Another submittal, another bizarre European entry from a highly produced but unimpressive group going nowhere.

They caught our attention because of their mention of gothic/post-punk influences we love; that familiar Bauhaus, Joy Division, The Cure goth grandfathers trio. Granted we haven’t really moved on since then, nor have many of our Gen X friends and colleagues that are happy to continue looking for ‘deleted Smiths singles’, as they play the first 3 Cure, 3 Joy Division, and the five or so studio records by Bauhaus ad infinitum (and of course as purists they’ve got the first few New Order, Love and Rockets, and all the later Cure records but they don’t really get much spin), however, we’d think a group from Glasgow Scotland would have. There should be a whole laundry list of obscure British goth groups since then, even those that may directly ape the 3 grannies, that they know about but we don’t. Or maybe this is just their way of trying to relate to what they think we might actually know.

In any case it doesn’t work. They don’t even sound like a poor man’s version of any of these greats. Their music is twenty first century production and perhaps seventies post punk vocals. They’re probably trying very hard to write seventies post punk melodies for their vocals, but again, not working. Some of the tunes border on the interesting, like the instrumental ‘The Core’, but it’s more of an electronic noise curiosity than what they’re trying (or say they’re trying) to do.

What is interesting, at least in theory, is the fact that all the songs on this their debut ep are about Chernobyl. However interesting the subject might be though, this isn’t anywhere near as good as the mini-series that came out a couple months ago. There’s no real insight or genuine emotion from the lyrics (that are clearly about Chernobyl themes)… witness for example ‘Caesium 137’. No we don’t know what that is and honestly we’re not going to look it up because we’re sure we’ve heard about it at some other point and it’s a contaminating isotope that resulted from the Chernobyl meltdown fallout (sorry, we know no ones really sure if it was a meltdown, an explosion, or… who knows — write about that, the mystery, the uncertainty, the fact that some of the people that worked there were denying anything at all happened up to the point — whatever. We’re not doing your homework for you. Just saying that while the subject matter is interesting, what you’ve written about it is not. You can’t just take some really dark subject matter, sing about it with downtrodden goth vocals and expect it to be anything).

And then there’s the clearly trying to be their ‘Love will Tear us Apart’ “Pripyat Love Song”… this ain’t that. Even if they’d done it first, this wouldn’t have claimed any place in that zone whatsoever. It is, instead, a poor imitation of a classic that sounds more like a song that was written by The National (I can sing along ‘nowhere I thought I’d be by now my head is a buzzing 3 star hotel’ easier than any actual post punk song) and backed up by a slowed down Depeche Mode track… btw it’s ok to admit you like Depeche Mode at this point. Point of fact we’d respect you far more if… ah not worth the ‘ink’.

It’s entirely possible that someday this will be their embarrassing debut wherein they tried to ape their heroes on their way to honing their own sound. Even in that case, however, if the lack of songwriting talent evident on this ep continues, their original sounds will still be marred by, well, suckage. Sorry kids this ain’t doing anything for me.

-xxStevexx