It’s a Hit

From January 3 to April 18, the Billboard Modern Rock Top 40
has averaged 2.07 new entries per week. Even by contemporary chart
standards, with a Top 10 that basically stays the same every
godforsaken week, this is incredibly sluggish. So when I saw four
entries—double the average—had made the April 25 chart, it
was like Christmas in springtime for a committed pop masochist like
me.

by Hollywood Undead

(A&M/Octone)

Compression, the “squashing” of vocals and instruments into
humungous crunching sound-wash, is utilized across the pop spectrum,
but Modern Rock’s use of it is garish and constant—the
format/genre and compression go together like chain strip joints and
silicone tit jobs. Anyone who thinks that louder/bigger is
automatically better is an oaf, of course. And there are times when I,
too, am an oaf. But not for this baldly unimaginative youth-angst
grunting, which entered at number 34. Even via YouTube, the
soft-to-loud ratio of “Young” was so ridiculous it made it impossible
to hear the record as anything but a gizmo, like an obviously fake pair
of 44-double-Ds. The mask-hat combos they wore in their video, though,
made me laugh out loud.

by Red

(Essential)

As someone with almost no religious training, Christian music has
never drawn me strongly one way or the other. But in the case of this
awful hunk of light aggro, which entered at number 37, the religious
aspect at least does us the favor of adding some extra
dimension—maybe the chorus that sounds at first like the usual
teen angst (“You tear me down and then you pick me up/You take it all
and still it’s not enough/You try to tell me you can heal me/But I’m
still bleeding—you’ll be the death of me”) means something else,
too. Not that it improves anything, mind.

by All That Remains

(Prosthetic/Razor & Tie)

Metalcore is not my specialty either, so number 39 is even more of a
learning experience. Main thing learned: Man, does some of this stuff
have soggy choruses.

by Shinedown

(Atlantic)

In at 40, this song’s actual chorus goes like this: “I created the
sound of madness, wrote the book on pain/Somehow I’m still here to
explain.” What I thought I heard the first couple times I listened to
the song: “I created the sound of madness for the football
brain.” What the song reminds me of in audio fact, subject matter
or compression or screaming vocal aside: “Seventeen,” by Winger.