AS IT IS Take us through Hell but never really come back on new record

 

I Went to Hell and Back is the fourth record by Brighton pop punk outfit As It Is, their first as a trio since guitarist and co-vocalist Ben Langford-Biss left the band in 2019. To me personally As It Is have been one of the most consistent bands in the pop punk or emo lane. On every record they have committed to exactly what they want to be. Never Happy, Ever After, their debut, was a true pop punk record akin to bands like Neck Deep, State Champs and others that As It Is came up around the same time as. On okay. the band expanded on this sound but with a 1950s aesthetic and getting broader in their subject matter touching on things like life at home. Then finally The Great Depression really threw everyone for a loop as they completely shifted into this sadder, darker theme akin to bands like My Chemical Romance. All this to say; I look back at those three records as being one of the strongest three album runs in any band's career and was really looking forward to a follow up. As singles started to pour out though I started to feel like that greatness period was over. I do mean pour by the way nearly half of this fourteen track record was released before the end of 2021. So, with that much material not clicking with me, I was feeling pretty low on this release but resolved to not miss an As It Is record and told myself it would all make sense once it was together.

The first single and opening track, “IDGAF,” isn’t the worst song in the world but certainly has its issues. As good as I find the main riff as well as the chords the song is built upon to be the track is just so low energy, which not only feel out of the place as the opener to your pop punk record it also just doesn’t even match with the chorus, they feel like they’re from two different cuts entirely. One of the more interesting points of the song is the spoken word pre-chorus but even that is over produced, comes off as pretty corny even for the subject matter and to me, feels like an attempt to recreate a moment that AFI already successfully did back in 2003. Which, I guess given the context of a later track on here makes sense. The point is; I don’t think this is a bad song but it just feels like a b-side from The Great Depression but on that record we were sounding put together and saying something of value and on this one we’re quoting our middle school english notebook;

“Close my eyes and cross my fingers I don’t wake up, ‘cause I don’t really wanna die but really don’t give a fuck.”

I actually quite enjoy the sentiment on “I Lie to Me;”

“I lie to me, I say everything’s gonna be alright like I’m that naive”

“I don’t want to feel the way I do, screaming at myself now, looking for a way out.”

Definitely feel like lines from early 2000s radio but it also doesn’t feel like a tap in or a copypasta, just the way vocalist Patty Walters feels. The issue I walk away with on the track is it’s the exact same song as “IDGAF” only the vocal delivery is even lazier, Walters is taking from the book of Barker on these melodies using this half talking style of singing to sound like he can’t even be bothered to be on his own song. The riff and guitar work is basically the same and even placed in the same timestamps it’s like changing tracks on a DragonForce album. Not only on the vocal side, every possibly interesting moment on here is overtaken by some low sentiment move on the band’s part, Ronnie Ish sleeps through his guitar solo here. The entire track reads like the decision was to take the first single, make it lazier, make it the second single and very next on the track list and then do it all again and somehow with even less energy way later on the record in “I Die 1000X.”

I actually find myself enjoying “ILY, How Are You?” The lyricism feels like a dialogue with its second half missing and goes with the promotion and single cover from when it was released last year. It also sort of sounds like the answer or extension to “The Truth I’ll Never Tell,” which was on The Great Depression. The bouncy energy of the track sounds like it’d be a fun festival anthem and the unconventional instrumentation really gets me. For a while what I thought to be bass turned out to be a chopped and distorted vocal and I have to admire that sonic tool. In no way, however, is any of this an original idea. Not that there’s really anything wrong with this side of music but this, to me, feels like a move from a Twenty One Pilots or an Imagine Dragons when there’s plenty of those bands already. As It Is once had something special that they could call their own but now I can easily compare them to radio rock bands and it’s sort of a sad thing to consider. I think, though, if the song was its own entity I would have walked away from it on a top list last year but not only does it find its way here, it was also a double single packaged with the next track on the list.

“IDC, I Can’t Take It” is another track that’s low on the sin side sonically. The instrumental is fun but it's basically a loop that is realistically under a minute with the only change up being when it’s pitched up on the later half of the track. That and Walters is snoring through yet another vocal melody here and the lyrics are so weak it sounds like they’d fit at home on a poorly aged anime AMV. The theme of the entire track is not caring and life being unfair; it sounds like the soundtrack to being dumped in freshman year. The passage;

“I don’t care what you say, I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what you think, I don’t care if it’s true, I don’t care if you leave, I don’t care if you’re through, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Is one of the rougher to hear on the entire record.

I’ve got to be honest I am still so split on “I Miss 2003.” I enjoy, performance wise, what this track is going for and I feel this is the non-phoned-in version of what the entire record is trying to be; an emulation of a certain era of alternative music. Walters is singing like his old self mostly though the chorus almost sounds like an uncredited Jeremy McKinnon feature. Not an attack though I am relieved to know he still has some vocal chops in him. The band sounds tight knit, the production is really strong and the sample-esque guitar intro sounds a Hell of a lot better here than on the numerous other times that strategy is used on the album. Even the big rock outro for sure sounds like a 2000s radio rock emo cut, it all works. For as much of the good, though there is just as much bad. I do appreciate the use of all the references to old bands, songs, things relevant to the culture. I can’t really attack name dropping New Found Glory when I praised The Dirty Nil for doing it with Cro-Mags and Turnstile last year and I actually think that one’s pretty strong. It communicates a feeling, and New Found Glory were high in relevance in that time and it feels like a proper call back to that era.

“Tell me that you’re alright, cause I’m not okay.”

Feels sort of AMV-cringe but it again gets the message across. My issue comes from some of these not even being real sentences.

“Now I’m feeling miserable at best, I guess that’s what you get when your dirty little secret is how I miss the year that gets me.”

“I’d drive through every red light just so I can press rewind.”

Feels like they’re just trying to cram as many song titles as they possibly can without it really being an actual thought.

“Now life is boring, let's write a story where we never grow up.”

Is a sentence but it just sounds like it only exists for the sake of rhyming. The chorus sounds so much like it’s channeling that era of music that it just sounds like a Papa Roach sample. I think, again, ultimately this single is fine and if the concept of it was self-contained I could appreciate it artistically but were there fourteen tracks of material on this thought alone? I still have a single and all the deep cuts to talk to you about and I can give you a spoiler that; no this is it in it’s strongest form and it only goes so far.

When “In Threes” dropped at the very end of last year, As It Is stated in a tweet that the song belonged equally to themselves, Set it Off and JordyPurp. Yet it is on their record and is a Set it Off song. I like this song a lot but I cannot possibly give it credit in the context of I Went to Hell and Back because it fits in snuggly with the singles off the new Set it Off record, which by the time you’re reading this will have been released. While I cannot physically see what band members are playing each part I can hear that Cody Carson is the most used vocalist here. Looking at the liner notes I can see that Carson is the only Set it Off member who had a hand in writing this track, which means that As It Is wrote a Set it Off song and sold as something that involves all parties to create a false sense of comradery to sell tickets for the tour they did together. A tour that JordyPurp wasn’t even involved in and other touring mates, Stand Atlantic and Nevermind the Middle Child get no benefit from either. What I’m trying to say is; I’m not going to give you points for a song being good when the lyrics, melody and production are all in the style of the band you are claiming is a feature. While this was a good track, it is the biggest sin of the record by far. This only continues onto the album tracks as well I’m afraid.

Just like “In Threes,” I in no way feel good about giving any credit to As It Is for “I Can’t Feel a Thing” since it’s a The Word Alive song but this one just isn’t even very good to begin with. This is the exact same deal in that if you put this on Monomania it would totally blend right in as a Walters feature. Not that I’m saying something like that is a bad thing inherently, a collaboration between artists should bring the best parts of both sounds out. See the Stand Atlantic, nothing,nowhere. crossover from last year; “deathwish” where it sounds like a song by both artists and if you’re a fan of one and not the other you can still show up and have a good time. Here Walters is the primary vocalist but he just sounds like he’s singing over The Word Alive and even when Telle does show up he sounds absolutely abysmal. The best I can give him is that he's fitting the theme of the album in that he sounds like he’s emulating this lazy Tik Tok vocal style. Then let’s say this was on Monomania it would still sound in context, not just sound wise, but because it’s so phoned in and crafted beyond any amount of creativity. As much as I did enjoy that record for a spell we have to face the facts in saying that The Word Alive is a total shadow of their former selves and As It Is is showing that time may be coming for them as well.

Delving further into the deep cuts we get “I’d Rather Die” in the midst of side A, which I actually find myself enjoying. There’s a lot of good lyricism and the track opening with that “long time no sleep” line actually feels like some sort of poetic as opposed to manufactured. The beat behind the words is well crafted too but there’s not a whole lot here, mainly because it’s so short. Something that “I’m Sick and Tired” actually suffers from a few tracks down, being short and pretty repetitive. For where it’s placed on the album though, it's a nice break from the, albeit phony, rock anthems.

“I Want to See God” is probably my favorite title of the bunch and;

“I don’t think my thoughts and I should be alone tonight”

Is a good line but that’s honestly all the give I have on this one. This song feels like the cheapest version of when emo bands would put one hardcore song on their record just to show off their influences, see The Used’s “Choke Me” from the self-titled for example. Not that’s there’s anything really going wrong performance wise but the production is an absolute mess. It sounds like there’s an endless amount of guitars tracked over each other in the first verse alone. That and from a songwriting stand point it’s another of these two and a half minute, three chorus cuts that just feels like it’s going on and on.

“I Hate Me Too” is a decent song. I actually like that line about the internet but my thing is it was cool when it was the only good part about four other bad songs prior to this on the record. We once again tap into that AFI cloned pre-chorus, we do the sampled riff strategy again, the song even has the same sentiment as “IDC.” It feels almost like this was written first then split up into other, equally mediocre songs and kept on the album anyway. There’s bits and bots of functioning ideas whereas a lot of those other tracks only function as nostalgia grabs but it’s still, overall, mediocre.

I’m gonna go ahead and give As It Is points for “I’m Gone” because I’m a little proud of the band for coming through on a song on the worst portion of their worst album but even that has a caveat. Like how I said the opener sounds like a b-side of The Great Depression this sounds like a b-side of Never Happy, Ever After. The hook is incredible, the instrumental is really strong and yet the track does not go sonically on the record at all. This is a sad showing that this band still has strong moments in them and it’s more upsetting when so much of this album is on the cusp of being good and a track so above everything else takes until it’s final quarter and pulls from a bygone era of their career entirely.

Finally, the title track which closes the record is produced fine but I can’t say anything really great about it overall. While the lyricism on this and the entire album is lazy I have to give a shout out to;

“I went to Hell and back cause Heaven was too far away, fuck it this feeling’s got me feeling like it’s not worth the pain.

Cause you said tomorrow would be better but that was yesterday.”

For being such an awful line that I cannot believe it was actually considered for real to be put on the record.

In the beginning of this review I pointed out that whatever the theme is sonically and aesthetically, As It Is always delivers on it. On this record it feels like what they’re tapping into is this mix of alternative culture but also what people on the outside of an alternative listener base think their music sounds like. I’ll be frank; it sounds cash-grabby. It’s almost as if they listened to as much of these old alt records or throwback playlists as possible and just went for all the cliches, none of the nuance or fine tuning and it breaks my heart that I can’t even say I don’t know who this record is for. It’s specifically engineered for people who post about emo “not being a phase” and exclusively listen to the singles off My Chemical Romance or Fall Out Boy records and haven’t heard of an alternative band who never charted. Which, by the way, if that’s you there is nothing wrong with that, like what you like. The issue becomes those listeners aren’t listening to an As it Is album in the first place, they may just hear “I Miss 2003” at an Emo Nite and never think about it again.

The deeper I allowed myself to dive into this record the more I realized the songs aren’t even really bad at their base, but they phone in so much that there’s nothing really going on in them anymore. What gets me most? Recapturing the 2000s came so naturally for As It Is not one record ago, it’s a step backwards. This sounds like every album Travis Barker is compiling blink-182 b-sides for in the 2020s except he’s not even dredging up boring tracks for them, they’re writing them themselves. Ultimately, I have to wonder if Langford-Biss was the one responsible for what I loved about this project in the first place or if there is a desire to make this band something it’s not. My overall thoughts are that the lyrics aren’t about anything, the instrumentation and production can be chalked up to “2003 but make it boring” and there are decent songs on an overall piss poor record.

As It Is LinkTree

Follow me on Twitter