This is a great album musically. Rarely does an album have so many consistently good songs. The first song "Open Your Eyes" starts with a social focus, but after that it becomes psychological navel-gazing regarding pain like most heavy metal.
It appears that this album disappoints Staind fans, but that's not surprising given how hard it would be to surpass "Break the Cycle" for popularity.
Staind is another of those bands whose talents are at least somewhat wasted, because Staind doesn't work with lyricists with anything to match their musical spirit and possibilities. It's not surprising that in the imperialist countries we have people excelling in technical forms but with nothing much to say.
We recommend to Staind and a lot of heavy metal bands to get out of psychology. Statements like that found in the song "Reality" lead nowhere: "You've drifted off somewhere alone/Somewhere that's safe, no questions here/ A quiet place where you hide from your fears."
We agree with Staind that people make a mistake by retreating to safety and comfort. The fact is that alive and alert people are deeply troubled by this time of nuclear weapons and mass environmental destruction. Those in denial are like those in a drug-induced stupor. Pain and anger may in fact be normal and necessary for entire historical periods and in any period, progress depends on how well people are able to leave established misconceptions and take up more profound truths.
There is no psychological expression without a deeper underlying cause, usually social and very rarely biological. For example, Staind is often talking about listening to criticisms from others. The subject comes up in "Could it be," which is "could it be true that your criticisms are true."
Psychology of this type is mostly the condescending product of those who believe that ordinary people cannot figure things out for themselves. Psychologists of "self-esteem" often advocate balancing criticism and praise. It's like saying, "you are one of those who cannot figure out for yourself whether or not 2+2=4, so take the criticism of others and accept some of it and reject some of it-- arbitrarily." MIM would even say the act of choosing a leader to follow is more than just "balancing" criticism and praise. There are true and false reasons to follow a leader. Progress depends exactly on how well people choose their leaders or figure everything out for themselves.
In contrast with psychologists obsessed with self-esteem, MIM would say if someone is saying 2+2=5, that persyn needs to accept 100% of criticism. Likewise, it's important to block out the mediocre who want 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 and 2+2=6 etc. When someone is right, s/he needs to block out incorrect criticisms. Adopting a psychological approach is to surrender substance.
Regarding the possibility that the song mentions, that "I say things just to disagree," this sort of thing can be an endless and futile question. Instead of asking whether the substance at hand justifies constant criticism, we have someone asking whether the motivation for disagreement is correct or not. This is a typical psychological and logical cop-out. Many are too lazy to consider substance and they prefer to attack the credibility of their critics or people they are debating with. It's like saying "2+2 is not 4 like you said, because you slept with Monica Lewinsky." In this sort of scam, everything after the word "because" is an irrelevant distraction.