Daughtry – Cage To Rattle (2018) Review

Cage To Rattle ends a five-year gap between studio albums, arriving as Daughtry’s shortest full-length to date: ten tracks, 38 minutes, no padding on paper.

After Baptized divided opinion, the band spoke about stepping away to reset and spend more time at home — and the comeback pitch was clear: a record with more groove, more modern texture, and (supposedly) a return of guitars.

It’s good to have them back.

The problem is that Cage To Rattle doesn’t quite deliver the version of “back” it advertises.

“We knew early on that we wanted to bring back heavy guitars…”

– Chris Daughtry

The Jacquire King Shift

Daughtry hired Jacquire King — a producer with a track record in modern, radio-ready rock — and the change is immediate.

This is a sleek, adult-alternative leaning take on the band’s sound: thick layers, tight control, guitars that are present but often sanded down into texture rather than impact. It moves Daughtry further away from their traditional post-grunge base into something which resembles mellow, “easy listening” adult alt, with rock gestures used more as seasoning than as the main course.

There’s also a genuine sonic expansion here. Elvio Fernandes’ keyboards and synth colour give the album an atmospheric frame that Daughtry didn’t have on the earlier records, and the new line-up (including Brandon Maclin on drums) brings a different sense of pocket.

That’s the trade-off in a sentence: more texture, less crunch.

Just Found Heaven

At its best, Cage to Rattle suggests the band could make this pop-rock hybrid stick if they committed harder to the songs.

Stuff Of Legends is the clearest win: the beat hits, the riff has bite, and the chorus finally gives Chris Daughtry the kind of runway his voice deserves.

Elsewhere, the winding Back In Time brings a retro groove that suits their blue-collar warmth, while Bad Habits delivers one of the album’s biggest hooks without feeling like it’s straining for crossover.

And when the album finally leans into scale rather than softness, it catches fire. The brooding Gravity builds a proper sense of lift, and White Flag closes the record with the closest thing to genuine heft on the tracklist — indeed, it compounds the frustation of Daughtry’s obsession with pivoting to pop, because you’re reminded just how effective they are as a rock unit.

"One hand reaching for the sky,
One hand holding on for life."

WHITE FLAG

Bad Habits

The frustration isn’t that Daughtry went modern. It’s that the polish often replaces personality.

Cage To Rattle is at its weakest when it slows down. Lacklustre tracks like Just Found Heaven and As You Are aim for uplift, but the execution is so smoothed-out that they struggle to even leave a dent.

On earlier records, Chris Daughtry could carry a softer track with nothing but a melody and a bruised vocal. Here, the sheen can make the slower songs feel weightless — as if the arrangement is doing everything except giving the chorus something to bite into.

This frustration can be summed up by the lyrics to the title track, which carry a layer of grit the production lacks.

"We all have a cage to rattle,
This just might be the death of me."

CAGE TO RATTLE

Singles, Reset, Reality

The album rollout tried to sell a rock-leaning return.

Backbone surfaced online first, then Deep End arrived as the official lead single.

Meanwhile, Cage To Rattle debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and at No. 14 on the UK Albums Chart.

These are respectable numbers, but not the kind that signal a full-scale relaunch. More telling is what followed — this would be Daughtry’s final album on RCA, which makes the record feel less like a new chapter and more like a band still searching for stable ground after Baptized.

End of the Road

In the years after Cage To Rattle, frontman Chris Daughtry has been noticeably more candid about what went on behind the scenes.

He’s said that the album was originally pitched to him as a return to rock — a quiet apology from RCA, who had pushed for an ill-conceived pop record last time out — and Jacquire King was brought in as part of that “back to guitars” brief.

Once the recording sessions were in motion, however, that clarity didn’t hold.

In later interviews, Daughtry has talked about a revolving cast of label “suits” and A&R voices cycling through the project, each arriving with a new set of priorities. The cumulative effect, in his telling, was a slow dilution of the original intent — a record that began as a clean reset and became compromised by too many outside hands.

That experience helped push Daughtry toward a bigger decision — after fulfilling their five-album deal with Cage to Rattle, they decided to part ways with RCA/19 and move forward outside the major-label machine.

“Our original A&R guy said, “We want you to make a fuckin’ rock record!” and we were thrilled. He got replaced by the label a week into the sessions, and then the souls were ripped from our songs. I stood in the control room yelling about how we want this album to sound, but they wouldn’t listen. On the last day, I turned to the band and I told them that I no longer cared if we got offered a new deal after this. I wanted out.”

– Chris Daughtry

Daughtry – Cage To Rattle

The overriding feeling here isn’t disappointment so much as irritation.

Cage to Rattle has enough quality to show Daughtry can still write, but all too often it sands down the very edges that made them matter in the first place.

A tighter, punchier version of this sound exists inside the album (you hear it in Stuff Of Legends, Gravity, White Flag). The rest feels like a band still negotiating how pop they want to be — and how much of their original audience they’re willing to risk in the process.