It was 2003 when the world first got a chance to hear All Time Low. Their style has evolved over the 17 years they’ve been together and they now boast a full and accomplished catalogue of high profile songs and they tour (a lot), which has kept them at the top of their game as a performing band.

With Alex Gaskarth as the lead vocals, there is an English link to All Time Low, as he was born in Essex, but the band evolved from their US high school, with the other members, Jack Barakat, Zack Merrick and Rian Dawson all completing the line up and providing some awesome rock backing vocals along with their tight instrumentation. 

If you’re of a certain age, probably in your 30s, you’ll identify with this song a lot, mainly because we’ve all made mistakes, we all judge people and we have gone through our fair share of ups and downs. This has all led to us starting to understand who we are, and this is beautifully reflected in the lyrics of ‘Some Kind Of Disaster’. There is however an undertone of romance to this song, as well as the honest self reflection of what kind of disaster we might be as an individual. The line, ‘it's all my fault I’m still the one you want’ paints a rather lovely image of love crossing boundaries of imperfection and suggesting we all fall in love with people with lots of faults! Reassuring isn’t it! 

As a song, All Time Low have given us a raw, rock song. One that will have thousands of young bands learning the chord progressions and developing their abilities. One thing I love in this track are the drums. Their position in the mix is perfect, and you can hear how hard they’re being hit. Sitting alongside these are the guitars that spar off each other and bring in some delicate runs to break up the lyrics and break off completely in sections to give so much diversity in pace and volume. There are hints of Blink 182, even Green Day, but the vocals of Alex Gaskarth give ‘Some Kind Of Disaster’ a fuller sound and show a band that are so comfortable with who they are and what they do that their ever-growing fan base know that the songs they release are going to be catchy, accomplished and a long way away from being ‘Some Kind Of Disaster’.

 Pop punk       Pop rock 

Author: Phil Arnold

Phil Arnold is a musician, producer and music reviewer from Devon, in the South West of England. Whilst not writing music reviews, Phil also writes and records under the name of Ugbrooke.