Paul Meany - FOREVER PHASE (2025) Hi-Res

None of the songs are bad… but this is a 12-track album that only lasts 37 mins… borderline EP.

For those who didn't know, Paul Meany has co-produced every twenty one pilots album since Trench and is the former frontman to the iconic experimental alt-rock band MUTEMATH. Back in 2024, Paul announced that he was releasing his first solo album Motivational Speaker… as you can see that is not the name of this record (he says the name no longer fit the vision of the record).

My theory is that Clancy & Breach took a lot of Paul's time and hadn't been able to give all of his focus to his solo work, so he compiled all that he had worked on the past few years and threw them together… if that's not what happened then that's how this album feels.

This tracklist features three singles "No Such Thing," "Fear On Your Side," and "Hold the Record." The song "Sooner or Later" released back in 2018 and "Prodigal" in 2024… both as MUTEMATH releases post-breakup. So already we have 5 out of 12 releases.

"Faux Hero" and "Phase Forever" are essentially repeated lyrics over transcendent production.

"Semantics" and "The Surge" are instrumentals.

So the only truly new SONGS are "Ambulance," "Scenic Route," and "Say the Word" ("Ambulance" clearly being an unrecorded MUTEMATH track), which on my purely subjective scale makes this a 6-song EP with two bonus tracks, two instrumentals, and whatever you wanna call "Faux Hero" and "Phase Forever".

Again, all these tracks are GOOD. I'm just a little disappointed with the release. I think Paul could have marketed this a little better and should have waited till he had nothing on his plate to put together a fully realized project.

Who knows… it may grow on me.