimately banal lyrics about facing pain and getting over adversity and other things kids in the “heartland” will dig because they stay very non-specific and any idiot can make them apply to their own life if they try hard enough. The quality of these generi-tunes varies, ofcourse, from the enjoyable “It’s Not Me” and “Let Me Go” (apparently the first single, but I haven’t seen or heard it anywhere on Long Island yet…on an unrelated note, I still hate Long Island) to the slightly shitty (but not really, because this band is very adept at avoiding shittiness) “Be Somebody” and “The Real Life.” There are a few very nice bridges with loud metal guitar yumminess (“My World”) and a couple pretty vocal harmonies (I forget which songs have vocal harmonies). Occasionally the band comes dangerously close to forgetting their best quality (adequacy), with a guest spot from the worst artist in the history of the world (Bob Seger) on “Landing in London” and retarted MOR female backup singers on “Father’s Son,” but both of these things are gone within five seconds and do not ruin the inherent half-decent adequacy (how’s that for a recommendation, eh?) of everything 3 Doors Down puts to tape.
I don’t really like 3 Doors Down, but I don’t dislike them either, and far be it for me to neglect when a band can kick my ass (“Right Where I Belong”) or be pretty without being cheesy (“Here By Me”). I would neither recommend them to anyone nor assert that they suck at all. I have never found a band that leaves me as noncommittal as 3 Doors Down. I am bored.
And Bob Seger must die.
Pedro Andino (pedroandino@msn.com) writes:
wanna hear something funny?
well here goes! I was watching raw one night and thinking to myself ah! now
there is a great superhero, JOHN CENA!! he is one of the hunkiest guys in the
ring and girls are so in love with his thug image. but jbl and eric bishoff
hated him but I do not care! see I love wrestling! and also what do you think
of the bikini boot camp!? man the show was great. and there is more! eddie
guerrero and rey mystrerio for the custody of dominic. and batista the world
champion! come on brad! enjoy ya' self! don’t' be a stick in the mud! the wwe
rules as 3 doors puking meh!
3 Doors Down (2008)
Rating: 4
Best Song: “Train”
Frighteningly generic even for a 3 Doors Down album, which I suppose could be considered an accomplishment in some sort of dystopian future prominently featuring Vin Diesel. And sure, it’s not like 3 Doors Down have ever been anything other than frighteningly generic, but at least they always made a habit of doing two important things: 1) tossing a few songs onto their albums that rose above the generic sludge and were actually decent and 2) playing actual guitar riffs in their choruses. Apparently, they have decided that the best way to sell records is to do away with even these relatively minor concessions towards people who actually like music. Remember the one song on their last album that totally rocked hard? They don’t have one of those here. Hell, they only have one song that does anything different than the “soft, pseudo-contemplative verse, big guitar chorus, verse, chorus, bridge with guitar solo of minimal start value, double back to the chorus, and don’t forget to act really earnest the whole time!” thing, which is the opener “Train.” And while “Train” does not rock at all, at least it appears that the band is trying to rock. And yes, I know it’s sad that I’m granting “best song” to something because the band seems like maybe they try to rock even though they can’t because their producer smoothed everything over in such a sickeningly generic way, but it’s not like you’ve listened to this album, right? Right. So don’t judge me! Let me be myself! I’m gonna live the life I wanna live! I only know where I’m going if I know where I’ve been!
Sorry, I turned into the singer from 3 Doors Down for a minute. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could listen to these ass-poor excuses for over-earnest lyrical clichés and not laugh uproariously at the ridiculousness of it all, but then again I don’t live in Wyoming or Kansas, so it’s not like I know what goes on in the “heartland,” where real Americans have sex with their shotguns and cheat on their incapacitated wives with beer heiresses. I mean, “if you’re afraid to fly, then I guess you never will?” What does that even mean? And that’s just the line that Brad Arnold happened to sing just now when I needed a quote to type to demonstrate how bad the lyrics were. I didn’t even have to look for one. Ass-poor. It’s not like you even notice, though. Whatever hack studio-shill producer got his hands on these songs warmed everything over for radio consumption so egregiously you don’t even sense anything happening. Like, ever. It’s so generic and forgettable it’s impossible to really hate it, for fuck’s sake, hence the bad-but-not-pathetic 4 rating above. Somehow, 3 Doors Down have shat out an entire album of hard rock elevator music. I suppose that this may appeal to people who like their music as predictable as possible and their TV comedies as unfunny and on CBS as possible, but I watch the Venture Brothers and my favorite Gentle Giant song is “Knots,” so, um, not so much for me (of course, if a 3 Doors Down fan actually knows who Gentle Giant are, I’ll eat my own leg). I played a game with my roommate recently where I played a random song from this album and dragged the cursor to a specific point in the song in an attempt to locate the token generic guitar solo. Invariably, I would stop at a point about two-thirds of the way through, let go, and hear the beginning of the guitar solo I was looking for coming through my speakers. This is pathetic. Come on. Can’t you write something with a shred of creativity or originality? It’s like that Nickelback video going around where two of their music videos are played simultaneously and it sounds like the thing is just playing in stereo. Is this what modern rock music has come to?
A few songs overdub strings in their choruses, so I guess that’s notable if you think that makes something any less generic (it doesn’t). The closer “She Don’t Want the World” tries some sort of slow, moody electronic backing thing that I suppose differs from the generic nature of tracks 2-11 (thus meaning two songs, not one, diverge from the template; this would be elicit a “good job!” from me, except this album is so lacking in inspiration I don’t even feel like being sarcastic anymore). This would be more notable if the song were any good. There are also two bonus tracks on my version, the genesis of which I had a hell of a time locating until I discovered they were, in fact, Best Buy Exclusives! And yes, that means exactly what you think it means: they’re only contained on copies of this album you purchase at Best Buy. If you’re wondering if the guys saved their genre-bending progressive-classical-funk-metal pieces for Best Buy customers only, you’re a retard for that thought even entering your brain. This album blows.
By the way, Weezer fans, yes, this rating means I think it’s better than The Red Album.
AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! JOOOOOOOOHHHHN!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!