Panic! At The Disco, Brendon Urie is back with album no.7; Viva Las Vengeance. It’s historically been quite hard to predict what you’re going to get from Panic! when a new album is on the horizon, given the way that they’ve swung from emo, to baroque folk, to theatrical pop-rock over the years writes Izzy Morris.
While the project has massively changed since their debut A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, one thing has not changed: Brendon’s powerful and impressive vocals. This rock opera is no different,
seeing the star soar to incredible vocal extremes in a dramatic and maximalist album filled to the brim with energy. However, much like a child on a sugar-high, this overbearing album is not an easy listen. At best, it’s a formulaic-Adam-Lambert-impersonation, at worst it’s an overachieving theatre kid screaming for 43 minutes and 47 seconds.
"...interesting instrumentation and progressions thwarted by the laboured one-liners and corny messaging."
The album starts off with the title track, a relative high point. Viva Las Vengeance is about the burnout following stardom. It’s full of life with its punchy riffs, and its catchy refrain of ‘shut up and go to bed’ is, paradoxically, energising and fun. The opening track makes good use of a choir of voices to echo Urie’s theatrical disillusionment, in the same vein as classics like Beauty School Dropout from Grease, the musical. There’s something here reminiscent of old Panic! too, with theatrical flamboyance similar to some of my personal favourites on Vices and Virtues, with musical light and shade in the track and a desperate cry about going nowhere, leading into a lovely slowed down stillness before bursting back into the lively chorus. The track is fun, but foreshadows the album’s biggest weakness in its final note; Urie’s screeching, almost strained crescendo. It’s almost funny that in the single’s accompanying music video, the singer appears out of breath and in pain, battered from the anthropomorphised instruments onstage attacking him. While it’s impressive that he can reach those heights, it sometimes feels like showboating rather than necessary, or indeed, listener friendly. I can’t help but wonder how healthy that style of vocalisation can be for him, and how sustainable these songs will be on tour.
Brendan is very clearly influenced by 60s and 70s rock on this album, most apparent on Something
About Maggie, which somehow combines Beatles-esque whimsy with an odd attempt at replicating Freddie-Mercury-theatrics. The two styles are clumsily interwoven, making for quite an uncomfortable listen. Add in some lyrics that could be perceived to as trivializing self-harm, and you
get a shudder-inducing three minutes, easily my least favorite on the album.
Upon my first listen, I had to take a moment to decompress after hearing the ‘If you give a listen / you sweet little kitten’. After throwing up in my mouth slightly, the second-hand embarrassment continued to develop through the countless repeated hooks on the album. In the oddly patriotic Star Spangled Banner, Urie repeats the phrase ‘home of the freaks’, in a feeble attempt to recapture the fierce teen spirit that has left Panic behind. Say It Louder’s hook panders so shamelessly to its audience, souring what is otherwise a fun and catchy track and converting it into the audio equivalent of a substanceless Twitter thread. The album is undoubtedly held back by clichés and cringe'; even in its title, that same forced edginess looms over, fruitlessly warning prospective listeners of the ruined tracks that lie inside, their interesting instrumentation and progressions thwarted by the laboured one-liners and corny messaging.
While an overwhelming majority of tracks on the record are upbeat and energetic, Don’t Let the Light Go Out is an emotional ballad about losing someone close. Here Urie, successfully uses light and shade imagery, perhaps with the exception of a strained chorus about ‘heavy machinery’: seemingly a confusing and forced metaphor about substance abuse. There are some really nice moments in this track though, which is probably something to do with the fact that it’s more dialed back and simple against some of Viva Las Vengeance’s chaos. His lower register is enjoyable and smooth, proving that he doesn’t always have to be slapping his listeners in the face with his impressive upper range. The guitars in this one also more successfully nod to the classic rock influences that he’s going for, while still retaining a Broadway- esque quality. If this truly was a staged rock opera, I think this would have the potential to offer an emotionally resonant moment.
In one of Panic!’s fan-favourite tracks, The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press
Coverage, they ‘swear to shake it up, if you swear to listen’. Regardless of the musical musings being
chased, charismatic lyricism, impressive vocals and experimental instrumentation has led the project
to success. It’s clear the quality produced by this previously winning formula is beginning to wane.
The problem doesn’t necessarily seem to lie with the production, although the incessant gimmicks
thrown in absolutely cheapen the record, but rather in the lyrical and vocal content. It feels like Urie
is trying to upstage the production rather than work with it. I wasn’t overly impressed with Pray for The Wicked, and had High Hopes that maybe Urie could bounce back, but it’s reasonably clear that the Golden Days might be over for the emo golden boy.
Izzy Morris
Edited by: Caradoc Gayer
In article and cover images courtesy of Panic! At The Disco via Facebook. In article video courtesy of YouTube.
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