REVIEW: A Day To Remember – ‘Bad Vibrations’

Six albums and nearly fourteen years after formation, A Day To Remember has come full circle with Bad Vibrations, a culmination of everything the band has been working towards that isn’t afraid to think about the future. The Florida natives display a renewed vigor on this release and their signature ability to be overtly aggressive yet undeniably optimistic remains in tact.

The boys fighting to become men on For Those Who Have Heart have long realized their dreams and lived to tell the story, but Bad Vibrations is not just another entry in the ongoing saga of Jeremy McKinnon and company’s adventure through life. Like Common Courtesy, the latest release from A Day To Remember splits the focus of the songwriting between introspective anthems about overcoming the odds, edgy alternative rock takedowns of the world at large, and ballad(s) – this time there are arguably two – for the broken. The tried and true works as good as it ever did, but what is most interesting are the instances where the band gives us a possible look at where they may be headed in the coming years.

You first notice it on “Paranoia,” which fittingly served as the album’s lead single. The driving sound that has more or less been a cornerstone of ADTR’s career has evolved ever-so-slightly in a way that further emphasizes the catchiness lying just below the aggression of guitarists Kevin Skaff and Neil Westfall. Anyone that has spent more than five minutes listening to modern rock radio knows this sound all too well, as it’s found somewhere in every song those stations play. You may or may not listen yourself, but you’ve seen and heard the marketability of this almost intangible quality your entire life. It’s a sound that unites people the way a great pop song might while still serving its core audience of people who likes to mosh alone in their bedrooms, cars and/or while packed like sardines into one of the band’s hundred or so shows every year. It’s what one imagines every artist hoping to build a legitimately sustainable career in music aspires to create, but what sets ADTR apart is that they managed to reach such creative heights while staying true to those who gave them the opportunity to reach this point.

To be clear, this isn’t to say the album is without fault. There are times that the reliance on breakdowns and hashtag-able catchphrases appears to border on parody. It will work for some no doubt, but others will realize they’ve heard some iteration of “this is a battleground” like one-liners on almost every ADTR album and question the legitimacy of the originality. I’m sure it will go over like gangbusters in a live setting, but given the push toward new sonic ideas on the majority of songs, I imagine this element may be eliminated as the band continues to mature.

Bad Vibrations is the anti-sellout record. The goal of every artist who ever truly chased their dreams has been – and will always be – making it big with the thoughts in their head. The key element here being ‘their thoughts.’ A Day To Remember built a following in a time before social media was even a thing, and they managed to keep those efforts going when faced with the incredibly difficult situation of being tied to a label that constantly did them wrong. They stuck it through, as they have told us at length throughout their catalog, and now their business is theirs alone. Few artists can ever say they actually lived the lifestyle they promote to fullest extent, but A Day To Remember can, and they do not take the responsibility to encourage and support others to do the same lightly. Bad Vibrations is the album they needed to not only prove this, but to move one step closer to being a band history will remember in an age where everyone has a voice.