The good guy robs a convenience store...

Supposedly the producer of Tonight Alive's WHAT ARE YOU SO SCARED OF went out of his way to make Tonight Alive a star, which you'd think would be an indication that this band is at least good, if not legendary.  This guy produced the breakthrough albums of bands like Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World, The Starting Line......
Simply put: this band isn't close to being as good as any of those 3 I mentioned, although I'm not really into TSL and Blink 182 anymore, I consider them to be the reason pop-punk is as good as it is today, although each successive band has outdone its predecessors and it only makes sense that by now The Starting Line and Blink 182 would seem primitive in comparison.

But Tonight Alive's WHAT ARE YOU SO SCARED OF? is definitely NOT The Starting Line - and just to be clear, The Starting Line aren't music I listen to often, or even "once in a while", but I am much more likely to listen to their music with open arms sometime in the future than this album.  The band was so stoked, thinking they must be better than they realized after finding the guy who produced The Starting Line/Jimmy Eat World/Blink 182's breakthrough albums trying to worm his way into their careers.  And if he were simply producing their album, I'd be like "OK, a producer can't exclude less than iconic musicians from his body of work" [they'd be out of a job for most of their life if they did!].  But he didn't simply agree to have his name on their CD, he CALLED THEM, he OFFERED them a production job.  And I can't see why.  The guitars are muffled sounding, as if the producer were trying to hide the fact that they can't play, and the vocalist so obviously cannot switch from one note to the other without them sticking together.  There's a few occasions on the CD you can almost hear her clearing her throat so the previous note will go away.  The worst part is the songwriting - obviously trying to be "epic" & sugar-poppy, but the whole thing just seems to meander without a clear purpose or destination.

Just kinda irritating.  Especially when all these 12 year olds on Amazon are raving about how great they are & I'm always looking for pop-punk music to listen to, and seem unable to find it.  I guess pop-punk on the same par as The Starting Line and Cartel has never been an everyday thing...