Love them or hate them, there was a time when Good Charlotte made punk the coolest thing once again. That was back in 2002, with one of my top 20 pop punk albums of the decade ‘Young and Hopeless’. The follow up came in 2004, and it’s what I’ll be reviewing today.
‘The Chronicles of Life and Death’ is one of those albums you will probably either love or hate. Though, if you hate it, it is probably because you hate Good Charlotte for selling out. I don’t review personal lives, thats what I do when I gossip about music with my friends, not make serious reviews of it on my website.
The album is a rock opera of sorts about several things. One being not giving a f*ck what critics say, and the others being other typical punk and dare I say emo themes. It opens with the extremely catchy title track. Though some will say the songs that stick at first are barely worth listening to, this song has good lyrics, and is an easy listen, with a nice guitar solo.
Good Charlotte is all about easy listening pop punk. That is the reason so many people hate them. Sometimes, though, there is nothing better then a catchy song where the lyrics aren’t just lazily put together words about how your girlfriend left you.
Good Charlotte proves they will take a risk. Funky, violin, and chord progressions in “I Just Wanna Live” makes it worth many listens, plus, Justin Timberlake type vocals in part, an extremely catchy tune, and decent lyrics. It is one of those songs many people will want to hate but can’t bring themselves to stop listening.
Melodicity, though lacking on a few songs come up and kicks you in the ass on two tracks in particular, “Ghost of You”, and “Predictable”. Unfortunatley after those two tracks the album gets a bit dull. Songs like “The Truth” , which puts you to sleep with sappy lyrics and a lack of melodic risks we saw in the first half of the album. Or “Mountain” which is good instrumentally, but lacks anything worth more then one listen.
Lyrically, Good Charlotte isn’t the best, but I can’t call them bad. They have some sappy songs, but nothing that makes me want to vomit (other then maybe “The Truth”), at least on this album. The second half of the album does come out strong with “In This World (Murder)”, though. It expresses a great disgust in murder and pointless loss of life.
High Point: Predictable
Low Point: The Truth
Overall Rating: 6/10
