It's a pretty good record. A lot better than what I was hoping for, to be fair. While I loved a select few songs from Out of the Vein (namely "Blinded" and a few others), overall it was kind of a stale sounding record on the whole. It seemed like they were just going through the motions for a lot of that one. This one I would say is a definite step up, both in the music and the quality of the hooks. The lyrics aren't quite up to par with past efforts on the whole. Jenkins still has moments of brilliance, but there are certainly more lyrical clunkers than on any other album.
As someone who's been known to follow the band, what "Summertown" turned into was a travesty. The whole rap intro and outros are completely unnecessary and mar what is otherwise a really strong song. "One in Ten" is really the only other notable lowpoint, but the rest of the album is pretty well done on the whole. Definitely has a fresher sound than their last one. "Don't Believe a Word" keeps its rollicking pace very nicely, though I do wish that it still had its original lyrics, as a lot of the newer lines wind up cheapening the song a little. Really though, the first half of this album is just as good as anyone could reasonably expect at this point. The second half does drag a little since a lot of the songs are based around similar acoustic chord progressions, but "Dao of St. Paul" is one of their best "deep" tracks since Blue. "Water Landing" and "About To Break" really surprised me with their quality, and of course "Bonfire" and "Sharp Knife" are also probably among the group's best songs.
