Fall Out Boy: "Mania"

3 years after their 2015 release of "American Beauty American Psycho," Fall Out Boy returns to the scene with their new album, "MANIA." It’s noted as a complete departure from their rough pop-punk roots. After listening to this for 2 weeks, I’ve managed to form my opinion. Along the lines of if it’s good or bad... I’m on the fence about it.

Here’s the tracklisting:

1. Young and Menace
2. Champion
3. Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea
4. HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T
5. The Last of The Real Ones
6. Wilson (Expensive Mistakes)
7. Church
8. Heaven’s Gate
9. Sunshine Riptide
10. Bishops Knife Trick

Favorite Track

My favorite track as I’m writing this is "Bishops Knife Trick." The melody of it is really soothing and Patrick Stump's vocals really crawl under your skin on this track. For the last track of the album, it has hints of Fall Out Boy’s older music mixed with the sound brought in this new album.

Least Favorite Track

I’m sorry, but I don’t really enjoy "Champion. "I mean, it’s listenable, but I can’t really get into the beat of it. It’s overplayed on the radio, on ESPN and other sports networks. They’re trying to embrace the “jock-rock” and it doesn’t work in this single.

Tracklisting

Now if we look at the tracklisting of the entire album, at first glance the entire track list has the hints of sounding like they put it through the random name generator. But if you go down the list, each track becomes more and more intense, hitting a peak at "The Last Of The Real Ones" and slowly winding down into "Bishops Knife Trick."

My final thoughts

Coming off of" American Beauty American Psycho," "MANIA" has a lot of missing pieces. It doesn’t have a uniform sound, each track is different in its own way with "Young and Menace "and it’s dubstep chorus or "Heaven’s Gate "and it’s soulful love ballad vocals. The songs are good, but they don’t have a way of connecting together on an album like Mania.