Angels & Airwaves - We Don't Need To Whisper (Parental Advisory) [PA] (CD 2006)

The ego has landed. After weeks, no months, of weird blogs, crazy postings and promises of the Second Coming, Angels and Airwaves have finally landed on Planet Earth. When Tom DeLonge quit Blink 182 and formed his new band, he promised something which would change the world - a band that would literally reinvent the musical wheel. Unless you've been living under a rock you'll have read DeLonge's endless distribes, hyping his new band like there's no tomorrow. Choice quotes from pre-release interviews? "I promise that you will love it. We have spent quite a lot of time planning how to make a new era of rock and roll, and this film and album I think are going to help with that." Not convinced? OK, here's another: "Imagine a record with 6-7 minute long songs, full of anthemic, melody and long intro's, but it sounds totally different....like the next step you would expect."

With more hype than the second series of Lost, you'd expect 'We Don't Need To Whisper' to actually be half-decent. But you'd be wrong. Very wrong. DeLonge's 'masterpiece' is actually a vapid and boring waste of a shiny disc. Never has an album been so much of a letdown. If ripping off U2 and giving each song extended and over-produced introductions is ground-breaking, fresh and new, then AVA have succeeded. In my eyes, it's nothing like the re-birth of Jesus, as promised, whatsoever. If you take strands of the last Blink album, throw in some Box Car Racer, and make it long and incredibly dull, then you'd have a decent idea of what AVA sound like.

If you've already heard the album's first single, 'The Adventure', then you've already heard the album's best song - by quite some way. Indicative of many of the tracks here, the song takes over a minute to build up, featuring a wall of guitars - apparently there are 98 tracks of instrumentation on this album - before running into a catchy verse and chorus. Sadly, it's one of the album's only highlights, and at track five it's the first real moment where you feel the album is worthy of the hype. It takes more than 25 minutes to get to this point, however, and it's a long, long journey through a vacuous and uninspiring set of songs. 'Valkyrie Missle' is a massive disappointment, while 'Do It For Me Now' doesn't really do it for me at all.

'The War' is one of the better songs here and 'Distraction' is ok. But the rest is very, very poor. When I first listened to this I was disappointed. After about four listens it got marginally better but was still a letdown. For all of the hype, my disappointment was probably made all the worse. I think if any other band had come out with this, it would have been slightly better received - but for someone so influential and famous, this is pretty poor stuff. No doubt it will sell by the bucketload and probably be lauded by the critics for being some misguided classic, but for me it's just plain old boring. Tom, you've let us all down.

As a massive Blink 182 fan, i was suprised that the sound from AVA is so diiferent, but it is without a doubt excellent, Tom Delonge says this is the best music he has ever wrote and heard. "The adnventure" is cinematic and Tom puts so much energy into the video.

Green Day will remain my all time favorite, their music is so unique, however AVA are in a class of their own to, Tom Delogne is in a better group with experieced musicians and this is the band he should always of been in .

Personally, I think that We Don't Need To Whisper is a fantastic album. I am a huge fan of blink-182 and I have to say that this challenges the best that blink can offer, although admittedly it is a slightly different kind of music, but can be compared reasonably well to blink's last self titled album.
Lyrics are excellent, as is the sound of the album, there is a lot of feeling. Overall, an unbelievanly good album-without a doubt buy it!

After getting over the shock of blink 182, this long awaited cd, is just what want to get you delonge fix.
This is a natural progression from blink. I listen to this cd almost every day in my bug. Turn it up full and chill out.
I would buy this CD if you love blink and Tom. But i would buy thias if you never listened to blink before because its a whole new experience in listening to rock.

Totally new sound, won't find anything else that is the same. I bought it to see wether Tom Delonge is still as good as he was in Blink 182, and he is. Well worth buying, you won't be disappointed. If your thinking about which album to buy that has come from the splitting up of Blink, +44's or Angels & Airwaves buy this one, i've listened to them both and i think that this is the better one.