How do I tell it my child? Well... let’s face the naked truth: I do not often get the chance to listen to such a bunch of bullshit! But, maybe I’m just a little bit too old for AMATRIS and their current album Before The Final Journey. With this, they simply smash the tree, bands like Theatre Of Tragedy cut off years before.
Starting from the „good & evil“-cover on the front and the „injured soldiers return“ on the back from these 96er synth-sounds to those songs‘ uninspired end-of-the-world-subjects we have nothing but a litany of clichés.
Let’s not pretend: The fact, that the male vocals both are clean and growled doesn’t make it variable: It simply is bad! Every half-professional singer may be shocked facing such a gruesome intonation. Whereas the female part doesn’t seem so pretentious, but on the other side cannot receive more than a „pleasing“. Her ambitus seldom moves above a quint (and when it does, it tends to be atonal).
With their college-gothic lyrics they spread such naive pessimistic ideas like mankind as Stupid Puppets or Waiting for the final journey. - Hoooh!
And every time, their sound comes up a little bit more „doomy“, one may think of the silently despaired Moments of My Dying Bride - and facing such a jackhammer’s staginess bite into the desk’s edge! Melodies, chords – didn’t we have it all before?! Fragile songwriting definitely is something different... Ok, ok, I better stop now! I don’t want to spoil this for anybody (everybody has to form his own opinion, right?), but at my age one shouldn’t get upset so much!