Biggest disappointment album of 2009

Don't you hate it when you get really pumped for a new album to come out and it either totally blows, it's a bunch of the same old boring thing, or they change their style to the point where it's not enjoyable for you anymore? Here are three albums that did that for me in 2009.

1. VersaEmerge - VersaEmerge EP. I first listened to this band randomly on their MySpace in summer of 2008. The music on their Perceptions EP was very interesting and the girl could seriously effing sing. I loved every one of the songs I listened to and I watched hella YouTube videos of her and the guitar player doing a bunch of acoustic versions of their songs. I couldn't get enough. When I heard that they were coming out with a new EP in 2009, I naturally got excited. When I heard the first track, "Past Praying For," I wasn't that impressed. That specific song has since grown on me, but when I heard the rest of the EP, I was even more disappointed. The music became a lot poppier. Gone were the interesting and intricate guitar leads and atmospheric style that pulled me in. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing for a band to make changes to their style as they grow. But to me, Perceptions sounds much more mature and shows a greater level of skill at their instruments. Not only that, but before I felt that Versa were a band that could share a stage with bands like Therefore I Am, or the Receiving End of Sirens if they were still a band, or maybe even Moving Mountains, or Chiodos or Circa Survive or Saosin. But now they fit in perfectly sharing stages with bands like Boys Like Girls, Cobra Starship, the Maine - bands that cater to what seems to me to be a pretty narrow core audience of 12 year old girls. VersaEmerge has the talent to do way better than that, to make intelligent and challenging music and to be damn good at it. They're currently writing a full-length, and I probably shouldn't really get my hopes up, but I will anyway because the acoustic versions of the new songs kill so far.

311 - Uplifter. 311 is a great rock band. They are one of my favorite straight up rock bands, actually. I've seen them live and they were great. They pull together so many different styles to create something that to me never gets old. So understandably, I was anticipating the release of Uplifter, only to listen to the whole album on Grooveshark and be totally bored the whole time. And now they can forget about me paying $40 to see them play a set with mostly boring songs and two or three of my favorite hits.

The winner: Atreyu - Congregation of the Damned. Any longtime Atreyu fan knows that they were one of the front runners during the rise of metalcore back in the early to mid-2000s. Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses is a great first album. The Curse rocked really hard. You could bang your head to it and sing along to the catchy clean vocals, and the singing, screaming, and musicianship had gotten better. A Deathgrip on Yesterday was never as great as I had hoped it would be, but I can't say it was a disappointment either, it just wasn't better than or even as good as The Curse. And it was way too heavy on the "we love 80s hair metal" shtick. Then Lead Sails Paper Anchor came out, and I had heard the single, which was sick. I guess I thought the single indicated a sick album, which should have been the logical progression. But this is where I was wrong. I don't even know what they were trying to do with that album, but it definitely wasn't Atreyu. When I heard the first single from Congregation of the Damned, it sounded crazy. I thought, as well as many of their fans according to message boards, that the old Atreyu was back. The band that pulled us in and made us fans was back, and seeing as until Lead Sails Paper Anchor was released Atreyu was my top favorite band, I was understandably fucking pumped. To my dismay, Congregation of the Damned is filled with more "we love 80s hair metal" and this weird sort of layering of the clean vocals that makes it sound really over done and just corny to me. I can't listen to most of the songs on that album and not cringe with embarassment. I guess I should have never gotten my hopes up, but for me this band is like an ex that you love that keeps showing up in your life, and you want to finally have a healthy good relationship with this person, so each time you go back to them and they make the same old mistakes. Anyone ever experienced that? Maybe it's just me. That's probably too much information and that is my signal that it's time to stop writing now.