Review: Madina Lake's Attics to Eden

Fun fact: Madina Lake’s Nathan and Matthew Leone are twins, and got the band’s start-up money by winning Twins Fear Factor. Now you know.

Attics to Eden is the 2009 sophomore release of Madina Lake, a band who, similar to Coheed and Cambria, uses their music to tell a story. Unlike Coheed’s galactic warfare and genocide, Madina’s is some sort of 1950’s whodunit mystery story that, to be honest, I can’t really make any sense of from the lyrics.

What is the album? It’s a pop-rock affair at its core, with a few moments of ballsier, thudding weight to the music, most apparent in Let’s Get Out of Here, which is also one of the standout tracks on the album. But as a whole, this album isn’t clicking with me and I’ll tell you why.

The lead tracks are driving anthems that capture the ear with their energy and forceful rhythm and serve as excellent openers. But the third track, Legends is something like a mid 90-s alternative rock mixed with a club-ready chorus complete with synthesizers blasting over the mix. Many of the songs are well written, but the vocal melodies are either too repetitive, or they suffer from bring overwritten and won’t just resolve at the end of a phrase, often opting to jump to a whole new key. And that seems to be the key dilemma with Attics to Eden, it’s constantly either underwritten or overwritten, never entirely sure what kind of album it wants to be; a simple, fun rock album or a complex and diverse concept record with music as diverse as the characters in its story.

In all Attics isn’t a bad album at all. It’s indecisive, like so many others, it lacks focus and direction, which, if given to presumably the right producer, the result would be powerful. These guys know how to do it, but they’re not sure what is is that they want to do.