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Lies For The Liars | The Used
Reprise | 22nd May

Review by Tom Fairman

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Sounds like … masturbation

In my heady days as a young punk-rocker in the obligatory shitty band, my bandmates and I would often indulge a joke together – the “nu-emo-breakdown”. You know how it goes – the songs pacing along, all concentrated teenage angst, and then bam, it’s bridge time kids. The drumbeat is chopped in half, the guitars burst their bounds, a violin or some string arrangement comes out of fucking nowhere, and before you know it, you’re screaming your heart out at the crescendo of the music and accordingly your emotional investment. Game, Set, Match.

The Used’s new album makes clever use of this cunning emotional technique on tracks 1 through to 11 (for those playing along at home, ‘Earthquake’ employs it at precisely 0:36). It’s ashamedly easy to get caught up, similar to lingering a little too long on a Today/Tonight report. And the usual gothic themes are there – death, weakness (‘The Bird & The Worm’), death, religious indifference (‘The Ripper’), death, and of course, don’t forget the triumphant, acoustic-love-ballad sometime around track 9 (‘Find A Way’).

This music is designed to elicit emotional catharsis. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the manner of The Used is that it’s self-indulgent, repetitive and superficially addictive– a bit like masturbation. Sure, you’re blown away by the sheer pleasure of the mastering. You think you’re convinced of its sincerity after wave upon wave of intense sound, accentuated by Bert’s lead vocal screaming. But, there is no subtlety in the work, no hint of intelligence that even My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade demonstrated, and there is no further reward on repeated listens. The depth and sincerity hinted at by the lyrical content and album art, upon closer inspection, is just like mascara - the shadows merely being painted on.

3 out of 10