Album Review: A Day To Remember - What Separates Me From You

The return of A Day To Remember with their fourth studio album, ‘What Separates Me From You', couldn’t come at a better time. With bands of their ilk enjoying a popularity to rival anything else on the scene, the expectation behind the record was vast, and boy, did they produce. No horses are held with the opening track ‘Sticks and Bricks’, which crashes in, and encompasses everything good about ADTR. Chainsaw guitars, fierce growls juxtaposed with soaring choruses and thrashing breakdowns make for a brutally soothing beginning.

The record is produced, like 2008’s ‘Homesick’, by New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert, and his influence is unmistakable at points. Tracks like first single ‘All I Want’ and ‘All Signs Point To Lauderdale’, are crafted brilliantly and scream pop-punk at the top of their lungs, the chorus of the latter reminiscent of early All Time Low, all the while maintaining the edgier sound that got them here in the first place.

For the traditionalists of the bands following, tracks like ‘2nd Sucks’ and ‘You Be Tails, I’ll Be Sonic’, are the heavier offerings, and serve to give the album’s genre definers out their a run for their money, oozing the bulldozer like hardcore they’ve been synonymous with on their musical journey thus far.

It would be far too easy to be cynical about ‘What Separates Me From You’. The lazier commentators would argue that this is a label influenced attempt at gaining A Day To Remember a more mainstream following. The beauty lies in digging deeper and really listening to the results. The band have grown as musicians, and perhaps more importantly, based on the meaning behind the records title, as people. All this makes for a record that could, and should, catapult them to bigger and better things.

4/5

'What Separates Me From You' by A Day To Remember is available now on Victory Records.

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Liam McGarry