Review: 'I - Empire' by Angels and Airwaves

Hi

In my previous post I explained the basics about Angels and Airwaves, so I’m not going to do much repeating here.  You can check out what I said here if you want to.    There was a slight line-up change around the time of this album because Matt Watcher replaced Ryan Sinn as the bassist.   I remember reading once – I think in Kerrang! Ages back – that the ‘I’ stands for ‘Imaginary’ Empire but I’m not too sure.  The ‘I’ could stand for anything. 

I really liked the single ‘Everything’s Magic’ in a way it sums up the band in terms of its cheerful, upbeat sound and lyrics.   I have to admit that this isn’t my favourite album by them.  However I do like many of the songs on the album – and none are so bad that I wouldn’t listen to them.  Some of the songs on ‘I Empire’ are gentle and delicate love songs – like songs of this nature should be.  Examples are ‘Breathe’ and ‘Sirens’ – they are both very sweet songs.  There are also some real anthems such as ‘Secret Crowds’ and ‘Heaven’.

 

‘Heaven’ is an important song for Angles and Airwaves, not because it closes the album, but because it is a prominent example of how the band re-use riffs.  ‘Heaven’ echoes ‘Valkyrie Missile’.  Angles and Airwaves are after all a multimedia project, so it could be suggested that they re-use riffs and sound bites for effect as opposed to laziness.  The way I see it is that they use instrumental themes like they do in musicals. 

 ‘I Empire’ is a decent album.  I do recommend ‘We Don’t need to Whisper’ over it in many respects, but I do believe that ‘I Empire’ does contain some real gems that shouldn’t be missed.