The hard rock band Red walks a fine line. Not only do they associate themselves with the modern hard rock sound that has so deplorably plagued rock radio over the past decade, they also have a mundanely generic name and they’re widely acknowledged as a Christian rock band which, needless to say, can often spell disaster for the mainstream acceptance of a band. It seems that there is a lot going against Red and yet somehow they’ve managed to stand apart from the absolute landfill of similarly sounding rock bands. Red’s debut, End of Silence was a refreshing take on the already tired genre and their follow up Innocence & Instinct was their finest effort, a breezy rocker with an interesting conceptual theme. With high expectations, Red’s third album Until We Have Faces rides in with the wind at its back. As one of the finest examples of a band that has taken strides to give listeners a gratifying experience by taking a popular genre and doing surprising and rewarding things with it, it’s sad to see Red regress to a state of absolute banality. With Until We Have Faces Red has not only fallen victim to lazy regression, but their color-by-numbers approach has given us an album that falls into the crowd of eerily similar sounding modern rock albums; none of which I could recommend with a clean conscience.
Until We Have Faces sees the band flexing their power chord muscles one moment and pumping their dime a dozen riffs the next. Like Innocence & Instinct, this album is supposed to be loosely connected by a lyrical concept. While Innocence drew upon Dante’s Inferno, Faces takes its concept from a C.S. Lewis novel titled Till We Have Faces, which itself is a retelling of the Greek story of Cupid and Psyche. It’s nice that vocalist and lead songwriter Michael Barnes continues to craft these conceptual ideas for this band’s full length albums, even though I should strongly emphasize that this album is loosely conceptual. No matter the lyrical content though, throughout most of the album Barnes seems as if he tries his hardest to make his powerful voice as bland as the music that’s raging behind him. Gone is the emotional outpouring and commanding performance, instead Barnes growls and fumbles his way to what amounts to a stock vocal performance. At times we see some life out of his vocal chords - a few verses with interesting lyrics and aesthetically pleasing vocals - but it’s not really until the piano driven final track that we really see Barnes’ potential.
One of the main problems with Until We Have Faces is that it is chock full of mind numbing and repetitively unimaginative rockers. In fact, much of the album seems harder and angrier than past efforts. It’s possible that the increase in adrenaline, or “our first two records, but on steroids” as Barnes himself puts it, just doesn’t fit the band right. Sadly a shot of steroids has also made Red unable to craft a chorus that’s even the slightest bit memorable or a ballad that isn’t downright cringe worthy. That is until the album’s highlight, the poignant “Hymn for the Missing.” In the same way that their last full length ended with the highlight of that album, Faces ends with a nearly six minute ballad that sees Barnes transform into the talented vocalist that we all thought he was before he released this album. With a string aided chorus, Barnes is given a platform to not only showcase his range but also his ability to channel emotion back to the listener.
With “Hymn for the Missing,” Red’s newest album ends with hope. Hope that Red may rebound from the worst effort of their short career. The album as a whole though kills a theory that I hypothesized after reviewing their last album two years ago. At that time I said that their previous record may “change the genre” and that “I won’t be complaining if it does.” After listening through Until We Have Faces, I now see that Red is in no way the last great hope for modern hard rock music.
"Until We Have Faces" is on sale February 1, 2011 from Sony.
