Review on album 'Dancing'

Rating: 4/5

Despite the fame of this band throughout Russia and parts of Europe, I had actually never heard their music, though I had heard their name mentioned before and had been wanting to check them out for some time. Finally with the release of their album Dancing I got a taste of what this band has to offer. As far as goth music goes, this band manages to release something that is traditional and somewhat expected from a band of this genre.

The album begins with a nice solid number that fans will really love. 'Leaves' has that great guitar, solid beat and the vocals to match to drive the melancholy lyrics into the listener's soul. These elements ooze smoothly from one track to another with excellent power whether it's helped along with a solid beat or through a melodic piano loop or grinding guitars. But this first track tells it all, what this band can be and what they've been able to pull of. Unfortunately it's not entirely this easy and solid for the entire album, but it comes close. The next track shows a little interesting twist with a sassy flavor "c'mon". Not exactly fitting for this style but many people may enjoy it with it's strange twist along those lines while still maintaining a solid goth flavor.

'Killing Machine' picks up slightly in intensity and with the nice combination of all of these goth musical elements with a slight edge, but always maintaining those solid vocals over the solid instrumental layers. '10 Years' starts off with some intensity but quickly drops back into something of a depressed and moody piece that the uber-goth can delve into. Along these same lines 'Pain of feelings' slowly builds and moves along with extreme emotional complexities brought out mostly through the vocals and lyrical content, but accented by the excellent guitar riffs and grinding bass. 'Angel Song' reminds me so much of mid-career music from Nosferatu with the slide on the bass loop and driving guitar despite the mid-tempo beats. Once again the piano picks up and introduces the next track 'Dancing goodbye' which is driven along by that moving guitar over the sweet piano. Now we really delve into the extreme goth sub-culture with "Bloody Solution" and all of it's cliche-ridden elements.

'City of sin' is another track right along the same lines of the previous and like the somewhat sassy piece 'Looser'... but this brings out one thing that I would like to comment on from these bands that hail from a place as unique or unusual in the goth scene as Russia. You would think that out of a dozen tracks we would have at least one sung in Russian, if not for the interesting twist it would provide for everyone throughout the world, at least it would be something that those in Russia might understand and relate better to than English. The accent from the vocalist on this track stands out a bit more than the others because of the way this track is composed. Not to mention that not-so-perfect english, at least the lyrics are somewhat understandable and better than many other foreign bands. This brings us to another favorite of mine from this album as it begins to wrap up. The title is "Slavery Moon" and is such that the listener will definitely have the title memorized by the time the track is over, but this isn't a bad thing, it's done in a catchy way with a nice rhythm and all the great elements that make gothic rock so attractive to it's fans. Finally we're brought to the bonus track on the album "Winters Misery" which is a remix by electro-goth labels mates Requiem for FM. It's an extremely interesting combination of synths and a super-fast beat (like 200 bpm) layered over a slow, deep and touchingly emotional piece that just works so well in the end and is almost addicting and one that I really enjoy. This just shows what this band and the right mix can really pull off, no matter how strange or out of the ordinary it may seem.

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