The Bravery - Stir the blood

Written by Hakim | 23 January 2010

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The Bravery - Stir the blood

Released : December 1, 2009

Rating : 70/100

'The bravery' is an alternative rock band formed by five Yankees including the guitarist and lead singer 'Sam Endicott'. Since 2005 they released 3 albums, the last one titled 'Stir the blood' was released in December, the 1st. The synthesis of new wave in their music and the poetic voice of Endicott makes them sound like a mixture between 'The cure's' dramatization and 'Depeche mode's' electronic sounds. But despite of that they knew how to make they style unique and personalized in the previous albums, let's see if they do the same with the new one.

Comparing to their previous albums, in 'Stir the blood' the band overuses the synthesizers sound, and it starts right away from the first song 'Adored'. Aggressive electronic effects and excessive use of the F word, make this song a heavy entrance to the album. Apparently since their albums didn't have very good critics, they decided to make this one more energetic. And that's emphasized with the sound of screaming guitars and the fast tempo right from the beginning.

Then the techno beats keep going in the second track 'Song for Jacob', the tempo is even faster, and Sam's voice bravery is getting higher and angrier while repeating the words 'There is more inside of me than skin and bones'. Some other songs are in the same state of mind, like 'Hatefuck', and 'I'm your skin'.

After that comes the first single of the album 'Slow Poison', a nice and appealing song musically, but the lyrics not so much. 'The bravery' fans never expected too much from the band's lyrics. This time it's even worse. The lyrics are very poor and superficial, not as dark toned as they band said it would be.

The song 'She's so bendable' is the one I liked the most, it's just so quiet and different from the whole album, it's a mixture of echoed guitar, an nice bass line, and the low pitch voice of 'Endicott'. Then there is a short but nice little blues guitar solo. I think it's one of the rare songs where the band sounded really unique in 'Stir the blood'. There was just nothing so exciting about the majority of the other songs, like 'I have seen the future' and 'Red hands and white knuckles', where the pulse of the electronic drums and the synthesizers keep repeating until the listener gets bored. There are some other nice songs like 'The spectator', and 'Sugar Pill', but that's just not enough to save the album. It's just too weak to be saved.

The excessive use of echo effects and synthesizers would have made 'Stir the blood' a legendary album if it was born 20 years ago, but that time is gone now and music styles changed, that's why this album isn't really gonna change the world or become an old classic rock or new wave album. Plus the plagiarism with 'Robert Smith's' music is very obvious and recognizable. 'The bravery' could have done better if they personalized more their style rather than just try to sound like other artists. Also the lyrics seemed very poor to me. Apparently 'Sam Endicott' focused more on writing lyrics for 'Shakira' and 'Christina Aguilera' than on making his own songs.