This Is Only a Test is the sixth studio album by the Chicago-based pop punk band the Smoking Popes, released March 15, 2011 through Asian Man Records.
It is a concept album, with all of the songs written from the perspective of a single teenage boy dealing with the growing pains of adolescence.
[11] Rick Anderson of Allmusic gave This Is Only a Test four stars out of five, remarking that "While [the songs] deal with some predictable themes — obsessive and unrequited love ('Wish We Were,' 'Diary of a Teen Tragedy'); ambivalence about the future ('College'); mono ('I've Got Mono'), and rock & roll itself ('Punk Band') — [Josh] Caterer addresses them with a refreshing lack of either eye-rolling or rhapsodic mystification.
"[1] He also praised the band's musical maturity, noting "the blend of smoothly crooning vocals and meat-and-potatoes, punk-inflected pop that has always been the hallmark of the Smoking Popes' sound and has only become tighter, richer, and more hook-wise over the years.
And Caterer's voice, perhaps the most tunefully expressive in the entire pop-punk subgenre, brings across the way small things grow gigantic under the influence of hormones.
"[12] Bryne Yancey of Alternative Press was critical of the band's musical divergences on the album, stating that "Unfortunately, much like adolescence itself, This Is Only a Test isn't without its moments of awkwardness.
Whether it's piano-heavy power ballads ('College'), spoken-word verses written as diary entries ('Diary of a Teen Tragedy') or five-minute electronic tracks about not being able to participate in P.E.
class ('Excuse Me, Coach'), Smoking Popes occasionally veer off their tried and true template of catchy, soulful pop-punk, and do so with mixed results.
"[2] Tori of Punknews.org had similar criticisms, saying of "Excuse Me, Coach" that "I'm not sure what they were thinking, and I'm not sure I want to know", and calling the spoken-word verses in "Diary of a Teen Tragedy" "downright cringeworthy": "The reality remains that the Caterer brothers are not high schoolers.