Heartwork
| The Used
Heartwork
Heartwork is the eighth studio album by American rock band the Used. It was released on April 24, 2020 on Big Noise. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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NME
‘Heartwork’, with its big choruses, is a stark contrast to 2017’s ‘The Canyon’, a gruelling art experiment, and this sense of bounce-back offers the album a free-spirited playfulness.
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Kerrang!
Utah’s post-hardcore princes The Used spill their guts as they surge back to the future on gloriously polished eighth offering, Heartwork.
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Everblack Media
A lot of hard work has obviously gone into this and it is an amazing album. It’s equal parts fun & bouncy and equal parts angstyand aggressive. A fine addition to an already immaculate repertoire of work from one of the scenes longest lasting bands.
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Wall of Sound
Overall, Heartwork has helped me to fall back in love with The Used all over again. The band sound so tight and it really harks back to their earlier records In Love and Death and Lies For The Liars and I am 110% here for it. The production quality is also really high on this record and you can tell that the band and John Feldmann worked super hard for the record to sound the way that it does. I’ve never been as excited for a release from The Used until now.
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Screamer Magazine
Heartwork brings that perfect balance of edgy, dark lyrical content paired with catchy, playful melodies that fans have grown to know and love.
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Distorted Sound Magazine
Heartwork nonetheless unfortunately falls short of THE USED’s incredible legacy, thanks to a somewhat muddled musical canvas featuring a touch too much experimentation that doesn’t really land with the impact the band probably believe it does.
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Bring the Noise UK
It feels big, accomplished and evolved – the perfect summary of Heartwork overall.
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Mind Noise Network
Heartwork is a truly remarkable album from The Used and is evidence of just how much this band still has to give to not only the alternative rock scene, but to music in general. This album is rich with influences, inspiration and innovation.
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Insert Review Here
The Used just have a distinguished, unique, household sound. It's going to be extremely hard to top this in the future as it truly feels like the band have achieved their best work yet.
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All Music
one of the Used's catchiest, most direct and hard-hitting albums to date, one of those packed sets that sounds like a greatest-hits collection.
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Sputnik Music
An overproduced, inconsistent mess of an album that runs on for way too long.
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Kill Your Stereo
Yet with filler noticeably felt and an equal measure of hits and misses, ‘Heartwork’ is sometimes questionable and worn thin, despite it being a mostly comforting sonic road-map of everywhere the group has previously charted.
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Alt Corner
This album is probably the most natural I’ve heard in a while. They’re not pretending the last seven records haven’t happened, they’re embracing them and they’re taking what they’ve learned and they’re making an album with their heart and soul in it.
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3 Songs & Out
'Heartwork' sprawls itself over so many different genres but still feels extremely tight and cohesive. This could be the defining album of the decade and we’re only four months in. This album is unforgettable.
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Backseat Mafia
The Used’s eighth album sees them mixing things up, but ending with a satisfying amalgamation that makes it their most interesting album in the last few years.
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Alternative Addiction
They show some maturity here sure, but they also show that they have the propensity to make music that their fans will love. There’s no redefinition with The Used on this album, and there doesn’t need to be. They make what they make, and they do it well.
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Hysteria Magazine
It’s very easy to find yourself falling down a rabbit hole with Heartwork, quickly realising this isn’t an album you should be picking apart, rather it’s one you will find you’ll allow yourself to be enveloped by and enjoying it for what it is.
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Highlight Magazine
The songs on this album are heavy, emotion-filled and honest. The Used excel in creating new anthems that fans will be able to rock out to at their future shows.
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Resurget Magazine
The album finishes off with the biggest sounds and full instrumentation and drive that fill your listening room with angst, emotion, and intellectual songwriting that make you wanna check that you had your player on repeat for the album.
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Concert Crap
As soon as Heartwork ended, I immediately wanted to listen to it again to absorb more of it. The Used put a more modern take on the album but their older sound definitely shines through in some places.
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The Prelude Press
The Used have been constantly reinventing themselves since their inception, and Heartwork is simply the next chapter in their story.
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Gigwise
Hellish lyrics, buoyant choruses and memorable ballads.
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Gig Goer
Heartwork is a highly diverse album, splashed with influences from many now popular genres and modern sounds. It has something to suit everybody’s taste and it might also lead you to discover your new guilty pleasure in the form of a new and strange rock flavour.
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Ghost Cult
Heartwork, with its sixteen songs clocking in around 46 minutes, is a lot to take in one sitting. There are songs that are going to be skipped but where there are weaknesses there are strengths. After eight albums, The Used can produce any album they want, yet they manage to stay relevant, have fun along the way and invite some friends to party.
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Punktastic
it’s a truly wonderful piece of art that expertly showcases everything this band is and ever was. The world might be on lockdown right now, but this album will take your head to a place where lockdowns don’t exist – a place full of sunshine, friends, and all the best memories from the good old days. Who doesn’t want that?
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Matt Derraugh
Artwork ultimately is what you would call either a “complete” record or damn close. It covers a wide spectrum of emotions and a wider spectrum of sonic corners to channel them through, running the gamut of the human experience from hardcore, emo, electronica to hip-hop and spoken-word poetry while keeping it totally current overall.
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The Soundcheck
Mirroring the oscillating state of the world with unwavering charm, Heartwork may not have been intended as such, but it most certainly finds itself as a sonic refuge in these uncertain times, and ultimately grants a sharp reminder for the enduring Used legacy after all this time.
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The Pop-Punk Dad
Songs aren't your typical intro, verse, chorus, repeat structure and take the listener for a ride which is exactly what HEARTWORK does from top to bottom.
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I'm Music Magazine
Having been in the game for nearly two decades, The Used have certainly earned the right to some experimentation. In this case, the band’s openness to push their musical boundaries pays off in a huge way as they’ve created an incredibly diverse yet cohesive album.
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Cryptic Rock
A culmination of everything that has come before, Heartwork draws from a zillion moments in time to place a spotlight onto the now. Not so much the socio-political times, but more their effect on us as individuals; the influence of the world’s violent noise on our hearts.
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Rocked
Overall, Heartwork adds to a long running discography of sing-along lines and heavy rhythms with some surprises thrown in. Whether it’s the electronic style or the original emo sound that made them famous, you get shades of both here.
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Discovered Magazine
‘Heartwork’, a fun, up-beat and catchy-as-hell record which perfectly encapsulates everything The Used are about as a band – enjoying themselves, writing badass multi-layered bops, and not really giving a shit.
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Alternative Addiction
They’ve had an impressive two decade run and that continues with Heartwork. They show some maturity here sure, but they also show that they have the propensity to make music that their fans will love. There’s no redefinition with The Used on this album, and there doesn’t need to be. They make what they make, and they do it well.
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High Fives & Stage Dives
For their new record, The Used enlisted some high-profile friends and delivered a record we won’t stop playing.
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Rantology 101
The album is inundated with out of place stylistic choices and a lack of memorable melodies that will inevitably leave the album in musical purgatory.
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