Album Review: ‘Phantoms’ by Marianas Trench
by Daniel J. Meyer
On January 25th, 2019 Marianas Trench teased their newest album, Phantoms with a cryptic and creepy teaser video. Just over a month later on March 1st, 2019, the band released the albums to their fans, and were met with a more mixed response than they had received with their previous albums. With fans divided on how to feel about the album, the band set out on tour to once again try and prove themselves and their material. But before we get too deep in the haunted house that is this album, let’s take a look back at the roadmap that brought us here.
Background
Marianas Trench may have four members, but the band’s success is really a tribute to the efforts of their frontman Josh Ramsay. Writing all of the band’s music while also crafting the image the band tours with, he is very much the groups ringleader, and based on his upbringing, that’s no surprise at all.
Born into a musical family, Marianas Trench’s lead singer Josh Ramsay has never been a stranger to limelight. His father once owned Little Mountain Sound Studios, which ended up becoming a home to some of the 80s biggest rock acts, like Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and AC/DC. His mother, a vocal coach who recorded and toured with Leonard Cohen, and his sister works as a vocal coach and has been known to provide background vocals on every Marianas Trench album so far, as well as getting on stage with her brother when she can.
With this strong foundation, Ramsay went on to gather his bandmates together into a group called Ramsay Fiction, which was later renamed Marianas Trench. Ramsay Fiction recorded a few songs, but it wasn’t until the name and final lineup change that the band released their first EP, and were signed to 604 Records, the label begun by Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger. On October 3, 2006 the band released their debut studio album Fix Me, and exploded onto the scene. Known amongst their peers for non-stop touring, Marianas Trench broke out into the mainstream with their single “Say Anything”. Featuring a harder, more guitar driven pop punk/rock sound than their later releases, the album lyrically saw Ramsay struggling openly with his past drug addiction.
Building on the momentum they started with their first album, the band went back into the studio and released their 2009 sophomore effort: Masterpiece Theatre. A slight departure from the heavier sound and lyrics featured on Fix Me, the album featured more instrumental experimentation, adding in piano and string sections on different songs, while still not losing sight of the overall pop punk/rock sensibility that they were known for. The branching out in sound turned out to be an overall success for the band, as the album sold 5,000 during it’s first week, and peaked at number four on the Canadian Billboard charts. A critical success as well as commercial, Ramsay was praised for pushing himself vocally on the album, and the band was applauded for their lyrics, and their expanded, more theatrical sound. The band went on to win Pop Recording of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards, and the album was certified gold by the end of 2009, platinum by the end of the next year, and is now double platinum as of 2018.
After months of fan speculation about what the band’s next move would be, Ramsay announced that their next album was in the works, and would be called Ever After. Acting again as a musical departure for the band, it saw the band experimenting even further, trying out different electronic elements, and flirting with a more modern-pop sound. That’s not to say they lost their rock edge, because they didn’t. Tracks like the “Stutter” showed the band’s willingness to try out new sounds while still maintaining the excitement and energy they brought to their previous releases. The album was met with wide praise by both fans and critics, and was even nominated for Pop Album of the Year at the 2012 Juno Awards (Canada’s equivalent to the U.S.’s Grammy Awards). It’s success lead to (in a similar fashion to it’s predecessor), being certified Gold, Platinum and Double Platinum in a similar timeframe. Also worth noting during this timeframe was Ramsay’s involvement with the Carly Rae Jepsen tack “Call Me Maybe”. Originally a folk song, Ramsay was brought in to help give the track a more pop-leaning sound, and co-wrote and produced the final version of the song, which went on to blow up and become an international success.
On top of constant touring, the next few years saw Marianas trench release two EPs. The first, entitled Face the Music, a lyric from their previous album, featured two songs from it, as well as two new acoustic versions. The EP served as the band’s first official U.S. release, and was meant as an introduction to the band for an international audience. After finishing touring with Ever After, the band released single “Pop 101”. It was soon followed up by single “Here’s to the Zeroes”, and both were meant to be the beginning of the new album cycle. However, the band would later announce that both tracks were being cut from the album as they no longer fit the tone and sound of the album, but would be included on an EP titled Something Old / Something New along with remastered versions of two of the very first tracks the band released on their self-titled EP.
And then all at once, everything shifted. Ramsay found himself hospitalized with pancreatitis, and was out of the game for a while. Left alone to stress of having to follow up the success of not only the band’s biggest album to date, but the commercial success of “Call Me Maybe”, he found himself in an incredibly dark place, but was able to pull himself out through working on what would later become the band’s fourth album, Astoria.
The album, released in October of 2015, proved to be again a shift in sound for the band, but also their most grand undertaking to date. Highly influenced by 80s adventure movies and the music of the time, the album features a wide variety of sounds, featuring 5 orchestral transition pieces, an and is also their longest album to date coming in at 17 tracks. One stand-out track, “Who Do You Love” features incredible harmonies, and a powerful Toto-esque drum beat, ended up becoming the band’s most successful single at adult contemporary radio, and was later certified platinum. The album proved to be wildly popular with fans, being certified gold only a few months after it’s release. Astoria saw the band achieve a higher level of recognition in the U.S. than they had previously achieved. Headlining multiple U.S. tours in support of the album, the band was set to make this album cycle on of their strongest.
Closing the album with the cinematic “End of an Era”, Marianas trench set an incredibly high bar for what they were capable of musically. Known for ending their album’s large, theatrical cuts that mixed lines from the album’s previous tracks in a collage-like fashion, “End of An Era” took the tradition a step farther, and tied the band’s entire career up to that point together in one track. Featuring musical elements from every album released so far, the song is their longest release to date, coming in at 7 minutes and 40 seconds long, but the time is well spent. The power, intensity and raw emotion of the song lead many fans to think the song would be the last the band ever released.
Taking the band and their sound out of the 80s, Ramsay decided to explore songwriting towards a project set in a haunted house. “The funny thing with the whole record is I wanted it set in a haunted house — ridiculous, I know — but one haunted by the ghost of former loves and the spooky sounds that accompany that.” Using modern song-writing techniques but using more classic, organic approaches to sounds, Ramsay hoped to create an album that sounded modern, but could be made with ‘real’ instrumentation, instead of just being electronic-driven. On November 16th, 2018, the band released the first single “I Knew You When”, announcing an upcoming tour shortly afterwards. The band found themselves in a difficult position, struggling to finish recording and finalizing the album before their upcoming tour in March of 2019. The album was eventually released on March 1st, 2019, and within 24 hours of it’s release went to #1 on both the Canadian and U.S. iTunes charts, taking a spot that up to that point was held firmly by Ariana Grande’s thank u, next.
Ghosts Of An Idea
All of this being said, how does the album hold up? In short: Not bad, but ultimately disappointing. Marianas Trench has always had an incredible strength when In being able to write and develop an album around themes, whether it was Broadway, Fairy Tales, or Adventure Films, but for an album written around the idea of a haunted house, very few opportunities to have it sound like that are actually taken. This makes for an ultimately pretty disappointing, and at some points fairly bland pop album made by artists who are more than capable of more. Perhaps the greatest example of this is the song “Glimmer.”
Opening with an airy synth and light guitar notes, the song quickly transitions into “Fallout” like drums, and begins it’s predictable ballad format. The main issue here is that the song more or less just follows the template the band has used on other songs. It feels like I’ve heard this from them before, and I have. Comparing this song to their single “Fallout” from their third album is difficult to avoid, but unavoidable when the songs are this nearly the same product. At any point during “Glimmer”’s chorus it could VERY easily transition into “Fallout”’s chorus, and it would ultimately go unnoticed. This isn’t the only time the treads on familiar territory, as 9th and penultimate track “The Death Of Me” feels almost eerily familiar to the previous album’s “While We’re Young”.
That being said, treading familiar territory has been a long-running theme for Marianas Trench, as their last three albums all follow a similar template: long, ambitious opener, a handful of upbeat singles and a ballad, a stripped down center track with shaky-emotional vocals, rinse and repeat with the upbeat singles and ballad, a stripped down piano ballad, and a bombastic closer. That’s not to say that this format doesn’t serve them well, as it definitely does. The issue with Phantoms is more in that when it strives away from that format, it doesn’t offer anything truly new. Third single “Don’t Miss Me?” could very easily have been a track off of Ever After, and even the track “Wish You Were Here”, which I’m honestly very fond of could easily have been a B-Side from Astoria, sounding very similar to tracks like “This Means War” and “Yesterday”.
A Glimmer of Hope
That’s not to say that everything here is bad, though. As I previously mentioned, I’m particularly partial to the track “Wish You Were Here”, and deeper cut “Your Ghost” has a danceable guitar in the chorus that suits the band very well. These two tracks just don’t offer much of anything new. When Phantoms succeeds, it showcases Marianas Trench at their strongest, and showcases their potential and ability to really produce some great songs.
“Echoes Of You”, the third track on the album is defiantly one if it’s strongest, and honestly only one of two examples where the Haunted House theme is consciously shown. Opening with a harpsichord, and a building beat based around a creepy piano crescendo, “Echoes Of You” showcases Marianas Trench’s strengths in a way the rest of the album fails to do. With bombastic drums, an intense string section, and guitars that while more subtle aren’t ignored. The song’s strongest point though is definitely it’s bridge, where featured artist Roger Joseph Manning Jr. shines with a quiet intensity that both matches and works as an excellent foil to Ramsay’s broadway meets rock’n’roll style of delivery. The bridge is also another of the few moments on the album that truly showcases the more spooky sound fans expected from Phantoms.
Coming as no surprise though, the albums strongest track comes in the form it’s closing track, “The Killing Kind”. Maintaining it’s position as both the best track and the most heavily influenced by it’s haunted house theme, “The Killing Kind” is designed to sound as a slow descent into madness, and it truly succeeds in that. Blending strings that you can feel gradually push you into a more manic place, and daring rock and roll screams that only Josh Ramsay can pull off, the albums final moment is truly it’s finest. Running at 6 minutes and 46 seconds, it is also the albums longest track. One might easily believe that this track was given more time than the rest, as it sounds the most cohesive with the themes the album was said to be written around, but according to their recently released documentary, it was actually one of the last songs written, and was actually rushed to completion to meet a deadline in the album’s final week of recording. The shame of this, is that when only a handful of tracks truly take advantage of, or for that matter even make any effort to showcase the theme of the album, the rest of the songs end up sounding lackluster and lesser by comparison.
Where’d The Rock & Roll Go?
When all is said and done, Phantoms isn’t a bad album. It’s just a mediocre one. Created and produced by artists who have consistently proven they’re capable of more, Phantoms does have plenty to please fans, but not nearly enough to be memorable, or have any sort of real staying power in their otherwise solid discography. An easily forgettable collection of tracks that might’ve served better on an album of B-Sides, the moments that do shine through are too few, and too far between to save the work as a whole. Not awful, but not something I expect to find myself coming back to any time soon.
Rating: 1.5/5
Highlights: Only The Lonely Survive, Echoes Of You, The Killing Kind
Skip’em: Glimmer, I Knew You When, The Death Of Me
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