Tuesday, February 4, 2014

DEAD BY APRIL: ”Let The World Know”

Rating: RRR
Label: Universal 2014
Review by Kimmo Toivonen

With their third album, Dead By April proudly stay on the strange path they've been on... Their music is a rather curious mix of death metal and boyband pop. Yes folks, they are mixing hardcore screamo vocals, blast beats and crunchy guitars with keyboard loops and Backstreet Boys-esque vocals and sugary sweet choruses. See, I told you they are a strange band!

I think DBA might be onto something, but somehow I don't think they've really found the right balance. At times the mix of metallic aggression and ultra-melodic choruses works nicely, but at times they sound like one of those "mashup" videos... And as melodic the choruses are, some of them are a bit too repetitive and similar to each other. The clean vocalist Zandro Santiago sounds like he's about to burst into tears in every one of these songs, and I am not particulary impressed by the very processed nature of his vocals.

The highlights for me were ”Beautiful Nightmare” and "Done With Broken Hearts", to name a couple. Each one of these songs did have a decent chorus, but maybe they could've used some additional help to make them great. Max Martin maybe?

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