4 / 10
We can be thankful for Aiden for one reason, and one reason alone: discovering music was all that stopped lead singer Wil Francis from carrying out a massacre he had planned for New Year’s Eve 1999 (or so he once said). Roll on album number three, and the dramatic sound-shift Aiden promised merely equates to rebalancing their oeuvre with a few more slow numbers – possibly because they won’t rest until they’ve made every 13-year-old girl on Earth weep at least once in her life. In fact, judging by the track ‘Teenage Queen’ – with its chorus of “Tonight I’m a teenage queen” – we’re almost certain that’s their plan. Unfortunately though there’s little in the way of tunes here and Francis’ voice is bleating and irksome, making Aiden My Chemical Romance minus the winking intelligence, imagination and stage costumes.
Mike Sterry
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