LOVE released

Angels & Airwaves released their third album, LOVE, for free today via their website, angelsandairwaves.com (Modlife). It's a solid album that flows well and has some nice peaks and valleys.

The Flight of Apollo got the album going pretty well, and set up what would be the two best songs on the album. Epic Holiday and Hallucinations were two standouts that gave the album a much-needed rock and roll feel.

But after those two songs, the album sort of slips into a prog-rock, psychedelic journey into the mind of Tom Delonge. Letters to God Pt. 2 is a decent song, and it's a solid follow-up to its Pt. 1 (from Delonge and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker's Box Car Racer album). Unfortunately, in Shove he samples a single from I-Empire for the chorus, using the melody from Everything's Magic. And on the final song, Some Origins of Fire, the verses are the same melody as AVA's most popular song, The Adventure.

Apart from those two blemishes (as well as some lackluster drumming from Atom Willard), LOVE is definitely worth listening to. I don't think Delonge went too far out on a limb for this album, and he did deliver on the promise that this would be unlike anything we've heard from them (apart from the two instances I mentioned above). BUT, Delonge does need to stop telling everyone AVA will change the world and that he's put out his best stuff (which he's done for every AVA record, as well as in his preview of the upcoming Blink-182 album). He needs to let the music speak for itself, and maybe there wouldn't be as much backlash when the music isn't actually life-changing, as is the case with each of the three AVA albums.

The entire album can be downloaded here or here. Give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.