MANIA is the 7th studio Album by Pop Rock band Fall Out Boy. While I am no professional music reviewer, and I also have absolutely no musical ability, I am a long time FOB fanboy, and I felt like writing this review so I’m gonna do that.

TL;DR:

7-(n/3) out of 10, where n is number of listens.

Yeah that’s right, I used maths in a review. Sue me.

Got a lot of heat for my review of The Last Jedi. Just keep in mind all art is subjective, and this is just my opinion. Love you all, please don’t kill me <3.

Also as reviews go, my thoughts will probably change over time and listens. Let’s see how that goes.

When the first single off the album, Young and Menace, was released, I was pretty damn excited. The first time I listened to it, I hated it. Thought it was trying too hard to be a banger, and whose idea was it to release what is essentially a dubstep banger in a post-dubstep era? Even with how powerful EDM is now, it felt kind of archaic.

I thought it was stupid. The premise was stupid. The name was stupid. It took all the wrong risks. But then I listened to it again, and this time I really got into it. When the bass dropped, I let it hit me, and goddamn it felt good. Probably replayed it like 3 or 4 times right there.

beep

By the 5th replay, the power of the song was starting to dull, and eventually it just became irritating. When I sat down to listen to this album this morning and the opening vocals/piano/bass thing started I actually sighed, knowing that I’d end up having to turn the volume up and down throughout the song to avoid losing my hearing.

boop

The upside of this song is that it shows that even after all these years, FOB is still trying to evolve and try out new things. Save Rock and Roll and AB/AP were both decent albums, and it was interesting to see the group stray further from their emo roots and focus more on the pop rock side of their style. With AB/AP, it was pretty clear that they were definitely spiralling deeper into pop, so with Young and Menace it was interesting to see them still trying out different genres and styles.

folie a deux is better

The downside of this song is that it doesn’t really have much replayability. I also feel like it was a bit misleading, being the first track released off this album and the first track of this album. With the name being unnecessarily incorrect and the style being so far from what they’ve been doing so far, I was hoping we’d see them use this album to venture into new territory but bringing along some of their older work on the adventure. Like a Folie à Deux Part Deux. This album is not Folie à Deux Part Deux, but more or less a sequel to American Beauty / American Psycho.

best fob album ngl

Also this song should never, ever, be performed in concert. The live performances of this song have just been so cringey, watching Patrick try to sing the dubstep chorus. Ugh.

Following that is the second single released from this album, Champion. I feel like after the success of Centuries and Immortals, Fall Out Boy has enjoyed mild success at producing inspirational power tracks that will end up buried somewhere on Spotify’s work out playlists after their run on the radios. Champion is their next attempt at that, and I guess it kind of pays off.

I think the song really plays to FOB’s demographic, being the disgruntled youth who have followed them from their emo days. There’s a sense of disenfranchisement in this song which I think resonates well with the events of the last few years, as young people begin to lost faith in the systems we rely on. The song isn’t a cry for help or an anthem of nihilism, but rather a rallying cry. Kind of a call to arms rather than a rant about the problems of society. There isn’t much subtlety in this track but there really doesn’t need to be. It’s not meant to be a complex track, it’s an uplifter for young people who just need a quick boost of motivation.

Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea was the first track of the album I hadn’t heard yet, and honestly the name had me super hopeful. It was very reminiscent of a pre-hiatus Fall Out Boy. The opening bass and drums had me hyped.

The track is pretty damn good. It definitely shows more of their rock side, Patrick definitely has fun showing off his voice in this one. Lyrically, it’s another inspo track. I really think this album would be better off with cutting off Champion and keeping this is as the call to arms track for the album. The lyrics again are very disenfranchised, calling for resistance. There’s definitely a commentary on the events of the last years, with references to “childhood heroes hav(ing) fallen off or died”, which is strange because (at least to me) FOB isn’t really known for their current events commentary.

Much like Champion, there’s not much subtlety here. It’s another simple uplifting power banger, great for the treadmill or when you’re feeling angsty about politics (the latter is usually when it works better for me).

I’ve noticed with these last two tracks, in particular Champion, there’s a bit of the Simple Plan Effect apparent. Maybe at the start of the band’s career, it would make sense to write a banger about being a youth confused by the system and the way things go but as they’re entering their mid-30s, it would be good to see the band start to mature a little bit more. Their attitude made sense when they were writing tracks for an audience that was of the same age as them, but 15 years since their first album it feels like they’re still kind of writing for the same group of people. It would be interesting to see them write a slightly more mature album with their next one.

HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T is another single that was released ahead of the album. Like Young and Menace, it didn’t really click on first listen. It took a few listens for me to get into it, but I did find myself enjoying it after a little while.

It’s an uplifting breakup banger? Champion, SFRMT, and then HMTOD are all uplifting bangers. You kind of end up feeling like you don’t have any more room for hype in your body after the last two, and then with this song having lyrics that balance hope for rekindling a broken relationship with the futility of the same relationship, the hope doesn’t really kick in and you end up sitting in this awkward lukewarm pool of breakup. As a single, it worked in my opinion. There’s more mellow moments, more upbeat moments, the snare track is nice, the hook is nice. But in the context of the album, it is kind of washed out. Maybe if this was the second track, followed by either Champion or SFRMT, it would have worked better.

The Last Of The Real Ones was another single released ahead of time. I think TLOTRO was kind of what I was expecting on this album. It has this kind of old school Fall Out Boy feel to it, mixed with a much flashier production style.

The chorus is kind of disappointing, just repeating “The Last Of The Real Ones” over and over again. This technique is done well if the vocals are used almost as an instrument, kind of how they are in Young and Menace. But it falls short with this.

Overall, it’s a decent song. Nothing special. It doesn’t really try anything too new. It’s another loud track with a drop, just like every other song on this album so far. Like with HMTOD, as a single it works. In an album, maybe not as much.

After 5 tracks I had already heard before (apart from Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea), Fall Out Boy hits you with a new track, Wilson (Expensive Mistakes).

This song excites me because it feels a bit like an homage to the song from 2010’s Folie à Deux, The (Shipped) Gold Standard. Both songs have these themes of escape, wanting to have normal jobs and normal lives and just getting away from the limelight. What interests me is that The (Shipped) Gold Standard kind of calls out musicians who constantly write tracks that blame the world for their problems, and that eventually they all become the same old song. Except so far on this album the majority of songs have been about disenfranchisement and rallying against the world. You’d think after 10 years they’d learn but oh well.

There’s kind of an old school emo-FOB resurgence in this track, tied in with a movie callback (a classic Fall Out Boy move) through the reference to the Addams Family quote “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker colour”, which is cute. The name itself is apparently a reference to Wilson from Cast Away.

While writing this review I found out this song was also released as a single with a music video about a week before the album was dropped. I haven’t brought up the music videos because, in all honesty, I don’t like them all that much. This one was nice though, it adds to the above review because the music video for this is the only one I’ve seen (so far) that seems to have a proper meaning to it, kind of highlighting the manufacturedness of celebrity, which the song highlights too. There’s also a lot of callbacks to oldschool FOB tracks, which is very nice to see. The fidget spinner and airhorn in the track definitely also show how out of touch FOB is, which makes sense with the dubstep for Young and Menace. Kind of like with the “Thug Life” bit in the original irresistible music video. If Katy Perry has taught me one thing, it’s never to use memes in music videos. I hope they grow out of pandering to angsty teens – this coming from an angsty teen.

Turns out the next song, Church, was also released with a music video alongside the album. The music video is ok, it’s trying to have some kind of message but I couldn’t figure out what it is.

This song has choir chanting vocals. I love choir chanting vocals. The song is an epic love ballad, tying together themes of love and spirituality, which is a theme combination I am obsessed with. They do that FOB thing I love in the 2nd verse where they cut out the vocals and let the acapella shine through. Patrick shines through with the higher end of his range, which I love. All in all, this song is made up of so many of my favourites thing, but yet it kind of falls flat.

Not to say it’s a bad song, because I don’t think it is. Definitely one of my favourites on this album, but it feels like it could be so much more. I’m not even sure where it’s lacking to be honest, it just doesn’t have the umph that it should have. Maybe it’s because of the way this album is designed, to oversaturate the levels of hype and energy so that you just don’t have the energy to enjoy another energetic song.

Heaven’s Gate is the most necessary track on this album. It offers a break from the nonstop energy of the preceding tracks.

Patrick goes all out with his vocals on this one. The chorus is relatively stripped down compared to the rest of the album, really highlighting his voice and the bass. The choruses are nice and mellow, with the vocals being used to infuse a little bit of energy here and there. Once again, the themes of love and spirituality being combined. There even feels like a little bit of fear in this track, that he hasn’t done enough good in his life to get in to Heaven, yet he continues to do bad things in order to fill the gap left behind by some ex-lover.

I really enjoyed this track. I’m not sure if it’s entirely because the song is good, or because it’s just so welcome after the barrage of energy from the previous tracks. This song should have come maybe 1 or 2 tracks earlier, just to give the listener a chance to calm down before going back into the hype.

Sunshine Riptide is the only song on the album to feature a feature, and surprisingly unlike with the last 2 albums instead of picking out a top contender from the charts, they went with Nigerian reggae singer Burna Boy, and it worked.

This song is almost the opposite of HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T. It’s a downbeat song about happiness and feeling love. There are more references to love in terms of spirituality and drugs, as we’ve seen in the last few tracks. The reggae feature is really nice and really quite different for this album, it was well welcomed by me.

And finally, the closer Bishops Knife Trick. Its kind of a more somber track (as somber as this album can allow), and somewhat introspective. There’s some reminiscence for days gone by on this track, and unfortunately after going through the album I too was reminiscing for days gone by. As soon as the track finished, I went and listened to Folie à Deux again, because of course.

As a song, it’s good. I like it. I enjoy it. I enjoy this song, not much else to say. As a closer, it doesn’t really do the job it’s meant to do. A closer is meant to tie in together all the themes, thoughts, feelings, emotions, of the album. But this album is so messy that this song could never do that.

This isn’t an album as much as a mixtape. It’s a collection of singles with not much thought put in to how they work together. They don’t run through very nicely, with all the hype energetic tracks right at the start and then a sudden drop to a more mellow and somber section that runs through to the end of the album. There are lots of great singles throughout the album, and I enjoyed all of them. As an album, it’s just tiring.

Maybe Young and Menace is actually a great opening track, because it really does introduce the album. It’s messy, the name is stupid, it’s a little out of touch, and the more you listen to it, the less of an effect it has. The score I gave it at the top is one that decreases with every listen. We know Fall Out Boy is capable of making classics that last forever, like for instance (an album I have mentioned at least 492840298 times while discussing this album, because it is undoubtedly their best work) Folie à Deux. The album is far from their best work, it takes risks in the wrong places without actually adding much to the character of the band. They’re trying out new directions but only at the very surface level, go a little deeper and it’s the same style from the last two albums mixed with the same themes from 15 years ago.

Did I hate the album? No, not at all.

Did I love the album? Not really, no.

Did I like it? Yup. I enjoyed it, and it’ll definitely be a welcome addition to my playlists when I shuffle through them; but I won’t be sitting down to listen to the album from one end to the other in one session any time soon.

New pop-focused Paramore last year, and now a new pop-focused FOB. Has anyone checked up on Brendon Urie recently?