About That Life, the fifth long-player from Southern-fried party-metalcore outfit Attila, sounds a little like Hinder, G.B.H., and Disturbed gave birth to a stillborn child and then had Fred Durst reanimate it. It’s deafening, relentlessly juvenile, and hopelessly dudebro, but to its credit, it never pretends to be anything other than a teen-angst talisman meant to invoke the wrath of parents. Opener "Middle Fingers Up," which unveils (with no attempts at subtlety) the band's mission statement through the suburban street poetry of frontman Chris "Fronz" Fronzak ("Alright motherfu#ker listen up/This is for the fu#king homies steady givin no fu#ks"), starts things off on an upbeat (so to speak) note, laying down a sinewy, laser-guided missile of a guitar line over a ferocious, breakdown-laden backbeat that manages to land multiple haymakers, adding an extra dimension of nihilism to each carefully placed "fu#k" not given. Elsewhere, the jarring title cut stammers about like a boozy, beer-goggled party goer trying to cross the living room without taking down a window treatment, and the thrashy "Break S**t," which implores its listeners to "Break every fu#king thing you see at this show" and "Punch a fu#king bully in the goddamned face," is a lot more fun the previous sentence would suggest, but there's not much here to recommend for anyone who isn’t already on board the Attila pleasure barge. About That Life is what it is: the audio equivalent of being trapped inside a Warped Tour Porta Potty as a mob of fevered twentysomethings roll it down a hill.
© James Christopher Monger /TiVo