Review Summary: Love is an entertaining listen all the way through and shows a lot of potential, but is brought down by it's tempo.
I listened to this album upon recommendation from a friend. Honestly I didn't expect much considering the name of the band and album, but I gave it a fair shot. I'm glad I did, as the album shows some good potential.
The album as a whole is decent, if a bit inconsistent. The high points of the album are really found when when the band slows down such as in
Sad, the first half of
My Pain, and album opener
Emotionally Dead. These sections are the band's real talent and where they should focus on in the future. The drums are a bit quiet in the mix for my taste, but the guitars and vocals work well together to create a brooding atmosphere. When the band decides to speed up (
Murder,
De(hu)manize), this effect is somewhat lost. It comes across as trying to force a generic melo-death sound. It's certainly not terrible but it doesn't sound natural, and when comparing it to the stronger tracks on the album, they sound lacking.
The vocalist has a unique shout to develop. It sounds pained, almost tortured sometimes, but can be reeled in rather well. On songs that require an emotional performance, he can deliver. However it sometimes doesn't come across well or at all. Most prominently on
I Remain Silent, he sounds kind of boring. Its disappointing because it comes immediately after one of the strongest tracks on the album,
Sad. He can give a very good performance, but it just doesn't work sometimes. I can see his tone being a "love it or hate it" kind of deal, and I happen to be the former. It fits adequately and contrasts well with the guitar tone, especially when the band slows down. He just needs to work on an emotional delivery.
The instrumentation on this album is also inconsistent, but still pretty good. The guitarist's main strength is in the slower passages. He is able to pull off some nice, atmospheric passages that also show some degree of technical skill. The aforementioned
Emotionally Dead is probably his best work on the album. When the tempo quickens, it just gets bland. It sounds alright, but there isn't anything exciting. This goes for both guitarist and vocalist - neither of them seem suited to fast paced melo-death.
At it's best,
Love is the product of all the band members' strengths. These strengths are slow, emotional, atmospheric passages and songs. When the band tries to work towards these, they sound great. But this only accounts for about half of the album. The other half, while not bad, is certainly not the band's forte. An entertaining listen, but there is nothing to separate them from the myriad of melodic death metal bands producing the same thing. If
Leukemia begins producing songs that only play to their strengths, I think they could easily set themselves apart and produce real quality music.
