Release date: 22nd August 2019
When I heard the first single from Renegades, the album’s title track, I was seriously impressed. I didn’t actually know it was Equilibrium on my first listen until it was pointed out to me, but the track slayed so hard that I was very excited to hear the rest of the album if it was going to be anything like that. It was an exciting and bold new path, but unfortunately the rest of the album just didn’t live up to expectations.
Change is great. There’s no point in bands creating the same album over and over, because it’s lazy and just gets stagnant. Equilibrium has always been a band unafraid to try new things, which is one of the things that makes them such an exciting band, but this time around, it just didn’t work and the main issue is the vocals. Aside from that god-awful rap line in Path Of Destiny which I’m going to try and gloss over, for the first time in their career Equilibrium are utilising clean vocals quite extensively, with the addition of another member just to perform cleans.
Aside from the cleans just sounding horrifically grating, to the extent I just want to skip past them whenever a new line starts, they just don’t fit well with the rest of the music. Second track Tornado would probably be good if it wasn’t for the overpowering cleans, whereas fifth track Moonlight (the weakest of the album) sounds nothing other than cringeworthy. Sixth track Kawaakari – The Periphery Of The Mind is perhaps the only truly listenable track with cleans, as the chorus is very catchy, but even then it feels like something is still off.
It’s not just the vocals that make the album a letdown. The music itself doesn’t have that special spark as a whole, and don’t have the ‘fun’ vibe of past albums that make you want to go and party to the songs in a live environment. Indeed, it’s ironic that Equilibrium have a song on the album called Hype Train when one of the descriptions of the phrase is to “convey disappointment at a product that fails to meet high expectations” because that’s exactly what they’ve done with Renegades. Equilibrium are capable of so much better than this, and it’s such a shame – all I can do is hope the songs sound better in a live environment.
3/10
I follow your thought Boris. But if you really found of the previous albums of Equilibrium – it’s hard to look to the album alone without looking to the band’s history.
I would grade the evolution of a band too. And I don’t like the evolution of Equilibrium with this album. I would grade it also in the same range as Natalie. But luckily humanity is divers in opinions as I’m sure they will build a new fan base with this album.
Well, no. Regardless of who the band is, I still would have graded it 3/10 because it’s just not a good album. I said in my review that it’s boring for a band to keep releasing the same album so I’m happy they’re doing something new, and I’ve actually come to expect it from Equilibrium because they’re always evolving and I really respect that. However, the album itself just isn’t that good.
I agree with most of it.. but you are grading the album after knowing equilibriums previous albums. You know what you want to hear. You expect something similar to that. This is a album new listeners might like, this album is not a 3/10.. that’s unfair. If they’d released it under another band name . This would have got a higher rating.