Why Nobody Can Agree What The Cruel Intentions Sound Like Anymore?
Read a handful of reviews for the newly released The Cruel Intentions album All Hail Hypocrisy, and you’ll notice something rather odd. Nearly every critic agrees the record is excellent, but almost none of them agree on what it actually sounds like.
That disagreement might be the most interesting thing about the album.
Usually critics settle into one comparison and stay there for the rest of the review, calling a band the next “legacy – insert name band”, and leaving it just at that. In the case of The Cruel Intentions the reviews scatter in every single direction, with different writers hearing many different bands. And you know what, the list is very long!
Mötley Crüe, Backyard Babies, Hardcore Superstar, Cheap Trick, Ramones, Sweet, Pretty Boy Floyd, Dokken, Dropkick Murphys, LA Guns, Faster Pussycat, Hanoi Rocks, Shotgun Messiah, Vain, The Cure, D.A.D., Pretty Boy Floyd, Trench Dogs and even The Cure , all within the same batch of reviews for the same record.
On the other hand, some critics latch onto the album’s punk energy, pointing to the gang vocals and shout-along choruses on songs like Triple Threat, Pseudo Genius and the title track. Other writers hear something rooted more firmly in classic Sunset Strip sleaze, comparing the guitar work and swaggering choruses to Pretty Boy Floyd or LA Guns. A third group keeps circling back to the band’s Scandinavian roots, hearing an evolution of that sound rather than a repeat of it, which feels notable given how closely The Cruel Intentions have been tied to that scene in the past. Then there’s a whole camp of reviewers who barely mention sleaze at all and instead talk mostly about the songwriting itself, drawing lines to Cheap Trick or Dokken because the hooks and arrangements have gotten so much stronger.
Even individual songs can’t settle the argument in some occasions. The album’s softest song Wasteland gets praised by everyone, but for completely different reasons, since some hear an emotional ballad while others hear acoustic rock touched by D.A.D. or The Cure. The title track splits opinion even further, landing anywhere from bubblegum glam to punk to an unexpected nod toward Trench Dogs, though everyone seems to agree it has one of the album’s strongest hooks regardless of what they call it.
It’s only fair to say that even in our Junkyard Reaction videos on YouTube, we said that Wasteland had some Oasis vibes, while speaking of Triple Threat we even managed to dig out some metal-core moments, calling it simply – GLAMCORE?!
And don’t get all of this wrong – doing band comparisons in reviews is a pretty normal thing.
Now, the simplest explanation to all of this would be that critics just hear things differently, and that’s probably true to some degree. But there’s a more interesting read here too. The Cruel Intentions seem to have reached a point where their influences no longer add up to one clean answer, which almost never happens with bands that lean on nostalgia, since those groups tend to invite the same comparison over and over because they never stray from one established formula.
In opposite, All Hail Hypocrisy carries the attitude of sleaze rock, the urgency of punk and the hooks of melodic rock but without ever settling into a complete copy of any single band that inspired it. And believe us, many of the similar bands do this a lot. Ironically, the more reviewers try to explain what The Cruel Intentions sound like, the more they prove that the band has actually developed an identity of its own.
After three albums in their discography, perhaps the best description of All Hail Hypocrisy is also the simplest one:
It just sounds like The Cruel Intentions, and that’s it!
Author’s Note
Before you start asking what this is all about, here’s an explanation. I generally love reading what other people think about an album, song or band that I consider valuable and that I personally rate highly. That’s the case with The Cruel Intentions and their album All Hail Hypocrisy, which I also consider one of the best rock releases of this year. After going through a large number of reviews, it simply occurred to me, once I started noticing a pattern, to dig a bit deeper into the topic. In the end you can look at this as an analysis of an analysis, or a review of reviews. All of this is done with the best intention of promoting the band and without any intention of offending anyone, which I hope hasn’t happened here. There will be more of this on Junkyard, so until next time, cheers!
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Sources: Musikknyheter, Norway Rock Magazine, Dystopia, Maximum Volume Music, Abysmal Hymns, Rate Your Music
