Trapt, Only Through The Pain

Very rarely do you run a cross an album title that perfectly sums up your feelings about the music. The latest from Trapt, Only Through The Pain, though, fits the bill. The only way I was able to finish this review was to persevere though the pain. And let me tell you, there was lots and lots of pain involved in this process.

Pain is the band’s third album and follows in the post-grunge, alt-rock, pop-metal vein of their previous releases. If that Wikipedia-inspired description doesn’t help, the band plays a bunch of “sensitive/sad bastard” pop songs. The album consists of 11 songs, with all but one sounding exactly the same. Trapt follows a formula that seems to have been created in a boardroom.

The repetitive lyrical content is singer Chris Brown lamenting that he is sad because his lady is gone or dead or something. Every songs seem geared towards 12-year-olds who are trying to show how sensitive they are. The rhyming pattern in the “Wastleand” is so laughable you’d think the band wrote it in junior high. Generic guitar riffs accompany the words in a way that lulls you into a deep sleep, only to be woken by Brown’s off-key singing.

As the album progresses, the numbers on the CD player slowly tick by in much the same way that the days on a calendar do for a prisoner. Then out of nowhere comes “Cover Up,” the proverbial needle in the crappy haystack. The song breaks from its ball-less predecessors and shows some anger. Instead off crying over some girl, again, she is getting called out for being two-faced. Wait, is that the lone guitar solo on the album I hear? Yes, it is, and you wonder why they didn’t do more. Sadly, the song seems to be the lone exception to the rule.

There was a period of time that the sensitive man was in vogue. If that guy was ever trapped in an iceberg and needed to be slowly eased back into modern society, then Trapt’s collection of whiny, crybaby, pussy songs would make him feel right at home.