★★★★★
In their latest release, indie dance-rock pioneers The Faint embrace their industrial post-punk spirit. Their music has always been on the "noisy" end of the spectrum, and Doom Abuse is no exception. Every element dances on the verge of clipping or glitching, and The Faint's brand of controlled chaos holds the album together like a corset. "Animal Needs" is a thumping, high-octane anthem that reads as both a manifesto and a critique on modern culture...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2014-05-23
★★★★★
Head here to submit your own review of this album.
Six years is a long time, especially in music. Trends come and fads flitter away into the ether. What was once the flavour of the month is now akin to a rotten, fetid mess snubbed by indie snobs and buzzband hyping websites (no names, I can't afford the lawsuits). What will always rise to the top though, is the music. If the band is tight and the songs killer, you can't lose. That's the theory anyway...
- www.thefourohfive.com
2014-05-02
★★★★★
Tweet A Special Night Omaha natives The Faint, which at one point 20 years ago featured the preeminent icebox Conor Oberst, haven't released a full-length since 2008's Fasciinatiion, but on their return they show they haven't lost momentum. The band's sort-of comeback album Doom Abuse is a brazen, dark and paradoxically upbeat slab of intensity that lives up to its maniacal title. The Faint spend a lot of time in the scratchy darkness, but it's hardly brooding...
- www.mxdwn.com
2014-04-30
★★★★★
2013's best punk album wasn't defined by slashing guitars or hyperactive drums; the best punk record of 2013 was brought to you by the electronic nightmare modernism of Kanye West. Sharpening, melting, and warping craped-up keyboards and cyborg drum machines until they howled like an expressionist reboot of Suicide, Yeezus managed to be last year's most breathless, vitriolic, and urgent album by capturing the maelstrom angst of punk without the crutch of its stereotyped trappings...
- www.thelineofbestfit.com
2014-04-30
★★★★★
For the previous two decades, Omaha's the Faint has faithfully followed a pattern: Alternate the danceable, catchy album with a noisy, experimental one. Doom Abuse, their sixth LP, offers nothing less than the long-threatened fusion of these two strands: Opener "Hole in the Head" suggests Depeche Mode jamming with the Stooges. It's the raging, bratty punk/synth-pop fusion you didn't know you needed from these guys, and it announces immediately that they are back in defiant fighting form...
- www.wonderingsound.com
2014-04-22
★★★★★
Within the family of Saddle Creek, the Omaha label founded by Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, The Faint never really made sense sonically, their music a sort of black sheep amongst the other artists. In its prime, the band would have fit in more with what was happening in New York in the early '00s, with dance-punk and a fondness for the less vibrant color spectrum--not necessarily perpetually dark, but overcast for sure--catching on. Black sheep turns out to be a more apt metaphor than usual...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2014-04-16
★★★★★
It's typically right around a band's fourth or fifth album that the innovation ceases, replaced by a sense of settling in. The identity is established, the fan base has peaked, and it's time to carry on with a tried and true approach. Such is the place the Faint occupy now, as evidenced by Doom Abuse, the band's seventh album. That it is their first album after a hiatus -- previous record Fasciination released in 2008 -- shines a brighter spotlight on the question of their continued relevance...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-04-12
★★★★★
Before modern, synthy dance rock came into vogue, before dubstep, even before The Postal Service, teens looking for something to satisfy both their us-vs.-them, heartbroken moodiness and the need to dance like crazy people had the dark new wave of The Faint. The Faint made it cool for hipsters to dance in the late '90s, and for that we thank them...
- consequenceofsound.net
2014-04-10
★★★★★
During the '00s indie-dance boom, The Faint rose to prominence by muscling keyboards back into rock music with geeky flair. But over time, the Omaha band's most enduring tunes--including the flailing new wave homage "Worked Up So Sexual," the gothic post-punk of 2001's Danse Macabre and the corrosive "Paranoiattack"--also tended to share DNA with punk rock's freewheeling energy and raw immediacy...
- www.avclub.com
2014-04-08
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