It’s repetitive and redundant. It’s repetitive and redundant. It’s repetitive and redundant.

See how annoying that is? That’s the same feeling you get after listening to the first three songs of Three Days Grace’s new album, Life Starts Now.

After a three-years hiatus, the band has returned with its third album that promised better jams sessions and more guitar solos. It promised to be better than its previous installments by the band, which were unoriginal, paint-by-the-numbers records that got a lot of brouhaha because their post-grunge/alternative metal sound spoke to the mainstream rockers. However, this promise won’t be fulfilled on Life Starts Now.

The band generated a lot of hype in 2003 upon the release of its first, self-titled album, including the widely known single, “I Hate Everything About You,” and again in 2006 with the second album that produced hits like “Animal I Have Become” and “Never Too Late.”

But for an album title so ambitious and hopeful, the song titles and lyrics are at odds. Life Starts Now instead illustrated the head banger’s heartache: a compilation of bad relationships and new outlooks on life (from the point of view of the trailer park). It’s obvious from the opening track, “Bitter Taste,” that Three Days Grace hasn’t improved at all, but instead has produced more typical average work. The song, like many other Three Days Grace songs, starts with a simple riff, and lead singer Adam Gontier follows shouting a routine verse. Give-or-take an interesting bridge every now and again, the album is relatively stale.

Following the fate of what could be considered to be the band’s post-grunge cousin Nickelback, Three Days Grace has sold out to its genre and become mainstream rock. With Life Starts Now, it has reached straight out to the fans, handing them cookie-cutter songs pre-designed to be hit singles.

“Lost In You” is an example of a song that already has a reserved spot at the top of the charts and “World So Cold” is another unfailing attempt to appeal to the masses, but the vocals and chord progressions are contrived and ineffective. The lyrics force Gontier to sound like he’s trying to imply a catchy hook, which leaves the listener bored and unchallenged by the band’s spoon-fed unoriginality.

Three Days Grace has the nasty habit — common among “dumb” rockers — of offering up the common man’s anthem, something that is usually a five-word phrase to shout over and over again. Songs like the album’s first single, “Break,” along with “Bully,” and the title track, are examples of third-rate songwriting with poor craftsmanship. They are attempts to make up for a lack of inspiration, but instead sound like recycled songs from years ago. We’ve heard it before, and if this album catches mainstream wind we’ll more than likely hear it again. If this is the best the band can put together in three years, maybe they should reconsider their next move in the industry.

Life Starts Now fails in all aspects of music production, however (and unfortunately), it is likely the album will do well in the market thanks to the band’s well-known name and few successful singles. Will this album be certified platinum like its antecedents? It’s possible, but artistically, it’s not deserved.

As repetitive and redundant as Three Days Grace may be, they certainly are entertaining and the album should do well.

2 stars out of 5.