PAX AM Days EP – Fall Out Boy

This EP is only 13 minutes, so, thusly, I can declare the whole of it to be my favorite Fall Out Boy song. Seriously, all eight songs on this EP are relentless bops reminiscent of a long-past golden age in punk music. You can clearly tell that these songs (with an average length of a minute and forty seconds) were put together in a couple days, but their rhythms are incredibly infectious and their choruses are as anthemic and compelling as Fall Out Boy gets, even if you won’t know what the hell they’re saying. Patrick Stump’s vocals are more like guitar riffs than poetry on tracks like “We Were Doomed From The Start (The King Is Dead)”, which reminds me of Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper”. (It feels good to be able to compare Fall Out Boy to Iron Maiden.) The harmonies feel based fundamentally on bass notes, and it works like a charm on the whole album, but especially in “Hot To The Touch, Cold On The Inside”, where the guitar constantly goes in unexpected directions and always fits well with the melody. Then again, you also have your more basic rock harmonies on tracks like “Caffeine Cold”, and they are beautiful. As always, Andy Hurley is amazing, and Joe Trohman’s work on this album is what he was born to do. It’s a shame that this was produced by repeated sexual harasser Ryan Adams, but the composition here has touched my soul; I sincerely hope that Adams is blacklisted, and I’m not going to stop loving this album.