Not being a huge fan of The Prophets I seem to have missed their transformation from metal into pop? Having recently swept the boards at the Kerrang awards I had strangely assumed that the new album would qualify as being at least somewhat heavy in its output. The rise of the band has been astronomical over the last 12 months, moving into the premier league of Stadium rockers. Now comes the new single ‘Can’t Catch Tomorrow’ lifted from the platinum selling album ‘Liberation Transmission’ that has the band finally throwing away the nu-metal childishness of their earlier material and going full blown 80’s pop for the masses.
The new single kicks off with a thin guitar line before a harmony of monkeys style ‘doo wop’ pumps into my head making my hand reach for the off button, with the song already bankrupt of any authenticity. What follows is the most anodyne and pointless slice of commercially minded pop you could ever wish to hear since The Killers returned a month or so ago. The track almost plays like a very interesting joke on the type of rubbish released for the masses to devour like McDonalds or KFC. Another depressing aspect of this track is how light it feels compared to their earlier stuff, lacking any kind of authority or punch. Perhaps the telling lyric in the song comes towards the end when Watkins tells us he’s ‘seen a million people change, but I will stay the same’, in terms of this bland rubbish is very revealing indeed.
Appealing to teenagers is a lucrative business to say the least and I’m sure The Prophets will do very nicely from this pact they have obviously signed with the devil. Words such as sell-out have become so widely overused it really carries no weight anymore. But are The Prophets sell-outs? Well I doubt it very much as I sincerely doubt they ever wanted anything else but being the biggest teen, emo, goth, nu-metal band in the UK. This type of stuff is so awful it’s hard to even muster up the energy to despise it as it’s simple-minded trash for those unable to get off their posteriors and go looking for something meaningful and honest. This type of material I simply detritus of the most commercial and horrid kind, but at least they can now go head to head with Take That in terms of sales and gate receipts.
