Evolve

Ok, this album is where most of the goodwill for Imagine Dragons dissapeared from the general public.

While the previous albums weren't quite all that great, I could still see the potential in them. 'Smoke + Mirrors' in particular sounded like they were actually trying to do something other than generic arena rock made to be played in commercials. The lush production and the lively performances made me tolerate that album and I was ready for them to evolve upon that sound.

Well I would be ready if I knew that this wasn't the album they released right afterwards. Simply put, 'Evolve' doesn't evolve (heh) the Imagine Dragons sound in any way. Infact, it simply doubles down on the boring and stale arena rock aspects of the previous albums and makes more music which sounds like its only purpose for it would be to be played in commercials. Just judging off the singles alone this is already a huge downgrade from the previous album, but the other songs on here really aren't any better.

I don't think I really need to talk about why the singles suck. I'm sure you've heard them all with how annoying, horrible and overplayed they are. But what if I told you that the singles aren't even nearly the worst songs on here? Yeah, I'm sure that you've got a hard time imagining something worse than 'Thunder' but my god I was begging for the sweet release of 'Thunder' after hearing 'Yesterday' 

WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT SONG? HONESTLY.  IT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE THE WORST IMAGINE DRAGONS SONG I HAVE EVER HEARD. It is so annoying the production is so terrible. HOLY SHIT IT HAD ME IN THE PERPETUAL STATE OF DISGUST AS I WAS LISTENING.

Right about the production, most of these songs sound like utter shit just purely looking at it from a technical standpoint. It feels like every single instrument is trying to carve out it's space in the mix without any regard for other instruments that are in the song, which results in most songs soinding horribly grating cause of how horribly everything clashes together. Like the song I've mentioned, "Yesterday". The chorus has horribly bitcrushed claps, loud distorted drums, cheap and tacky electric guitars, claps and distorted screamed vocals. IT'S A FUCKING ASSAULT TO THE SENSES AND IT GOES ON THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SONG. 'Yesterday' might be the worst offender on that front, but honestly it's an issue that runs throughout the entire album, and it's more noticeable if you listen to any song aside from the singles.

Really the only song that I thought was ok is 'Mouth Of The River'. I thought that the drumming on that song was more interesting than the rest of the album, the verses I thought weren't mixed that horribly and the chorus was a bit annoying but honestly this song really wasn't that terrible. It's definetly the only salvageable song on the album. That's all there is to say really.

This is a huge downgrade from their previous efforts, yet it's also by far their most successful record, so clearly they found a winning formula with this one. I can't say I'd want to ever subject myself to this album ever again though, impossible as it may seem having heard the singles off of this thing about a 100 times against my will.