Imagine Dragons dive into the darkness with new album
The new Imagine Dragons album cover depicts a man falling through space, gravity gently pulling him down. Inside is the sound of a man grappling with his own fall.
Lead singer, songwriter and lyricist Dan Reynolds has poured heartache, tragedy and his struggles with sobriety into the raw, confessional and searing “Mercury — Act 1,” a brave album from a band refusing to retreat into past hits.
The 13-track collection uses Reynolds’ falsetto to great effect to explore different sonic landscapes, and his lyrics ache with a portrait of a man who has lost friends to cancer, had his personal life collapse and battled depression and addiction.
“I’m finding it hard to love myself,” he sings on “My Life.” On “Lonely,” he offers: “These days, I’m becoming everything I hate.” The song “Dull Knives” has Reynolds’ almost screaming in anguish: “Won’t someone please save my life?” and one song has the singalong chorus: “It’s OK to be not OK.”
The album was written over a three-year period and much happened in Reynolds’ life. He separated from wife Aja Volkman, but the couple reunited in late 2018 after a seven-month break and welcomed a fourth child, son Valentine, the next fall. He lost loved ones to cancer, including his business manager, an ex-girlfriend and his sister-in-law, which inspired “Wrecked.”
Imagine Dragons — which includes guitarist Wayne Sermon, drummer Daniel Platzman and bassist Ben McKee — have always evolved their sound, but this, their fifth studio album, is a quite radical step. The big arenaready sounds of “Believer” and “Radioactive” earlier in their career have given way to murkier, smaller songs with electronic flourishes.
For “Mercury — Act 1,” the Dragons leaned on superstar producer Rick Rubin, who urged the band to go deeper into the darkness and not worry if what they found would alienate fans.
For all its anguish, “Mercury — Act 1” ends with two upbeat songs, the tropical-tinged “No Time for Toxic People” and the Hawaiian-flavored “One Day,” with the hopeful lyric: “I know that one day/ I’ll be that thing that makes you happy.” It evokes perfect waves and sun through the clouds.
“This record deals with a lot of searching and loneliness, struggling with the finite state of reality. However, I really wanted it to end on a celebratory note. Setting the foundation for a more steady and stable future,” said Reynolds.
Iron Maiden is not a band for those with short attention spans.
Since blasting out of England in the late ’70s in what would become known as the new wave of
British metal, Iron Maiden has never been one to give record companies the kind of three-minute anthems they craved.
Instead, they wrote and played (and played some more) until they were good and satisfied, and the result was often an epic track of 8 to 10 minutes or more, completely exploring a topic or idea until no stone was left unturned.
That is particularly the case on their 17th studio album, “Senjutsu,” which translates from Japanese as “strategy and tactics.” It deals with Iron Maiden’s obsession with war and battle, from the title track to “Darkest Hour,” an ode to Winston Churchill’s perseverance during World War II.
The album’s 10 tracks average eight minutes apiece, and the final three last for a combined 34 minutes.
Give singer Bruce Dickinson and Co. props for sticking to their musical guns and writing a song to be as long as it needs to be.
The guitar trio of Dave Murray, Janick Gers and Adrian Smith bring an unparalleled level of firepower to each track, and the duo of bassist Steve Harris and drummer Nicko McBrain has long been among the best in metal.