It’s no low bar set for the young Dayton, Ohio, lads of Hawthorne Heights, as they try to outdo their gold-selling debut The Silence in Black and White with their new release If Only You Were Lonely. But considering how truly appalling that debut was, the band can only go up.

That their newest album manages to be so much better than their debut, and still terrible, is merely an accolade to how bad it was.

Throughout the album, it is clear this is a repeat album, but it is more than just that. There are plenty of annoyingly catchy and formulaic pop-music choices available, especially in the emo-pop scene, but this album feels like the band decided to take the songs it used on its first album and simply try again. The album’s first single, “Saying Sorry,” even features a pre-chorus with exactly the same melody as the band’s elevator, “Ohio is for Lovers.”

Perhaps more disappointing than the cookie-cutter screams and exaggerated hooks is just how immature the lyrics are.

Lead singer JT Woodruff shows little growth from the band’s 2004 debut. Though the band’s target audience is no doubt greasy-haired, high school teens, it’s just so hard to excuse the band for such obviously over dramatic phrases such as “It’s serious just like heart attacks,” or even “And when I feel the stress, I’m lonely and depressed.”

Woodruff’s weakness is never as apparent, or unbearable, as it is on the album’s ballad-finale “Decembers.” The booming and broken down layered guitars featured on the rest of the album aren’t even there to save him.

Keeping with the troubled-teen tradition, the album is chock-full of cliche, self-mutilation phrases. Of course, not in the artistic and honest way like the Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation.” Instead, we get throwaway slogans such as “Let’s write our names with the blood that’s in our cheeks.” For instance, the tune “Dead in the Water” is a song about cutting yourself to your favorite song.

Incredibly though, the band has polished the formula. Overall, the sound quality of the album is distinctly improved. The vocals are clearer and the growling seems less, well, random. Fans of the genre will likely consider the breakdowns and heavy riffs as the only elements salvaging the album. This second effort may be cliche, immature and downtrodden, but somehow, it is actually better than their first.

What’s so terrible is not that the album simply sucks; it’s that something so detrimental to society could be so celebrated.

Hawthorne Heights’ first effort made them nearly as well-revered as their Victory Records comrades Taking Back Sunday. With this next album, however, it is clear Hawthorne Heights has run out of things to replicate in its own name, and therefore chooses to simply copy itself.

Unfortunately for us, the band makes no effort to do anything original, or to improve for that matter. In fact, if there’s one single element that could be credited to the downfall of American creativity in the 21st century, it would certainly be bands like Hawthorne Heights and their insistence on suffocating music as an art form.

But of course, you’ll hear no complaints from the MySpace.com and PureVolume.com world.

– By Adam Z. Winer