This is an open forum for staff members, contributers, and fans alike to submit their reviews on the latest music releases and concerts. In an industry that is drowning with overprocessed, grossly overrated, unoriginal crap these days, this is our chance to allow the real stars to shine, if only on our humble, little stage; and expose you to some of our favorite talents.
Reviews are given 1 - 5 stars.
First, Love
Written In Blood
Walking Away
True Romance
What I Want
It’s Just Begun
She Will Always Be A Broken Girl
This Is The End
Checking Out
Pretend The World Has Ended
Replacement
All Those Moments
Rachael
There are several musical phenomena I’ve completely missed the boat on. I never got into the whole nu-metal thing. I could never stomach hardcore or death metal. And I never much cared for the post-punk new-wave movement that became all the rage in the late 80s, made popular by Depeche Mode, Joy Division and New Order, to name a few. Unfortunately for me, She Wants Revenge’s latest album, This Is Forever, is patterned albums by those early 80s groups. Tragically - at least in my opinion - the genre hasn’t gotten any better in the last 25 years.
This Is Forever is dark, just like you’d expect it to be. I felt like I should be wearing black leather and lipstick in order to fully appreciate it. It’s what goth is all about.
This Is Forever is a dark album. I’m pretty sure I needed to be wearing black leather and lipstick to fully enjoy it. It embodies goth. The album’s production is slick and the space the music inhabits is vast; the mix isn’t dense and instead feels spartan. The music itself is mainly electronic. Percussion is programmed and, as a result, incredibly boring. Keyboards are responsible for driving what little melody the album contains (instead of traveling through a series of songs, I felt more like I was aimlessly plodding through 50 minutes of the soundtrack to a bad horror movie). I heard a guitar or two but was singularly unimpressed. The vocals sound eerily like a very bored reanimated Jim Morrison singing in monotone.
Clearly She Wants Revenge will never be my favorite band. I award one star to the album because it isn’t as tragically bad as it could have been and another because they really do a great job recapturing the music of the early 80s and updating it for the new century. It isn’t their fault I hate the genre with a passion.
Reviewed by: Chris Cactus | December 2007
