Customer Reviews

We All Need a Reason To Believe

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Philly's lovers Valencia comes back with their sophomore pop-driven emotional punk rock release "We All Need a Reason to Believe". This is the band's first major-label release for Columbia Records. The album flows well with most songs corresponding to the unfortunate passing of lead vocalist Shane Henderson's girlfriend. Henderson also let out some of his frustration and pain on his solo acoustic release under the moniker Promise of Redemption. He released that album in December of 2007 (also recommended). While we expected that Shane was finished outleting his emotions; he yet again decided to use his girlfriend Dana as inspiration for the majority of this album's tracks. Not a bad thing, though; it just sounds like Promise of Redemption with electrical instruments and a drummer.

Overall, this is a good album. There's not a whole lot of surprise or swagger instrumentally, which is expected in this genre, but the point of pop-punk is not complexity of musical composition, but more focusing on the melodic attraction of each individual verse/chorus/bridge. In other words, this genre is meant to breed catchy songs. That's what makes a great pop-punk band. Valencia can last in this particular venue, but these types of bands have a tendency to not exist for very long. We will see; they have release two solid albums, and I expect to see more, as always.

As long as Valencia keeps making this kind of albums, the genre of pop-punk will have nothing to worry about it's essence. 11 songs, 11 stories, all of them in order. All of these stories together, make an epic album.

This is a must buy album.

You can definately tell the the guys have matured more in the music sense on this album. Not as technical as their debut CD "This Could Be A Possibility" but way more catchy.

Not every song is a five star song, but there are enough on this CD to make it a must have album.

Listen to "Where Did You Go?", "All At Once" and "Head In Hands" for samples.

For fan's of "Bayside", "This Providence" and "There For Tomorrow".

I bought this CD not knowing much about the band, going completely off of a recommendation from my younger sister. To my surprise, this band is absolutely spectacular if you like their genre. The "Punk Rock" genre is fairly open ended and extremely diverse, but these guys know what they're doing. All they're missing is the publicity, expect to hear big things from Valencia in the future!

I've had this CD playing in my car everyday since I bought it. I could listen to 'The Good Life' repetitively for hours!