Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
The inner struggle is one that bares its teeth readily in the world of art, it is almost as if the exercise of releasing the beast, of finding a way to pour oil on troubled shores, is a purifying, and therapeutic liberation of the soul, that wishing the world to burn whilst holding the only match is an emotional stance in which the pain of existence is intensely shown.
Inner struggles, we all have our demons, and for the vast majority of time we keep them locked up, hidden away, the sound of the animal urge breathing in some quiet recess of our brain, a constant reminder that we are only a few steps away from unleashing havoc, of coming away from the dullness that the pain killer provides.
It is a pain killer that we perhaps have put too much faith in, we have allowed the numbing of our senses to be a saturated colander, a constant refilling of drowning our emotions, and it one that is heading for a fall, the colander no longer able to keep the pain from falling, a handle on the world which is starting to snap for Generation RX and all those who stand alongside them.
Good Charlotte’s latest album seeks out that sense of pain, it doesn’t advocate it, it doesn’t seek to relish in it, but it finds that the pain we have been inflicted with, from a disgusting number of sources, both internally and those to whom we seek salvation and guidance from, is the topic of conversation we must sink our thoughts into. Pain does not go away easily, pain is terrifyingly real and the current situation with opioid saturation is arguably not helping.
It is a theme in which Good Charlotte have initially unwittingly delved head first into, and in songs such as Self Help, Actual Pain, Leech, Better Demons and California (The Way) I Say I Love You, the band immerse themselves into discussing the way we have become our own worst enemy. The trouble is there is a very narrow road in which such subjects can travel, the wider topic, if not joined in by everyone, can seem as if we are just willing into shout into a vacuum, the effect of our words drowned out by the silence and the unwilling.
Whilst the overall flavour of Generation RX perhaps does not stand up against some of the band’s former offerings, in terms of endearment, of a collective high and ongoing beat, it is arguably the group’s most sincere recording, a passionate display of searching for a truth, one that in this day and age is to be congratulated and admired.
Ian D. Hall