Album Review: As Lions – Selfish Age (Better Noise Records)

Do you like bland sounding, inoffensive rock that even your 80 year old grandmother would say was pretty bad? Great, you’re going to love Selfish Age, the debut album from As Lions.

Fronted by Austin Dickinson, the son of legendary Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson. Selfish Age proves just how far from the tree the apple has fallen. It is a horrible album lacking in any original ideas, filled with some of the most boring riffs you’ll hear this side of *insert terrible indie band’ here.

The opening song Aftermath has plenty of bounce at first but the common issue found throughout the album rears its head early on. You see, Selfish Age is filled with soft melodic verses that focus on the vocals only before bursting into a faster, up-tempo chorus. This has been done a million times before & by far better bands. It even has the isolated vocal moments that drop into silence before coming back into the chorus.

Just absolutely terrible.

Any high points are snuffed out by just how boring it is. They might be competent musicians & Austin might be a decent vocalist but when it’s used to make such terrible music it means nothing. By the third track, Bury My Dead you’ll be tempted to stop. Rubbish use of a piano & sickeningly bland to the point that it becomes unlistenable.

Just when you think things can’t sink any lower, Deathless & it’s odd techno start leads into a song that screams, ‘we wrote this for popular radio’. Mind you, every song has that sound. Selfish Age is a radio friendly song but lacking in any memorable hooks, any moments that even the most hardcore fan will really remember.

It’s hard to talk positively about any of this utter trash, White Flags is disgustingly bad offering no redeeming moments. Pieces promises to have a more melodic sound but quickly descends into the same vocals focused crap fest. By time World on Fire comes along it almost seems impossible that such music could ever have been released. A part-ballad that focuses on lyrical content regarding the state of the world but it sounds incredibly insincere here.

11 tracks, 40 minutes long…it can’t end soon enough. It’s fitting that the last song is called The Great Escape & those hoping for a big ending will be sorely disappointed. It ends like it began with a massive, steaming pile of nothing.

Overall Track Listing:

1. Aftermath
2. The Suffering
3. Bury My Dead
4. Deathless
5. Selfish Age
6. White Flags
7. Pieces
8. World on Fire
9. One by One
10. The Fall
11. The Great Escape