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Black metal from Finland..... You know what band this album brings to my mind? The German DIE KRUPPS. The dominance of the keyboards, the hacking beat and the heavy guitars are similar, and the singer's voice, although more growling here, suits the big picture as well. Quite a similar sound, and that's not bad. But what is bad is that this isn't such a good album. This band is responsible of the simplest guitar riffs of the years so far. In fact, I think the riffs are there all in vain - it would have been better to just let the keyboards wander all over and to back them up with only massive power-chords. They do that from time to time, and then it sounds pretty OK. But when the clumsy riffs emerge, then the listening becomes as pleasant as drinking tar. Moreover, what bothers me is the mechanical song structures. It's like songs would have been built of blocks: First this block, then this one, then this one again, then another one, what next, this one?....... It's too predictable. There's no explosive surprises. The keyboard player girl Hannamari is truely a talented one. Could it be possible to increase the role of the keyboards even more? It might be interesting and original. Now I get a feeling there's a primus piano student of the music academy playing with dirty boys who want their simplex riffs to be heard, too. There is some promising stuff here. The song Armaya begins with fascinating Mid-East [?] sounding keyboards and continues with a pretty good guitar riffing. But THEN - a weird "beep" is mixed in with the riff, and it sounds like a mouse's fart. It sounds really terrible and ruins the whole song. A pretty good song wholly is Phantasmal Paranoia. There's wild keyboards on the loose, the atmosphere is like that of Hachaturyan's Sabre Dance's or something, and the wisely used double-bassdrums sound good. Overall, I think that every good thing on this album has to do with the keyboards. All else is pretty poor.
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Neon Nights / June 2003 |
