German melodic death metal / metalcore band with an incredibly generic name; lyrical themes are veganism, liberation and the three xxx’s are sometimes attributed to them. It sounds dead boring when you look upon it like that doesn’t it? Indeed first couple of times I heard the group’s name I had absolutely no wish to delve any deeper and certainly could not give a flying one about checking them out, after all we have one Earth Crisis already and they do quite a good job without being imitated don’t they? But this is not an Earth Crisis clone as I discovered when for one reason or other (probably lack of available reviewers) I was forced to check them out for fourth album ‘Manifesto.’ To say it blew me away is a big understatement, it went on to be one of my albums of the year in 2008 and I was forced onto various shopping sites and secured previous two albums ‘Wolves and ‘Earth.Revolt’ Whilst neither of these had quite the same effect I certainly liked them a lot and it took me a while to gear up for pressing play on ‘Bizarro World’ as I so wanted it to be another stunner of an album.
The most interesting thing as the album starts is song title ‘Virus Jones’ which has me wondering what it is about. Chunky guitar and bass swirl away and the yapping bite of Johannes Prem’s vocals come at you. This is flamboyant but standard metalcore and I feel rotten wishing Johannes would belt up. My prayers are answered as it is not long before the angelic yet forceful vocals of the bands secret weapon come into play. Sabine Weniger has fast become one of my favourite female vocalists, she is both beautiful and powerful and sends a shiver down my spine and makes my heart melt. It is also a voice that has the band playing festivals like Belgium’s Female Voices Festival and puts this band at the top of the game. It is not just down to her though, there is a great and passionate sense of melody behind numbers like ‘State Of Decay’ and the band are also adept at programming some electronics into things keeping the music ever changing. The lyrics here are all very positive, perhaps a bit too happy for my normal listening and yes I should point out they are all delivered in English.
The group are also more than happy to go outside the constraints of metal per se. Last album they had an excellent rap section and here on ‘Falling Skywards’ there is a bangra style drum rhythm tapped out. By now I am enjoying this so much I am even more than happy when Johannes snarls back in, the rabid beast hits the mark along with everything else. They do a pretty good ballad too. ‘You Left Me Dead’ case in point, does not feel all slushy and has a certain bombast about it whereas the power and jagged fretwork behind ‘Brutal Romance’ does just what it states…….
As I write this review the band have posed a question on their Facebook. “Metallischer Pop? Poppiger Metal?” It is a valid question and easily translated and it does highlight there is a strong commercial sense behind the music here. I wonder how big they actually are in Germany, with songs like these they deserve to be massive and it is annoying that over here in England to the best of my knowledge they have still not even played live. Personally I think they would be a perfect band to open for Lacuna Coil but with songs like the belted out ‘Renegade’ suspect they would wipe the floor with them.
These 11 songs do not overstay their mark all hitting an average 3-4 minute mark and indeed the album seems done with all too quickly at 40 minutes. I am not sure yet whether this is going to have quite the impact that ‘Manifesto’ did on me but I do know that a download copy is not good enough for me and I will be getting this on disc myself. Cannot really give it a better heads up than that, cracking stuff!
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