(Source: Chris Daughtry Instagram Stories)

Three Days Grace – One-X

My original review of Three Days Grace’s sophomore album, 2006’s One-X, talked about the “circle of life,” and how you’ll get into something, but forget about it after awhile, only to discover it again later on down the line. Sometimes you end up really loving it again, or the first time, because it hits you a different way, regardless of how many years later. I originally listened to that album around 2013 / 2014, somewhere around there, because my friend Jake was a big fan of the band. We had just met on a Blood On The Dance Floor hate page that I managed at the time on Facebook, but I introduced him to Fall Out Boy (at least indirectly, anyway; I posted about them all the time on there, but he messaged me one day to tell me that he picked up a copy of 2007’s Infinity On High, and the rest was history), so it was only fair for him to introduce me to his favorite band. I remember really liking that album at the time, but I wasn’t familiar with 00s hard-rock. I was always relatively bored with that era of hard-rock, because it all sounded the same. I’ve since gotten into some of it, especially recently, and yeah, a lot of it does sound the same, but it’s not as bad as I remember. I’ve already talked about a few albums, and they’ve been pretty solid, but I wanted to go back to One-X. This was the first album in the 00s hard-rock scene that I listened to, and I’ve been wanting to hear it again for a long time, just to see if I could enjoy it more now than I did back then. I’ve gone back to it a few times over the years, but it hasn’t quite stuck with me, so I’ve been wanting to give it another listen, just to see if maybe the record finally sticks.

I’ve been giving it a handful of listens throughout the last couple of weeks, and I would say that I enjoy this album quite a lot, even after all of these years. Now that I’m a decade older from when I first heard it, I’ve gotten into a lot of other kinds of music, so I’ve been able to expand my tastes a lot more. There are a lot of things to appreciate about this record, especially almost 20 years later. Vocalist Adam Gontier (who left the band for a long time, and is back in the band, but as a second vocalist, so I don’t know how that works, but that’s cool, I suppose) is the star of this record. Unlike Daughtry’s self-titled debut from the same year, Gontier doesn’t totally carry the record. A lot of bands in this vein have great vocalists that carry the album, because the instrumentation isn’t all that great, but the rhythm section is great, too. There are some great riffs, hooks, and melodies that run through this song. Even the album opener, “It’s All Over,” is an utterly killer tune. It’s got one hell of a hook, but there are a lot of other songs I really like here, such as “Pain,” “Animal I Have Become,” “Riot,” and even the slower “Never Too Late,” which is a ballad-ish song, but it works well. It gives Gontier the chance to show his vocal prowess, and he is the best part of this album, hands down. That’s not to say the rest of the band isn’t good, because they are, but I would be lying if I said that Gontier wasn’t the best part here. I think most fans can admit that, too, because he is one of the best vocalists of this scene (especially in that era). I’ll admit that this record isn’t super unique, musically speaking, but it’s a case of a record being really and emotionally hard-hitting.