Review Summary: Substandard pop rock smeared in sickenly cute melodies that do nothing other then display her limited vocal range.
Liv Kristine is both loved and hated within the genre of doom metal. People love her for her work on the first three
Theatre of Tragedy albums which mixed her soothing soprano with death metal vocals, but people also hate her for turning the band away from doom and towards the electro-industrial of their following two albums. Since then she has left that band and made amends with fans by starting
Leaves’ Eyes which is similar to Theatre of Tragedy but much more bombastic. Even her first solo album was appreciated by most of her fans despite the fact that it was a weird mix of goth, darkwave and pop, but unfortunately I can’t think of anyone that might find her second album appealing.
From the opening moments of the first track it is readily apparent that something is wrong, and by the time the final track ends the reasons are obvious. Liv Kristine’s second solo album is the most generic of pop rock albums with an abundance of overly simple melodies, unobtrusive backing music, repetitive choruses that make up the majority of each song, and Liv’s vocals which just aren’t strong enough to carry the dull music. I was surprised that her voice seemed so weak on this album, but I found that if you focus on Liv’s vocals on any album she has ever been on that they’re just not that strong to begin with. It turns out that Liv’s vocals just lack range and are really kind of thin, but the music was generally able to carry her through it and make her look better then she actually was, but not this time.
Anyone that is offended by me putting down her abilities need only listen to the opening track, “Over the Moon”, to hear her thin voice struggling to hit the right notes and even sounding out of key in places. For those that want to believe that the opening track was just an isolated incident, it only takes a few more songs to solidify the fact that she just doesn’t have the range to sing over any music where her voice is at the forefront. Each song becomes an exercise in repetition with her vocal melodies sounding similar in every song due to her limited range, although the overly syrupy melodies and exceedingly safe pop rock that serves as her backing music doesn’t help any either. I think that if she wanted to make a pop rock album she could have succeeded but she was going to require much more interesting music in order to do so, and instead the music she got was generic and subpar.
I count myself as a fan of Liv Kristine’s work due to the fact that until this point I’ve always enjoyed anything she has been a part of, but this is just bad. I can’t begin to understand how Liv could have thought that releasing an album that makes
Avril Lavigne and
Kelly Clarkson look edgy could be a good idea. The distorted guitar has been processed to the point of merely being subtle background fuzz, the melodies are a constant barrage of generic mediocrity, the choruses are dull and repetitive, the beats are generally uninspired and simple, and Liv’s voice is simply too weak to do anything other then make it worse.
