Hey, since this is my site and all, I guess that entitles me to write my own review, right? Well, for starters I think Elva is great and I give it 5 stars. The only thing that really let me down was the exclusion of Darkside.
To tell you the truth, I wasn't expecting too much. I know, I know, I should never doubt the Law, but after all the disappointing releases of last year, I just wasn't too sure about the whole thing. And since I was trying to wait for a surprise, I hadn't really heard a lot of the demos, exept for a few of the very first ones. I was afraid it would be kind of slow since a lot of people on the Yahoo! club were saying it was, but we were all proven wrong there. There's a couple of slow songs, but a couple is a good thing. The rest of them are all rockin'.
The one thing I really hate is when a band's albums all begin to sound the same (see Blink 182 for reference). UL did a dang nice job of experimenting and making Elva unique. I love the reggae backbeats and the hints of Spanish and dance music. I guess multi-genre stuff is in right now, but most bands just do the same old rap-metal or ska-punk thing. UL's definitely got some ska with their punk in there, but in a totally different way than the usual Buck-O-Nine, Mighty Mighty Bosstones formula. I'm guessing that's thanks to Miguel who lended a hand in creating Sublime's own unique ska sound (not to mention the soliloquies, which I also thought were cool). I'm really glad it didn't sound like a copy of the black album, but it still maintained that good old UL sound.
The songwriting is great. Too many songs these days song formulaic and mediocre, and don't have any feeling in them. UL definitely gets their live energy into their albums. And you know what? To all you people who say UL aren't "punk" anymore, who says they were ever trying to be punk? They've always said they were just 90s (and 2000s) rock and roll. I'm sure if you started a band you would get really tired of playing the same kind of music over and over. Get real.
Since this is really long, I will shut up now and just say woohoo! This is a killer album (ahh, Sum 41 has poisoned my mind!!) so get off your lazy arse and go buy it!