Deadmau5’ Album Title Goes Here continues in the tradition of previous albums, 4×4=12 and For Lack of a Better Name. Just like its predecessors, Album Title Goes Here is chock-full of watered-down house tracks that have made Deadmau5, a.k.a Joel Zimmerman, incredibly successful. Album Title Goes Here might seem like an arrogant or even lazy choice for a title, but it suits the album’s content.
“Veldt” relies on an ’80s style synth line so generic that it makes you wonder why it wasn’t titled “Calvin Harris Song Title Goes Here.” Zimmerman dusts off My Chemical Romance front man Gerard Way for the faux indie-rocker “Professional Griefers,” which features an over-compressed indie rock riff that is reminiscent of a neutered Franz Ferdinand track. It’s been a while since the heyday of My Chemical Romance, and Way puts in a valiant effort on this track. “Just give me a life to bleed/Another world outside that’s full of/All the awful things that I made,” he sings with the same earnestness he displayed while his band was still popular.
Unfortunately for Zimmerman, the combination of these lyrics and Way’s cameo makes “Professional Griefers” wholly entertaining to anyone who hates My Chemical Romance. Perhaps the song is actually a latent manifestation of Zimmerman’s fears of irrelevancy.
Eventually, Deadmau5’ Album Title Goes Here starts to feel like a painfully oblivious victory lap. But hey, if you’re on top of the world why change a thing? Unfortunately, it seems that this mentality didn’t work out too well for Gerard Way.
—JP Kaczur
