Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

The mindset of the human being is such that we either look back on what we were with fondness or with sheer regret, there is no sense of the benign or indifference to be found within the past, it is either glory or criticism, pleasure or pain, and it is in that analyse that perhaps shapes our future to the extent that we enter middle age and beyond with trepidation; the wish to do better, to be seen as evolving, to refuse to shout with exclamation of joy and bow down to the anger of our own self-effacement.

That person we once were, surrounded by others in a bond that once was thought unshakable, seeks either the bright lights and overwhelming sounds that come with Las Vegas or the retribution of excess, and in Panic! At The Disco’s latest release, Viva Las Vengeance, the singularity of musicianship that is shared responsibly from Brendon Urie, brings the idea of growth and change into view, and yet as each song plays out there is a drama of dichotomy that leads the listener to suppose that the ideal is always just one, a hive mind perhaps, but certainly one that drives its own thoughts into place and acts upon them.

It is the appearance of the multiple me, the first-person singular that is invoked across songs such as the opener and album title track Viva Las Vengeance, the excellent Middle Of A Break Up, and Sad Clown, only in the cool Star Spangled Banner is the listener gifted the sense of the collective, and it is that makes the album lift itself from the possible drama of absorbing complete and obsessive self-reflection and into a world where the existence of those external influences are called into question.

The problem with vanity or self-conceit, even in the timing of considering our impact on the world, is that at times it could be argued that should remain an internal monologue, share it with the world of you must but don’t be surprised when others loo upon it as an interesting diversion rather than the masterpiece you envisage it to be.

That said, Viva Las Vengeance is an edition to the works of the name at hand, cool, sometimes brutally so, but often one drenched in its own longing, and one that does not perhaps stand with Brendon Urie’s artistic vision of past glories.

Ian D. Hall