Artist: Shivar
Title: Astraia
Genre: Dark Rock
Release Date: 9th September 2022
Label: Self-released
Review Flash
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. Promoting your new album by proudly proclaiming you came 4th once, in a “Battle of the Bands” competition, is similar to a restaurant displaying its hygiene certificate from three years ago. No-one cares. And citing influences as lofty as SMASHING PUMPKINS and PARADISE LOST only makes for poor comparisons, however individual the intentions. There are attempts here at producing, occasionally, a decent enough heft of guitar based gothic rock with metal aspirations, as on the I-wish-we-were-NIGHTWISH ‘Moonchild’. But it also sinks to the most dreadful of sludgy riffing and cliché on the excruciating ‘Roses And Cigarettes’, a song so bleakly awful it’ll take your breath. Amazingly, there is worse to come - the lyrical horror-show of ‘The Automatic Frankenstein’. Stop giggling at the back. This is no laughing matter.
Conclusion: One can only presume “Battle of the Bands” that year had just the four entrants.
Rating: 3 / 10
