Artists: Antivote
Title: Visions of Crime and Pain
Genre: Dark Electro
Release Date: 12th December 2014
Label: Echozone
Flash Review
Let me start with a certain kind of confusion, that hit me when I read on the band´s Facebook page about their musical influences or partialities – FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM? SISTERS? THE CURE? I had to cast a second glance for being sure that it was the right album I was listening to, cause there´s no, absolutely no intersection of the above and the music of the Saxonian threesome, whose stylistics you can most likely place in the watery climes of Dark Electro. In the proximity of the shore, in dead water. Musically it seems all relatively solid. They know the recipe, written down from so many before. The typical synthetic drums, atmospheric carpets made of sounds speckled with some pianos here and some choirs there but it feels all very unimaginative, uninspired and somehow it lacks any kind of tension. There´s one mood crawling through the whole album and even that is too pale for saving the own territory. Not that there´s no try to switch from Synth Pop to Industrial to EBM and back, but it doesn´t work out convincingly. Not anywhere near.
So far so mediocre but it´s main blemish are the main vocals. Beside its wretched skills of singing (what is more a kind of throaty whispering, faintly reminiscent of Mr. Spilles timbre but without it´s emotion and energy) it is the discrepancy between the music´s (occasionally nice) melodic contours and the vocal´s struggle to sound threatening and gloomy somehow, what sounds unintentionally funny when a strong Saxonian accent meets holey English language skills for intoning lyrics full of despair and Weltschmerz.
Conclusion: For being fair I have to mention that ‘Visions Of Crime And Pain’ (what an ironic title!) is the band´s debut and maybe a few things grow over time. I keep my fingers crossed. For now it is more than indicative that the most passable song is the opener - an instrumental.
Rating: 3 / 10
