But it's hard. It's hard to forget the many times one has heard Troels Abrahamsen scream out his lungs with earnest and personal lyrics. Hard to forget the bombardment of razor sharp drumming and synthesizers. It's true what they say, that VETO have become more melodic on this new album. That the songwriting has been more spontaneous - the band have stated so themselves.
Troels Abrahamsen writing melody is a bit like having the best striker in the world on your footy team, and have him play left back. It might be a bit of an exaggeration, but honestly, for all the talent he has as both a vocalist and as a producer, he really comes across as a mediocre songwriter. We've been dragged through a full three of his solo albums, including the one released under the I Know That You Know pseudonym, and now he has full-fledgedly applied his boring melodics upon his band mates in VETO.
The first three tracks on Everything Is Amplified are very good. When it came out as the lead single, I hoped it wouldn't be, but 'This Is Not' is one of the strongest tracks on the album, as is 'Am I Awake Or Should I Wake Up', which for a change contains an interesting melody and chord pattern. 'Take It Outside', which I initially bashed this Monday after my first spin of it, has grown on me, and I can also live with 'Slowres', which is sort of in the mold of older VETO tunes such as 'Cannibal' and 'YouYou'.
But the rest? Honestly, this album is one of the biggest falls from grace I have seen in a long time. The three middle tracks, 'Already Ready', 'If Else' and 'Fell Into Place', are just three pieces of endlessly boring and irrelevant music. Especially a tune like 'Fell Into Place' almost makes me angry. Here, you've got a tune with some pretty interesting lyrics, which are completely killed and buried by the most dull shit melody I've heard this side of Katy Perry. I mean, the progression and the harmonics are so obvious and predictable if you've heard just a bit of Abrahamsen's solo work. The two last tracks, although a bit less mediocre than the tedious middle threesome, are still really nothing, nothing to write home about - once again, neat, but much too boring.
I understand bands grow older and change and all that, and as I stated in my post this Monday, it would seem pretty hard to extend the sound of Crushing Digits to make another record out of it, but this is not a question of evolving or not - it's a question of knowing your strengths and weaknesses. VETO has turned in a melodic direction, which is a pretty familiar and predictable turn for a band that has shaken off its youthful agitation and energy. The only problem is that the fella in charge of writing melody is not particularly good at it. With that in mind, it becomes quite a risky path to choose, and on Everything Is Amplified, it really backfires, as this is really a boring album. For a band that has so many other strengths, and that has already released two brilliant albums, I'm sorry, but this is just too anodyne and middle-of-the-road to really move anything.
