Artist: Relate
Title: Level Up
Genre: Electronic Rock
Release Date: 5th November 2021
Label: Tangrami Records
Review Flash
Album number three for German Synth-Rock poppets RELATE, and it’s all bit of a Marmite conundrum, wandering through their peculiar musical landscape. Those who love over-dramatic and occasionally hysterical vocals sounding fresh from the eighties and gift wrapped in shoulder-padded, New Romantic and Soft-Rock splendour, will relish every morsel and hoover up the crumbs. Those who find it all a bit much will be reaching for the slightly safer territory of a good, solid, reliable strawberry jam. Songs like ‘Thief’ sound better suited to SCORPIONS, bizarrely, and lyrically ‘Ring The Alarm’ is more pre-school than poetry, with a massive chorus that almost works but is too bogged-down in cheese, dragging its rock credentials through globules of melting Cheddar. And ‘Glow’ yawns itself off into the distance by trying to be the big album closer, but ends up being a sunset on a very cloudy day.
Conclusion: If this is meant to be all a bit tongue-in-cheek and good fun, then honestly, it’s not a bad album. One suspects, however, that it is all taken very, very seriously, reducing it well below the classics and straight into amateur-dramatics.
Rating: 5 / 10
