Last week I found out one of my favorite bands from high school, The Used, was opening for Three Days Grace. This completely shocked me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy and respect Three Days Grace's music, even more so given that they are Canadian and I am a huge supporter of Canadian talent. However, if you had asked me seven or so years ago, when The Used albums never left my CD players, if I would see The Used going on tour with Three Days Grace, I would have laughed in your face.
In high school I associated Three Days Grace with the likes of Nickleback and Default, and all those other bands that sounded the same. I had their first album, but nothing stood out to me aside from their over played first single. I also noticed far too many similarities between their album and the Finger Eleven disk that was released shortly before. At the time I didn't think they were very original whatsoever, and took a long time to actually get into their music.
The Used's first album, self titled, was by far their best work. That was the album that made me fall in love with the band. It was heavy, powerful, and full of emotion. This was underground, something not yet widely discovered and unlike everything getting airtime on the radio. I used it to pump me up when I needed some energy, but also used it to pick me up when I was down. I remember like it was yesterday, driving around town with some close friends with this album cranked singing along at the top of our lungs.
Their third release, In Love and Death, followed a CD/DVD combo. This record seemed to have lost some of the rawness of their first album, but still produced some killer singles. It didn't earn enough time in my CD player though, their self titles album still dominated.
The record after that disappointed me a little more as I felt they were continually moving to a different sound than their initial release. I still supported the band, buying their live album Berth, and their third studio album Lies for the Liars. It seemed the screaming, that was said to have induced the singer to vomit on stage, featured so dominantly in the first album was slowly fading to just singing. I can understand why, obviously continuously vomiting is not healthy, but I feel it created a distinct for the band (the screaming that is, not the puking).
I recently purchased the latest single on I-tunes and was completely disappointed by what I heard. I'm not sure if it's the fact that my musical tastes have changed, or if the band is really so different than the album I first fell in love with. On the contrary, I'm far more into the past two albums Three Days Grace has put out as of late. Their last album got a lot of play on my I-pod and I'm really digging the new singles released over the past month or two.
Still, hearing the news that one of my favorite bands from high school is touring with a band I never pictured gaining much momentum in the industry was shocking to me. But now I've come to realize that bands are continually evolving their sound, sometimes in a direction you dig, and sometimes in a directions that is less your taste, and in cases like this it could bring together bands you would never picture together.
Edit: An hour after writing this I was offered a free ticket to this show. Weird.
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