Senses Fail’s new album The Fire is no exception to the awesome hardcore music that they’ve produced before. The band, which originated in New Jersey usually has songs or lyrics that are dedicated to their home state. This album stays true to that. In the song “Landslide,” the singer sings “New Jersey becomes the new Atlantis, ringing in a new age of romances.” The song starts out a little bit softer than many of their previous works, but the guitars have that same tinny and aged sound that all fans have come to know and love. The same guitar chords that are used to open the song continue throughout in the background as another guitar, the bass, and the drums enter and the song really comes together.The title track, The Fire, starts off far more intense than Landslide. Low, rough guitar starts off the song as the drums slowly build in the background. Around sixteen seconds, the song explodes as the instruments all begin to play in unison. The singer enters, yelling, and the drums and guitars reach their full intensity as the song continues. There’s a break right after the first chorus that’s silent only long enough for you to take notice before the intensity comes crashing right back in. As the song begins to end, the singer screams only once, and the intensity of the instruments never dies down. There’s no gradual decline, ever. It’s just continuous power and strength for the entire song.

Irish Eyes is another one of the songs that brings back the ‘typical’ Senses Fail sound of rough guitar sounds, intense drums, and the vocalist singing his heart out. Like The Fire it starts off very intense, and a vocalist finally screams in this song. He spends most of this album singing which follows the theme of previous albums, but he finally screams like you sometimes heard in prior albums as well. I am not sure if it’s the same vocalist screaming, though, because the screaming vocals were much deeper, and they seemed much more trained than in the previous albums. Either way, I was quite impressed.

Those three songs are only a small snippet of the entire album, but the songs don’t vary much from what I’ve said above. It’s consistent with the theme; if you’re a Senses Fail fan already, than you’ll probably love this album just as much as I do. If you’re not already a fan, but you like screaming and hard guitars, check it out and this could change your mind! However, if you’re not a Senses Fail fan or a fan of the genre in general, you may not exactly be jumping for joy when you listen to it.