When Michigan post-hardcore outfit Chiodos dispensed with the services of frontman Craig Owens in the same week that he broke up with his girlfriend of three years in 2009, a year after the troubled vocalist had attempted suicide by taking an overdose, you'd have been forgiven for thinking that the guy was headed towards an inevitable downward spiral.....

Forgiveness may be a word far from the minds of those people closest to Owens during those times, but for fans of great music the debut album from his new band Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows (cheekily abbreviated to D.R.U.G.S.) will present them with but one word - wow.

So is this a case of forgive and forget? No chance. Owens' lyrics on this (kinda) self-titled album are written in blood and tears in a showing of real heart-on-sleeve openness that, now sober and clean of any alcoholic or chemical influence, he can share in a cathartic exercise in which one emotion rises above all others - enthusiasm.

Album opener 'If You Think This Song Is About You, It Probably Is' may be a blunt statement aimed at obvious targets but even that pales in comparison to 'I'm The Rehab, You're The Drugs' with its "And now your friends are enemies" lyric. Haymakers aimed at the people who believed that his reputation far outweighed his talent - "If you had a sex life would you ever worry about mine" - and slaying naysayers on 'Stop Reading, Start Doing Pushups' make the lyrics in the CD booklet of 'D.R.U.G.S.' a compelling read, but they would be just words if they weren't wrapped around some of the most gorgeous songs to be released so far this year.

Owens has surrounded himself with a great band (guitarists Nick Martin and Matt Good from Underminded and From First To Last respectively, bassist Adam Russell from Story Of The Year and drummer Aaron Stern of Matchbook Romance) but it is, perhaps, the couple of other names that are associated with this new band, formed only last year, that threaten to propel this album into the mass consciousness. Pete Wentz is the first, for it is his record label, Decaydance, that D.R.U.G.S. are signed to. The second name is producer/writer John Feldmann whose influence over the album is massive.

Feldmann is famed for his work with the likes of Good Charlotte, Panic! At The Disco and The Used and, while there are certainly pockets of Panic-esque sound scattered around the album, it is the latter band that really come to mind over the eleven tracks that make up this record that has expertly taken the bad and reshaped it into good. There's a whiff of Daryl Palumbo throughout the album too, Glassjaw in spirit yet Head Automatica in sound given the intense infectiousness of this set of songs, certainly destined for bigger, and better, things.

In little over forty minutes Craig Owens has transcended his previous band and, hopefully, his demons. D.R.U.G.S., as a band and an album, is a real success story. Given the right exposure these songs will soar as they are from a vocalist and band who have breathed in despair and now breath out hope.

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