Review Summary: Tony Montana in a trenchcoat.
Lovers Revenge is a synthwave duo from Miami, Florida. Consisting of Chris Palma and Rachelle Leta, the pair construct a gloomily energetic self-titled album that pays tribute to the past. 80's to the core with it's pulsing synthesizers and brooding baritone vocals, Lovers Revenge put a darker spin on things. With song-titles like Stalker, Kill What You Hate and Bleed serving as wrapping paper for the dense layers of synth and mechanical percussion it is quite easy to imagine vivid scenes of drug fueled violence, sex and death taking place in the sunshine state. So basically Scarface. The contrast between the beautiful sunsets and people of Florida with the uglier shades of humanity lurking from those shallow, empty hearts is perfectly represented in the music of Lovers Revenge.
Synthwave is a genre that has the ability to tread into mediocrity right off the bat because of the general minimalism of the music. However, Lovers Revenge have taken that particular notion to heart when it came to this album's creation. The synthesizer performances from Chris and Rachelle are strong thanks in part to tempo variation, a melancholy but lively atmosphere and a compelling integration of movie samples. The Revenge for example takes a memorable quote from Tombstone's Johnny Ringo and places it's echoing tone over synth and percussion to great effect. The music is pretty straight forward throughout it's brief duration. It's very rhythmic, very laid-back and very moody but it's something you can do multiple things with. You can dance to it, you can sit back and drink to it, hell, you can even use it as a soundtrack to some campy 80's movie that you're watching. It's also perfect for going to sleep in style. The vocals alternate between a comfortable male baritone that wouldn't sound out of place on a Depeche Mode album and some sparse female vocals that provide a nice contrast to the gloomy subject matter that's being spit out.
I randomly came across Lovers Revenge one day when I was bandcamping and I gotta say that I'm pretty impressed with this debut record. It's got great jams, great atmosphere and a great replayability factor to it. My initial interest was piqued by the band's name and then I was instantly hooked by their compelling music. A few months later and I'm still playing this as much as I was before. All fans of darkwave and it's sister genres should give this a spin.
