SHAZAM

The third studio album from Canadian arena rockers Three Days Grace treads familiar ground, presenting 12 slabs of the kind of reliable, accessible and serviceable hard rock that will always have an audience. 2006's One-X dealt heavily with vocalist Adam Gontier's personal demons, a theme that continues on Life Starts Now, albeit with a hint of sunlight. With a sound that lands somewhere in between Breaking Benjamin, Collective Soul, and Godsmack, (Gontier sounds like a less volatile Trent Reznor) Life Starts Now treats the well-worn metal themes of anger, isolation, heartache, and redemption with the kind of begrudging respect they deserve, pumping out a competent flurry of fist-bump anthems ("Break," "Bully") and world-weary, midtempo rockers ("World So Cold," "Last to Know" that are so painfully earnest that one can almost hear director Michael Bay pitching them to the studio for inclusion on the soundtracks for his next ten Transformers sequels. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi