Album: An All Time ‘Eh’

   Last Friday, All Time Low released their new album, Last Young Renegade. It’s the first album they’ve released in a year, and their seventh album overall. The album is good, but ultimately falls short of our expectations for music style and album length.

All Time Low is composed of four people: Alex Gaskarth (lead vocals and rhythm guitarist), Jack Barakat (backup vocals), Rian Dawson (drummer) and Zack Merrick (backup vocals and bassist). They’ve been making music since 2003 and they’re best known for their song “Dear Maria, Count Me In,” which was released in 2007.
The new album is relatively short in comparison to the majority of their other albums, as it is composed of only 10 songs and runs for about 36 minutes. The album could have used more tracks to deepen its impact, but we believe that the reason for the short length is that they were experimenting with their style and wanted to gauge their audience’s reaction before going all-in.
This album is completely different from one of their first albums titled Put Up Or Shut Up. That album primarily consists of rock songs that you’d expect on a Fall Out Boy album, but on Last Young Renegade, the style is more reminiscent of the the band Boys Like Girls’ song “Thunder,” with a soft rock sound. The tempo is slowed down for almost all of the songs and the climaxes are the only indication of All Time Low’s origin as a rock band.
The sound of Last Young Renegade is rhythmic with a prominent drum beat that carries the lyrics and the motion of the song. But this band’s music is starting to become more generic, which can be heard in the lack of true rock and in the inclusion of some computer-generated sound. When we first started listening to some of their new songs, it didn’t sound like the same band. But they haven’t lost the connection to their roots.
It’s clear that All Time Low was experimenting with their music as they drifted away from their signature rock sound. The product sounded great, but it would have been nice to hear more songs worth jamming out to. We’d recommend this album to anyone willing to give the band’s new style a try, but if you’re looking for a rock-out session to blow off some steam, you should look elsewhere.