The Story of "Sweet & Deceitful"
"Sweet & Deceitful revealed totally fresh sides of Negative! We thought out and planned the new songs carefully from the beginning of the process to the very end of it. The album is a tight entity, the sound is more powerful and we were much better musicians by then, too. In my opinion we took a big step forward in finding our own style with this album," says Jonne.
An important part of Negative's tighter sound was their new keyboardist Snack.
"We chose Frozen To Lose It All to be the first single because the song reveals Snack's skills. We want our fans to know that Snack will be a very important part of Negative's sound in the future. And I guess that Frozen sounds pretty familiar to old Negative fans. But hey, Frozen is one of the poppier songs from our second album", Jonne says.
Soon after Sweet & Deceitful came out in Finland, Negative signed a worldwide deal with Roadrunner Records, which was again a big step ahead on their career. Jonne Aaron was even voted rockstar of the year in the 2004 readers' poll of the Japanese magazine Burnn!.
Who is Negative?
Vocals: Jonne Aaron
Guitar: Larry
Guitar: Sir Christus
Bass: Antti
Drums: Jay
Keyboards: Snack
The Album
A few years ago I was pretty much into music like this. I listened to lots of the 69 Eyes, Hanoi Rocks, HIM and also purchased this album by Negative. This album was maybe the pinnacle of that whole Love Metal/Rock thing that was going on in that time. I decided to review as there were not even filled in here and neither was a album.
Sweet & Deceitful starts with a dark intro that features the main melody of the next song but more toned down. As we speak we enter directly the second song
Frozen To Lose It All. The first remarkable thing is Negative's leadsinger Jonne who has a wonderful voice and sounds young and refreshing unlike HIM's frontman Ville Vallo. That's already a big difference. They sound exactly like a younger version of them with that new sound. The refrain of the song is very easy going and pretty catchy. It has the typical finnish sound going on that everybody knows who listens to artists like them (the catchy keyboard bit, the harder sounding guitars in the background, the long emotional vocals).
The typical long winding poppy keyboards in
Creeping Inside come off extremely out of nowhere and get you pretty fast. The refrain is extremely well done here as the vocals are just damn good. The harder guitar on the little bridge is good as well. Creeping Inside is pretty much your pop rock chartbreaking hit. The cheesy and simple lyrics, modern pop rock sound and the catchy refrain.
But that's already the big problem. There is no real substance behind this. Almost every song sounds the same and has slight different bases. The next song
Locked In The Dark Side sounds seemingly different but not that much.
In My Heaven has great production, very good vocal work and is just extremely catchy while the refrain is not that typical and not focused on easy listening. The main melodie of the synths is beautiful and the song is overall done very well. And so is
My My/Hey Hey (Out of the Blue), the other bigger and positive song of the album. The problem are the lyrics which are just too simple to be taken seriously. An example:
My my, hey hey
Rock and roll is here to stay
It's better to burn out
than to fade away
I know first graders who could write more productive and smarter lyrics than that. It really seems that the band is basicially for the quick success in the teen area and not that much for the music. The music is so heartbreakingly simple it's sometimes unbelievable. I have no doubt that they are great musicians but that's cleary the wrong path/genre to begin with if they would really try to come off edgy and professional. It's one thing to pay your tributes to bands like Hanoi Rocks and HIM, but it's another one to completely rip them off in a laughable way.
Neverending Parade is horrifying. It's a typical power ballad which can be found better and more emotional on every other HIM album. If you're into that then listen "Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights". This song right here is a very dragging and just painful version of that whole genre. After all those minor or bigger letdowns we get the song that pretty much puts the other songs to shame and saves the album a bit. The eight song [/b]L.A. Feeding Fire[b] has a far better and aggresive rocking sound than the other songs and has absolute great guitar work to it. The whole song is a lot faster and has even a small attempt at a crazy guitar solo in it whcih sounded absolute fantastic and a bit intrueging. This song is cleary the best on the entire CD.
The minor hope for the album continues as we get
Until You're Mine. It sounds first like the ballad thing until it sounds into another great rocking sound. The vocals are also different, when they are still cleary they have a more rough sound to it. It sounds extremely cool and more grown up. After 2 minutes we get a small, but absolutely great guitar solo that rocks into the great refrain of the song until the whole track apruptly fades out.
About My Sorrow is the longest song on the CD with ca. 6 minutes that feature pretty much a piano melody completed with the vocals by Jonne. After I almost fall asleep I get another slight seeing of hope as the whole song turns into a more rock opera type of sound before the song fades away slowly.
Secret Forgiveness could have been named "In my Heaven" as there is not one single thing that sounds any different. It's pretty much the same structure, the same bridge at the same place and a similar refrain. It leaves a very bad after taste in your mouth after listening to it. The last song
Angel's Won't Lie starts rather promising though as the sound isn't that clear and has some very cool electronic parts later in the song. The song gets even an edge harder with dark and heavy guitars before the song slowly build up to the big end. The ending sounds a bit overproduced as every remarkable and findable sound comes together in a big piece. It could have been a disaster but they someone managed it not to completely screw it up. Big ending for a more disappoiting album.
Highlights
- L.A. Feeding Fire
- Until You're Mine
- Creeping Inside
- Angel's Won't Lie
Positive
+ Fast and catchy songs
+ Great keyboard melodies
+ The longer songs are very well done
+ The second half in general
Negative
- The sound is pretty much a copycat of HIM at first
- Extremely cheesy and simple lyrics
- No substance behind the songs
- Extremely bad first half that will scare away most of the listeners
- The first half in general
Negative makes short, catchy and simple pop rock seemingly. But that's the problem. They have their strengths in the harder more longer songs. The first half of the album felt like every song was pretty much the same and the cheesyness of the songs didn't help either. All in all I give the album a rating of 3 as they at least gave a better effort on the second half rather then the first, which sounded like a unmotivated and boring rip off of other well known finnish artists. I'd say that you should listen to the Highlights of the album and maybe the other songs at the end. The other part is too hard to listen to as the amount of cheesyness reaches highs that you won't believe.
