[Tom4784]

Ava Max

This is an album with a sound too recent to be considered retro yet too dated to be relevant. Everything about this album feels like it's fallen out of a time capsule buried in 2009 and sometimes it works, but often, it simply doesn't. A lot of the songs are bland and uninspired and some of them are painful to listen to simply because Ava Max tries to present herself as this crazy out there person when she's as basic and milquetoast as it gets. Like, her album is called Heaven & Hell and the cover is literally her in a blonde and red wig to represent the two afterlifes and it's just... really?

It also doesn't help that a lot of songs sound the same, whether that's sonically or lyrically. There's the occasional song that I wouldn't skip if I heard it again but for the most part, it's all pretty bland, and at worst, grating and cringey.

I'm gonna give it a 3/10 because there's a few listenable songs but everything else is a complete and utter abortion of taste and execution.