Attila, after thinking long and hard about what to do with their last shred of credibility, have decided to pass it around amongst themselves, wiping it on the sweaty stretches of skin between their balls and buttholes, and then plant it on a pole from the tallest tower of their douchecastle to let it wave in the air as a flag for all to see.
If the internet is a reliable barometer of public opinion, then what I’ve just said is a pretty generous statement. “Last shred?” some of you may be asking, “There was never anything to begin with.” But the great tragedy of all this, if it’s even possible to pull out such a genteel word to discuss a band happily wallowing in the lowest bracket of low culture, is that there truly was a time when Attila was good, when what they were doing was interesting.
I had to go back and listen to Rage again just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. But sure enough, what I found was a young band who had discovered an untouched niche in a genre desperately in need of innovation, planted their feet firmly and from there pressed nine solid, creative tracks to establish themselves as a band who deserved some attention. The guitar riffs were fast, fun, and daring, serving as vehicles to move the song along rather than gasps of stale air between constant breakdowns. We heard for the first time that weird, rapid-fire “rap-screaming” that Fronz does, and it was damned impressive. It marked him as a unique vocalist and gave Attila that one thing that so many bands strive for: a “signature sound.” Rage may have still been a little lacking in the lyrics department, but at least you could distinguish one song from the next, and profanity levels hovered around “angry hockey fan” rather than shooting up past “spoiled middle-schooler.” What they really had going for them was anonymity and potential. There was almost a bit of a charm to these wacky kids yelling about weed and blowjobs while the rest of their peers continued to opt for necrophilia and heartbreak. We were more than happy to be taken for a joyride in Attila’s smoked-out partymobile—hell, for all we knew the personas put forth on the album were just characters. At worst, they were being totally serious, but would naturally grow out of it and continue to evolve musically while applying their tongue-in-cheek attitudes to fresh lyrical territory.
But instead of that, we got a resounding reply of, “Hey, you liked the last album? Well, we’re going to do it again, BUT THIS TIME WITHOUT ALL THE INTERESTING STUFF! FUCK YEAH DAWG! BITCH-SLAP A BITCH, BITCH!”
Outlawed wasn’t a bad album, but it should definitely have been a bigger warning sign to fans. There were a few stand-out tracks, but for the most part it was just a step in the wrong direction, with Fronz somehow narrowing his already wafer-thin cache of lyrical subject matter, and the compositions slowly straying away from the realm of the musical and wandering like brainless insects toward the tacky neon lights of Breakdown City.
Then, with the arrival of About that Life, we finally realize that Attila aren’t going to budge from their self-proclaimed “partycore” territory, but have instead chosen to kick up their feet on their Natty-stained couches and start shitting out songs in to a bedpan.
I haven’t listened to the entire album and I’m not going to—I have more self-respect than that. I’ve already heard all of the singles and two other tracks, which have been more than enough to cause the permanent palm-print now covering my face. The best the album is good for is the occasional laugh, but not at anything intentionally humorous. Take the unbearably annoying “Callout,” in which Fronz tries desperately to stake a claim as a big dick-swingin’ badass by dropping some hateful rhymes written by alcoholic Dr. Seuss to “call out” like three people that almost everybody else already got tired of hating. He mentions Jonny Craig of Dance Gavin Dance and the Macbook scandal, Ronnie Radke of Falling in Reverse just generally being a dickhead (I had to look him up because I had no idea who he was, and now I can’t stop reading about him), and the Westboro Baptist fucking Church hating gay people. He doesn’t seem to understand that calling someone out means pointing out a flaw that nobody else has the balls to mention, not yelling out things about someone that a significant portion of the rest of the world has already discussed at length to the point that they are all now exhausted and quietly taking hate naps.
Waiting until public opinion is on your side to “get real” does not make you a tough guy, it makes you a coward. This also comes from the guy who, in an interview with themerchdude only a year ago, said that he thinks bands hating on other bands is “absolutely fucking stupid. Grow the fuck up haha, we’re all on tour enduring the same struggles and missing our friends and family just the same, no reason for hate. Luckily, I rarely see this happen, but I would definitely be pissed. If you’re a hater, you’re obviously just jealous.” I guess poor Fronzie is just jealous he isn’t as much of a giant cock as Ronnie Radke yet.
Fronz genuinely thinks he’s being provocative though, as evidenced by interlude “Leave a Message” in which some guy named Mike musters his strongest acting skills and leaves a fake voicemail chewing out the Fronz, saying, “You said you were going to mellow out on this record but all you’re doing is getting more offensive. I can’t fucking believe it.”
Oh, shit, did he say more offensive? Better turn this next song up loud enough so mom can hear it from my room—that’ll teach her for not letting me get gauges!
Mike, still gunning for the Best Supporting Actor Award, whines that he’s going to “lose all [his] distributors and backing” because the Fronz is just too much of a loose fucking cannon dropping mad hate all over the place, yo. Seriously, how deep in the picket-fenced womb of suburbia, sauntering about with their longboards and 99-cent iced teas, do your fans have to be to believe that swearing and talking about genitals is being offensive, or that trying to be offensive is the same thing as being edgy?
But the album itself is not the worst thing ever. No, that honor gets handed to the new “music video” for their single “Break Shit.”
First of all, it doesn’t even qualify as a music video—it’s another one of those “lyric videos” that seemingly every band in alternative music has been paying their brother who kind of knows how to use Apple Motion to halfheartedly knock out so they don’t have to do an actual music video. And the “Break Shit” video can’t even do that right, because within the first ten seconds there’s a typo.
The video opens with a POV shot of the crotch of some dude, quickly panning up to reveal a sexy temptress in lingerie, because as we all know Attila loves fuckin’ bitches and objectifyin’ ladies. She starts her boring lap dance, and then just keeps going. About 30 seconds in, you realize that this is it. This is the whole video. It’s a montage of three women, presumably porn actresses or actual strippers, giving a lap dance. That’s it. They couldn’t even find three whole porn actresses who weren’t ashamed to appear in an Attila video either, because one’s face is blurred out the whole time.
I may have appeared in Jizz Jamboree 7, but I have my dignity.
So what you’re left with is porn set to a terrible song. There are no good ways to watch this video. You can’t listen to the song, because the song sounds like a fountain of diarrhea. And you can’t mute the song and just watch the porn, because the lap dances keep getting interrupted by shining eloquence like “BREAK SHIT / FUCK THE LAW / FUCK IT” in shaky typography.
Absolutely none of it goes together. If this strip club exists, that only plays bad angry metalcore, then every one of its patrons should get an automatic extra point on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. Honestly, I can think of nothing less sexy than a song about having anger problems, and I certainly don’t want to think about somebody snapping and punching people in the face while watching some poor girl grind on a motionless, faceless man. At one point in the song Fronz screams “Punch that bitch!” and I had no way of knowing if it was directed at the stripper or not, so the only thing I could do was immediately fear for her and her friends’ safety.
If you haven’t had enough things to be sick about already, just remember that the man who wrote this song and probably suggested the idea for the video is a father. It seemed a pretty inevitable outcome from the sort of life he espoused to having in every song he’s ever written, but less surprising is the fact that he doesn’t seem to have taken to full-time fathering, or at least stop putting his penis in other vaginas. Now, he may never win the title of father of the year, but at least this fine young man has decided to be an example and prove he’s responsible by tattooing his son’s name on his collarbone.
“This counts as child support, right?”
What an over-inflated doucheballoon. At least we know now he’ll never be able to win a custody battle.
Humongulous 