According to themselves, they play "New Wave Of Gothic Metal", which is self defined as "a new inspiration toward darkwave & gothic atmospheres, featuring electro-shaped sounds surrounded by powerful 7 string guitars. A mixture of romantic emotions with aggressive guitars riffing and heavy drum patterns".

Unfortunately although guitars are present and hard at some points, they have a restricted role. Dave and Victor are responsible for all music and lyrics writing. Dave's vocals is one of the main reasons for this faulty romantic style.

The first four songs are faster, more vigorous and qualitative, among them "So Far" seems to distinguish. While there are some songs, which are, flat and uninspired like "Crushed", "Forever". Some tracks start satisfactory enough, but the development is deckling. However unfortunately the main characteristic of this release is that all songs are more or less mawkish and sometimes this becomes excessive ("Shadows In My Love", "Hate Loving Heart", "Shades Of Grey"). The last song is U2's cover "With Or Without You". Unfortunately guys, Bono's voice is unique and the comparison with the original is overwhelming.

The music direction is obvious even from the excessive "love-hurting" (yet not so naïve) lyrics like: "Oh my lonely darkest days", "So far from your heart, babe, darling", "You hurt me like a knife", "Oh baby you left me alone" etc which cause aversion to an average "mature" fan.

Generally speaking this release is not rubbish. There are some partly good elements like: some good melodies and ideas, basic structure, nice instrumentation, skillful enough musicians, but the way they use their abilities and ideas is towards a love hurt or at least to a "silk" direction, which is also irrelevant to metal. I can't understand the reason why an average Heavy (even Gothic) Metal fan should bother his ears with this release. I would recommend it (with reservation) only to the fanatics of "Him".

written by Panayiotis Papandreopoulos

Playing time: 58.10