Billy Talent: Billy Talent III

Moving past the obvious anachorism of Billy Talent III being their fourth album, technically speaking, there are a few more issues which cloud our mind here.

Cards on the table time, this is an album we wanted to love. The staples of their second album, the one which reached the upper echelons of popularity, have been lodged in our collective consciousness for so long that they can now legitimately claim squatter's rights on our heads.

However, much like the previous effort Billy Talent II, III manages to be charming, without igniting the fiery passion which their second album elicited. The same checkpoints are passed on almost every song on the album. The rusted guitar enters with an intricate, yet always familiar melody. It plays for a few bars, then the drums kick in. A slow-paced verse with vocalist Benjamin Kowalewicz donning his trademark raw, almost-spoken delivery segues into a ferocious chorus where Kowalewicz explores the heights of his range before dropping back to default again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

True, the intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-chorus formula has kept popular music in business for almost one-hundred years now, so it's no black-mark because a band fails to deviate from it. The issue that Billy Talent faces though, is that because their guitars and vocals are such an oddity, they quickly begin to sound repetitive. By the time you reach track ten, you're glad you have the term 'deja vu' to describe how you're feeling.

Every single one of the songs here is on the verge of radio-worthy, never warranting the 'skip' option on your respective shuffle mode, but the act of consuming every one of the eleven tracks in one sitting may be too much. Perhaps this fault would be evident in their second album, were it released now, without the benefit of novelty. That will have to be a hypothetical question for another day.

Individual dissection provides far nicer results. "Rusted from the Rain" walks a similar tempo to "Nothing to Lose", albeit without the emotional intensity, pairing a rather odd skanking guitar rhythm into a slow punk song before amping up the speed and letting guitarist (and Guile impersonator) Ian D'Sa rip with a traditional guitar solo in the song's latter moments.

Wearing the "1st Place" medal proudly on its chest is "Tears into Wine" (that's the emotional ejection of eye-fluid tears, not a description of Kiefer Sutherland's drinking habits). "Tear the moon from the stars tonight / Twist my arm like a knife tonight / And if you wanna leave that's alright / Well I'll just turn these tears into wine", complete with the ever-reliable "whoa-oh-oh" backing vocals equals a winning chorus. The post-guitar-solo half-time slowdown also provides a welcome surprise, even if only sustained for the briefest of moments. If there ever was a band suffering from ADHD, Billy Talent are it.

In fact, it's almost ironic that the band have a song called "Pocketful of Dreams" on the album which offers a look into the world of a person who sacrifices her individuality for a world of safety set inside a suburban dystopia where appearances are everything, since this is essentially where the band are at now. Their ascending popularity has led to the erosion of the edge and the sense-of-risk from the band's dynamic and is likely to leave them at something of an impasse. Too raw for the mainstream and too diluted for the punk crowds.

We should be used to artists being shorn of their fiery passion and zeal when confronted with the weight of the world, but this one still stings a little.