Our 4 reviews of Aiden‘s recording output have generated more than 10,500 views. That’s among the highest for any band we’ve ever covered. Believe it or not our now infamous review of the band’s first Victory-released album isn’t actually the most read. That ‘honour’ belongs to the EP. But anyway, PT and Aiden have a long and not particularly pleasant history. Their fans hate me even more – I received death threats after one review and I didn’t even write it! Nevertheless, I’m always one for a challenge and even though you can count the number of positives I’ve ever said about the band on one hand, I kind of relished the opportunity to review ‘Knives’. I half expected the usual, childish, cookie-cutter faux goth pish, but wait…this actually isn’t that bad.
Let’s get one thing straight – this style sounds AFI-lite and still has a few faults. Lyrically it’s still very trite and the band haven’t moved away from some pretty cringeworthy stuff. Calling Jesus a ‘cunt’ during ‘Crusifiction’ is both a high point and a low point. Y’see, ‘Knives’ is a very, very dark album. WiL attempts to write an album that’s very anti-religion and anti-God. There’s no holding back at all and that’s admirable; it’s just the way in which he puts his views across are very childish. It’s not going to convince anyone over the age of 14 to believe what he’s saying.
That said, some of the songs here are arguably the best the band have ever written. ‘Killing Machine’ is great. The machine-gun drumming and the punk guitars provide a totally different side to the band. They’ve lopped off the poppy production and darkened things up. And when it works, it works very well. ‘King On Holiday’ is brilliant. If you told people the song was written by someone else a lot of the punk purists would lap it up. Of course the band chuck in stupid, pointless moments too – ‘Portrait’ is totally irrelevant, while I really didn’t enjoy ‘The Asylum’.
‘Knives’ is a nice surprise. It may well convince a few people Aiden aren’t as bad as the haters would have them believe…