Daughtry - Break The Spell

Oh the faceless modern rock balladeer from the American Idol fame train. Here they/he is with their third album worth of music that so far has been overtly lame ass wimp rock for macho wanna be's with dumb Japanese tattoos and that terrifying barbed wire wrapping around their arms, probably have those ridiculous tribal hoops stretching their earlobes as well. Yeah and the girls that may pass by my blog review of this album I'm probably describing your boyfriends. Now with the insults out of the way lets get to the music on this digital platter that leads a doomed format life.

The groups first song released "Renegade" is a decent high octane rock tune that is by far the best song the bands released to date. They quickly drop back into that ridiculous modern rock mid-tempo near ballad cliche but do so with an enjoyable tune. Shocking!, damn near heart stopping that the band put two songs back to back that both are good. The unbelievable achievement is that this doesn't only happen at this point the streak continues with a hat trick "Outta My Head" a catchy rock song that not includes a good chorus but a solid verse that is not normal for Daughtry's material. Usually this band regurgitates the same songs with different words but the exact same topical themes. The almost alt. country "Start Of Something Good" is right in their wheelhouse of shame, tempo wise but Chris doesn't do his normal over singing and emoting this time when the song breaks into the chorus. He actually holds it back and doesn't get lost in the Star Search/American Idol torch song gymnastics.

The band don't really come close to reinventing themselves at all on this album but if I am to compare this to their last record it's so much better even being as similar to it as it is. The song writing has improved drastically on Break The Spell and that is why this album isn't being trashed like I really felt inclined to do before I got past "Renegade". I can say this is not going to make my best of 2011 albums list and won't come close to earning more listens than when my wife, daughter or friends will force me to listen to or put up with me bitching about it being lame compared to other albums and they are forced to turn it off to shut me up. I can be that hard to deal with sometimes when it comes to music or movies. When the band drop two songs back to back that are both good and work together is at track eleven and twelve. Both songs are good modern pop rock songs with strong chorus's and good grooves.

The expanded version of the album includes "Who's They" which is a complete joke of a song and really should have stayed buried. They give four extra songs that are so vanilla you don't know if its Nickelback, Art Of Dying, Saving Abel, Shinedown or any other modern rock band. Even though "Everything But Me" is a good song it could still be anyone from the genre performing it. No originality or defining moments are had on this album which is still an improvement from their gawd awful waste of studio time Leave This Town.