If there’s one thing you can always count on Magnolia Park to do, it’s try to defy expectations. Emphasis on ‘try’, because they don’t always get there. Who can forget Joshua Roberts’ full-throated assertions that Magnolia Park aren’t a TikTok band on the first moments of Baku’s Revenge, only to stuff that album with the most TikTokable pop-punk outside of what mgk and his crèche of pretenders were doing at the time? They’ve often had a near-inhuman gift for hooks and melodies, though, which is not just their edge but also their saving grace. Regardless of how sparsely their belief correlates with their ability to break the mould, Magnolia Park have at least managed to brute-force their way into standing out.
Vamp, then, should be the ultimately litmus test for how far they can take that measure. It’s being trialled in a whole new field, as Magnolia Park’s usual pop-punk has been sidelined entirely for full-on nu-metal. They’ve toyed with those sounds in the past, but this is a true-blue, true-nu album, going the distance of total metamorphosis. And in typical form, it’s the furthest thing from revolutionary. Regardless of how deeply the ‘TikTok band’ allegations might get stuck in their craw, their approach to jumping genres is the same as one, co-opting the basics in a sleek, fashionable, younger-skewing way, and trying to sell it as a grand step forward. Needless to say, that’s difficult to buy with Vamp, but at least there’s the ol’ MagPark Magic to see things catch flight, right?
…well, maybe not. If there’s one thing that Vamp does above anything else, it’s prove just how limited Magnolia Park’s supply of mojo can be. Maybe it doesn’t even work outside of pop-punk; that’s certainly a possibility, based on this. Because if you take away genre qualifiers and boil things down to their essences, Vamp is really no different in spirit from Baku’s Revenge, an album that could get its hooks in surprisingly well. Both are a product of pre-packaged genre ideas and themes stitched together, with the heaviest onus placed on blowing them up to anthemic levels. The problem with Vamp is that it doesn’t particularly take to that methodology too much. Maybe nu-metal just doesn’t have the same propensity for a galvanising shock as pop-punk does. Or maybe it’s because Magnolia Park are fixated on the same low-slung, mid-paced nu-metal gait throughout that really shoots their efforts in the foot, multiple times over.
On some level, the creative shortfalls prove far more chronic, and far less enjoyable, honestly. Vamp definitely seems longer and more drawn-out as a result, feeling the twin-headed brunt of its singular pace and lack of significant new ideas. Apparently this is supposed to be a concept album, though you’d never tell without prior knowledge when mental anguish and toxic relationships are served up as primary themes, barely any garnish to speak of. The closest that Vamp comes is on Omen, where the break in the song actually slots in some narrative and world-building that’s barely present anywhere else. If it is, it’s not long before it’ll sink into the gloop of Magnola Park’s typical theming. On Worship, Vana might be voicing the story’s cyborg-vampire main character; she also might just be playing an alt-girl that the online gooners would want to step on them. Neither is out of purview, to be honest.
At least the band themselves are giving everything some real effort, the star signifier that this isn’t merely a tossed-off venture. It’s a component of Magnolia Park that’s always useful to have; even if the superglue hooks are missing, you can always count on that to pull something back. And for as off-the-mark as Vamp can be, the presentation is never an issue. Magnolia Park have actually taken to nu-metal rather well (regardless of how frivolously ‘gothic’ has been used as a descriptor around this album), in terms of tone and a suitable heaviness, and the overall feel they foster. The inescapable production is a given, but at least it’s stylised to feel necessary, rather than just slathered on for contemporaneity’s sake. Vamp has the slightest touch of Bring Me The Horizon’s cybernetic feel if you squint at it, which does make sense in a ‘modern nu-metal’ context. And, as always, Joshua Roberts runs away as Magnolia Park’s MVP, the kind of powerhouse singer that, even if only a certain degree, justifies the existence of whatever he appears on.
On Vamp, however, his contributions are carrying a greatly diminished weight. All of the band’s are, leaving the narrow sliver of light where Magnolia Park’s success lives all the more precarious. With just one variable changed, they become bland and stagnant. On an entire album of that, its magnitude only gets hammered in more and more. Maybe pop-punk truly is the only home where Magnolia Park can excel, propped up by flecks of outside sources to facilitate their self-confidence. If Vamp is any indication—an album that drags away more from its creators than it can ever give back—that’s exactly true.
For fans of: Point North, Wind Walkers, TX2
‘Vamp’ by Magnolia Park is out now on Epitaph Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
