Rewind Review: My Ticket Home - Strangers Only
My Ticket Home was a band I had admittedly been putting off for a while. Why? I thought the band was merely just another cog in the never ending slew of mediocre metalcore. My Ticket Home has been one of those bands that was just there. They were a band I envisioned as a generic paint-by-numbers Midwest metalcore act. I was partially correct as the band began with a below average debut and the fact that they sounded like every other band out there, coming off very easy to cast aside and ignore. However with several years and two records gone past and upon further investigation into the band with Strangers Only they have turned into so much more.
To my surprise, My Ticket Home changed their sound quite drastically. I perhaps have never heard a modern band sound so genuinely from the 90's as My Ticket Home does here without any of the cheesiness most nu-metal revival acts contain. The group has managed to take many of the best elements of 90's nu and alternative metal and morph it into an updated creative sound.Somehow in the latter end of the 2010's, My Ticket Home managed to being something new to the table in nu-metal, a phrase that baffles the mind completely. This album blows any and all expectations out of the water with it's addictivley catchy hooks and choruses and it's authentic to the era vocals.
Strangers Only is fast, aggressive, and takes no prisoners.Gone are this bands days of settling for being just another act, now they've asserted themselves as something new and fresh. It only takes a track or two to figure out what you're in store for with Strangers Only. The band's willingness to play this style before it was considered cool to do so again is admirable and they clearly don't care what anyone thinks of what they're doing. This album is pure fun and raw energy.
Musically this album is masterfully produced with each instrument sounding like it's genuinely being played in the style of the era it is replicating. Every riff, drum pattern and vocal line does it's job and doesn't step on the other parts of the songs. There's no mandatory typical metalcore breakdowns or solos here either, the band wanted to deliver a vision they had for an updated version of nu-metal and did so extremely well. The vocals have a pleasantly dirty sound to them that I simply love and give it a charm that 90's metal once possessed.
Songs like Painfully Bored and Spit Not Chewed sound like top of the class hits that would be getting MTV play had they been released in a different era. Strangers Only is consistently both raw and calculated. There's no dumb nu-metal tropes here either, My Ticket Home selected specifically what made nu-metal connect with millions of listeners and spit out their take on it. It's truly a shame that this band didn't get nearly the attention they rightfully deserved for their innovation.
While admittedly not all the lyrics are fantastic, I feel that comes with the territory of this style and overall it doesn't do much to take away from the album. Nu metal revival has absolutely boomed since the release of this record in 2015 but I still believe this is in all likelihood the best album o f this rebirth of a genre. It's a record you feel as though you can replay at anytime and there's numerous tracks that are amazing playlist fillers. Strangers Only gets a 4.5 out of 5 from us.
