Fall Out Boy’s second greatest hits collection finds them in much fitter shape than their first. While Believers Never Die volume one (released 10 years ago, almost to the day) was filled with the emo enormo-singles that allowed the band to swap Chicago’s box clubs for MTV, its release came just days before the confused announcement of the band’s 2009 hiatus, with it later becoming apparent that all four members needed a time-out from a set-up that was beginning to turn toxic.
That extended cooling-off period was broken by the surprise release of My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light ’Em Up) in spring 2013. It was a song that unapologetically advertised a new direction, all super-modern and slick with hip-hop energy. In case anyone wasn’t getting the message, rapper 2 Chainz turned up in the video with a flamethrower to torch the band’s old records. It served as the clear gateway to Fall Out Boy 2.0, and it’s here that Believers Never Die Volume Two starts rolling – picking out the highlights of a six-year stretch that covers the albums Save Rock And Roll (2013), American Beauty/American Psycho (2015), M A N I A (2018) and beyond.
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While much was made of the distance between the quartet’s emo-rock roots and the matured pop of Save Rock And Roll, perhaps the biggest takeaway from this collection is how much Fall Out Boy have changed and progressed again since then. The tracklist plays a part in this by running chronologically, which means that after the aforementioned opener, we get the oversized, symphony-led theatrics of The Phoenix and the blissed-out beats of Alone Together, before Young Volcanoes proves that vocalist Patrick Stump can do acoustic soul better than whoever’s at the top of the charts.