Aha. Well, it is the natural flow of the universe that I don’t just review a whole bunch of good to great songs in a row without eventually stumbling upon some real, genuine crap in the mix. I guess I’m not being too fair to this band, though. They deserve a proper introduction! Well, as proper as I can give it. See, I can’t find too much information on the group other than the fact that they formed in Barcelona in 2003 and are still presumably together. One website describes their sound as “Melodic Heavy Metal”, which I assume means that their songs are generally driven by a firm sense of tune and melody (unlike, say, Slayer or Cannibal Corpse), yet still retain a heavy, hard sound to their instrumentation and perhaps their production methods. The single in question today comes from their album Love Songs and Other Nightmares, which I think demonstrates this appeal to the duality of melodic death metal in its entirety.

Yeah, I’ve just gotta say it: this band blows. I’ve given fair chances to several of their songs across two of their studio albums, but to be honest, I can barely tell one song apart from the other. Their instrumentation is just fine, if a bit generic, but I think where the band truly falters is in their lyricism. Take these first few lines from their song “Fantasy”: “The music makes these bodies move / They’re far too perfect to be true / I lose myself, what can I do?”. It’s just a bunch of clunky lines pasted together and clumsily arranged for the sake of a rhyme pattern, all making very little sense in the meantime. And while this particular song largely deals with dancing at a club or concert, it simply sounds absolutely lifeless. I don’t necessarily object to harder, fast-paced music set to a more pronounced melody line, but when the lyrics are pretty interchangeable with any other terrible run-of-the-mill pop song out there, maybe the artist should reconsider.

Judging from the title, one shouldn’t surprise that “The Break Up” is, in fact, a break-up song. The first verse alone leaves absolutely no room for subtlety either: “I still can see you sitting here / What are you waiting for my dear? / You know the door is over here / Just leave the keys on the shelf”. Yeah, the emotional traction of this song has as much nuance as a high schooler’s personal diary. The rest of this song stays along this same path of surface-level angst, with such unmemorable lines as “I decide the time to break up is tonight” and “I wish you’d disappear and leave me alone”. Classic.

It should be noted, though, that this could all be drawn to English possibly not being the band’s first language. I read elsewhere that the decision to record all their songs in English – as opposed to the Spanish of their home country – was due to the assumption that English language would be more universally appealing across multiple countries, thus leading to more record sales. Let’s just say that this marketing decision pretty much went nowhere, considering that it doesn’t seem that this band has had much commercial success at all. Makes sense, though – not only is their music bad, but it’s the kind of bad that makes them utterly indistinguishable from the hundreds of other bad rock and metal groups out there. The one compliment I can give this song is that the melody in the chorus really has some potential, and the guitar solo is probably the high point in the whole track – still generic as hell, but generally not bad! In any case, though, there’s no reason for me to ever revisit this group ever again, I think.