Seven albums in, Fall Out Boy remains one of rock’s unlikely mainstream success stories, progressing from cult pop-punk icons with their 2005 breakthrough singles Sugar, We're Goin Down and Dance, Dance, to overnight celebrities. And 13 years later, they occupy an inflated position at the top of their genre, the only rock band to play on December’s Jingle Ball circuit alongside names like Taylor Swift and Camila Cabello.
Yet, the idea that Fall Out Boy actually makes rock music anymore, as heard on their seventh album Mania, is debatable. From a fan’s perspective, the band that named a 2013 album called Save Rock and Roll has followed through on that promise, updating the genre for the streaming era and helping popularize the Frankenstein hybrid of stadium riffs and booming programmed drums that has become the prevailing sound of radio rock. For proof of their influence, look no further than the highest-charting rock band of 2017, Imagine Dragons, whose overstuffed hits share the same DNA as Fall Out Boy singles like Centuries and Light Em Up.
And then, there’s the opposing view, that Fall Out Boy’s music is the lowest common denominator of rock music, close enough to pop and EDM to chart in the Top 40, yet too toothless to have any real identity. And their seventh release Mania, out Friday, unintentionally makes the case that the maximalist beats-rock they helped usher into popularity needs to die. That feeling sets in one minute into the unbearable album’s opening song, Young and Menace, with a screeching EDM drop that almost begs the listener to turn back now.
Keep listening, and there aren’t many redeeming moments. Mercifully, the electronic music bombasts don’t continue into the rest of the album, with the band instead opting for Maroon 5-esque pop-rock, replacing Adam Levine’s paper-thin falsetto with frontman Patrick Stump’s tortured squeeze-toy wails. Really, the only thing separating Fall Out Boy from Maroon 5’s neutered rock jams or the EDM-lite of the Chainsmokers are the band’s aggressive guitars, a lifeline to their pop-punk past. Often, they’re employed in service of songs like Champion, that seems destined to be played in sports commercials and exercise classes for years to come. Worse are the guitar-less tracks, stripping the group’s music of any identifiable traits, as heard on the lazy trop-house attempts of single Hold Me Tight Or Don’t.
And while Fall Out Boy have always known their way around an earworm melody, lyrics have never been their strong suit, and Mania finds them failing on both fronts, with attempts at wit ranging from self-parody (“I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color” on Wilson (Expensive Mistakes)) to inane wordplay, like “Are you smelling that (expletive) / Ode de resistance” on the inexplicably-named Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea.
The band delayed Mania’s release from September until January, stating in interviews that they scrapped the album’s material and started fresh after Young and Menace and Champion fell short of the Hot 100. Yet, those four months clearly weren’t enough for the group to churn up any new hits that, from the sounds of Mania, can rival the heights of their previous releases. Save Rock And Roll, this does not.