Artist: Promises
Title: In the Pharmacy
Type: Album
Label: Metal Breath Production
This curiously titled album from the Czech band Promises falls somewhere in style between heavy rock and metal. It’s not ground-breaking in any way and contains 11 competent songs. The production is primitive, due to a limited budget perhaps, but nevertheless there are some thoughtful and catchy guitar riffs in there, notably on “Beyond the Circles” and “Sanitas Animae”. The track “Eden” and “Adam and Eve” which follows have a languid instrumental attraction. “Closed Heart” ends reflectively. Instrumentally, it’s mid-paced, enabling prominence to be given to the lead singer’s emotive output. The vocals were strongly reminiscent of Axl Rose. There’s passion in them, but not a great deal of power. The lyrics have a message and they’re clear enough to hear but unfortunately they’re rather undone by the poor quality of English. Of course English isn’t the first language of the band, but even so it would have been advisable to have checked with a native English speaker as there seems to be a point being made yet some of them make no sense. It all seems to be about human weaknesses but beyond that I couldn’t say. A clue may lie in the band’s previous name, Gothic Darkness, which became Promises in 1996. As I listened to it, I imagined there to be a hard core of fans lapping up every word, while everyone else looked on, bemused. I would be an onlooker.
“In the Pharmacy” was pleasing and had some decent songs but it wasn’t outstanding. There were a number of details to be attended to – clearer lyrics, sharper vocals and more depth and individuality in general. In the meantime I’ll stick to Katatonia, with whom on this showing a clear comparison can be made.
www.promises.cz
www.metalbreath.cz
Andrew Doherty
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