Emotionalpunk.com
Media Review
Music Quality: 9.0
Production: 10.0
Originality: 6.0
Tracklisting
2. Foreign Language
3. Change The World
4. Cold War
5. Glass To The Arson
6. The Feel Good Drage
7. Autobahn
8. We Dreamt In Heist
9. Love Song
10. Cadence
11. Naive Orleans
The (personally) long-awaited Anberlin debut LP, Blueprints For The Black Market, is finally out. I can't say it lead up to all my expectations, as the demos seemed to have a certain amount of rawness that I hoped would be reflected throughout the entire disc, but Anberlin put out a pretty decent disc for their debut. With huge production and a sound to go with it, Anberlin's smooth, poppy, high vocals soar above the often dark, heavy chords reminiscent of a slower Finch or Used.
The real gem on the album is the monstrous, angst-driven Glass To The Arson, a song characteristic of the heaviness of bands like Linkin Park but with the tinges of bands like Mae and Spitalfield; a lot of poppiness with a lot of heaviness. A lot of the other songs are catchy and melodic, but don't seem to vary much between each other; Ready Fuels and Foreign Language seem to have the same feel as songs like The Feel Good Drage and Love Song (a cover song originally written by the Cure). Nonetheless, Anberlin's original rock, characteristic of a high presence of energy and emotion and never straying from the singer's smoothly delivered vocal lines, does one thing: rocks. Love Song's piano during the bridge sounds entirely appropriate; and Cadence's punchy, bouncy chords seem made for the mosh pit.
Although I was initially hoping for a disc packed with a ton of raw, heavy songs, Anberlin suprised me by releasing a disc with a ton of poppy, sing-a-long pop/metal anthems. The production huge, the vocals perfectly ballsy, what else could you ask for? Don't miss out on yet another solid Tooth And Nail Records release (I doubt you could, the myraid of promotional banners have been glistening almost every indie site on the net).