Album Review: Anberlin- Vital

Anberlin is a member of an exclusive club of bands in which a band’s fans are divisively split as to what is that band’s best record. Some argue that the band’s sophomore effort Never Take Friendship Personal has an energy that none of the other albums could match, while others say that Anberlin’s standout tracks come from 2007’s Cities, and still other say that the moody, socially-conscious Dark Is the Way, Light is a Place was the band’s magnum opus. But the band’s newest album, Vital, is the album that settles that argument. Vital is the definitive Anberlin album, and the band wants every single one of their fans to know it.

In fact, they make that fact abundantly clear by the first chorus of album opener “Self-Starter.” Drummer Nate Young puts in the best performance of his career as his pounding drums pace the most aggressive track Anberlin has released since “Godspeed”. The track, which features a few seconds of an atmospheric piano intro, before blasting full-boar into a heavy alt-rock drum crash, also features vocalist Stephen Christian’s best vocal performance to date, as he shows his full versatility. Christian is able to do it all in this song; the pre-chorus hook, the soaring chorus vocals, and even the screams not heard since Never Take Friendship Personal.

“Little Tyrants” cannot be described better in any other way except this one simple phrase: the song absolutely shreds. From the best guitar solo of Anberlin’s career supplied by Christian McAlhaney and Joey Milligan, to the massive drum fills to the gang vocals inspired bridge, everything about this track screams massive rock song.

“Massive” is actually a word that can be used to describe a lot of the album’s sound, as producer Aaron Sprinkle is known for providing lush soundscapes and layered production to the albums he works on (among them the aforementioned Cities), and Vital is no different in that regard. The electronic elements, synthesizers, and vocal filtering all aide in giving Anberlin the largest scale record in their career. 

But the band itself has a lot to do with that scope widening as well. Anberlin has never been a band to hide their influences. They have an unabashed love of new wave genre, having covered Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence” and New Order’s “True Faith” over the course of their career, and that influence becomes ever-present in the electronic “Intentions.” It’s as if the band took the best elements of New Wave music, and combined them with their uniquely “Anberlin” sound, creating “Intentions” out of the dust.

By the way, did I mention that Nate Young puts in his best performance of his career yet? (Spoiler alert: I did.) His drumming deserves to be talked about over and over again. Whether it is the Mute Math-esque drum solo outro in “Other Side,” or the electronic-tinged blasts at the beginning of “Modern Age,” or the constantly building drums of “Type Three”, he is always making his presence felt in songs that are otherwise heavily vocally driven.

Speaking of “Type Three,” the mostly acoustic track that the band debuted on their recent acoustic tour, it is one of the most bitter sounding anthems Anberlin has ever written, as Christian sings, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you baby, take all the hands that need you lately,” over a chorus of ominous sounding background vocals. The track crescendos into acoustic guitar solo, which leads perfectly into a beautifully crafted bridge.

“God, Drugs, And Sex” carries on Anberlin’s tradition for “epic” album closers. The haunting 6-minute-plus track has . The chanted finale to the song, “Let go, let go of me,” is a mesmerizing conclusion to the album. The other highlight of the song comes from Christie DuPree (the younger sister of the DuPree sisters from the pop-rock band Eisley) lending her angelic voice to a call and response verse between her and Christian. Her talents were also used on the intro of Self-Starter, and her voice just provides the perfect contrast to Christians own in this particular song. In a perfect world, Anberlin would close out all future live sets with an encore of “fin.” from Cities, “Dance Dance, Christa Paffgen” from Never Take Friendship Personal and this song. 

Lyrically, Christian has always been able to balance relatibility with a sort of social consciousness that is unprecedented in the current music scene. His ability to weave commentary of the “Arab Spring” into a song like Someone Anyone is exceptional. “Someone someone tell me what we’re fighting for, anyone anyone can start a war, no one can walk away truly alive,” he writes in what he has called a commentary about the uprisings, but the lyrics could really be describing the destructive power of any conflict, global or domestic. He also comments on the human condition several times in the album, in what seems to be a common theme. In the album’s penultimate track he sings, “Don’t we all want to belong, don’t we all write our own song, let our silence brave tonight. Don’t we all learn right from wrong, and don’t we all want to be loved, let our silence brave tonight.” This questioning of the connectivity of human experience is what makes Christian one of the best lyricists in the game.

Bottom Line: I’m going to put this in the simplest terms ever so that any Anberlin fan can understand it: Vital is the best album that Anberlin has ever released. Yes, I know that Anberlin has released some great albums, and some may even have better songs than Vital, (“fin.” comes to mind) but no Anberlin album has yet combined the consistency and musicianship that Vital combines. Many questioned whether the band could ever write an album as good as Cities, of Never Take Friendship Personal, or (Insert Anberlin album name here). Well, Anberlin has answered that question with a definite “Absolutely.” The question is how do they go up from here?

Recommended if You Rock: Relient K’s Forget and Not Slow Down, Motion City Soundtrack’s My Dinosaur Life, The Wonder Year’s Suburbia, I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing (My Albums Of The Year for the past three years)