Awake

You know you're desperate for attention when you use artwork that resembles an early Hypocrisy album cover and your band doesn't even fucking RESEMBLE Hypocrisy!

I remember seeing this album just stick out like a sore thumb in the old Spec's record store from back in the day. It just always fucking stood there looking at me whenever I would get a chance to visit there and buy a new CD if I saved up my allowance or whatever. I always remembered picking it up looking at it unsure of what I might hear and as always I put it back down because....I didn't know what the fuck to expect. Well that was then, and this is now, and I'm glad I never purchased this album because it's album cover and artwork deceives the listener. This is good and bad in my rule book. Good because if your album has good artwork, it can raise the value of the album and at least give the listener some decent eye candy, but bad in various trickery ways that will not really fit the music but make perfect sense at the same time.

Remember how I said the band used an album cover that resembles early Hypocrisy? Again, they sure as fuck don't sound like Hypocrisy...it's a cheesy mixture of Goth Rock mixed with simple metal riffs and Death metal vocals. There is NO Death Metal here at all. Imagine The Sisters of Mercy's Andrew Eldritch singing a doom/gothic metal song and then start growling. It's not as bad as it seems, it really isn't. It's cheesy-as-fuck but in a good way. It's a combo that sound good to mess around with, but in reality isn't going to gather much of a fan base. It's sure not going to start any scene what-so-ever. No, this is something only Europeans can come up with when they are bored. If you took away the obvious Goth influences, you could see this being put next to early Katatonia. Crematory is a bit more limp-wristed than say "Dance of December Souls" but the contrast of two different music genres is somewhat resembling. Sound production is squeaky clean mid-90's Nuclear Blast style...the lyrics are about doomed love and other traits that other cheesy fucking Goth Metal acts seem to obsess over.

The songs range from short pieces that leaves questions marks over your head(Maze) to good songs(Away) to crap that just bores you to fucking tears(For Love). The cover of TSOM's "Temple of Love" is so damn cheesy it makes me nauseated on my stomach. It's a mixed bag of simplistic music really. But there are some good stand-out tracks that make the album worth listening to such as "Lord of Lies", "Mirror", "Away" and gives a little bit of hope that's you'll find even better songs throughout the rest of the album, but that won't happen.

I would love to give this album a bad rating, I would trust me. I would have loved to ridicule the complete shit out of this band. There is nothing more hilarious to me than seeing a bunch of guys in cheesy Goth apparel trying to sound scary while trying to lure in fans. But, fortunately for these cheese balls they managed to right a few decent cuts on here that kept me from doing so. I guess you might want to pick it up....it's been 11 years since I started wondering if I would actually want to spend money on this album or just putting it back on the shelf!