Drown Me Blue

Drown Me Blue is a bit difficult creature to define. That's usually the point in the process when the awkward definition "dark metal" gets dusted off and applied, and that happens here, too, although originally by the band members themselves. If someone claims that something is dark metal, it's diligent to ask politely which part of the music makes it dark metal instead of some other, more strictly defined metal genre; usually it's really not that hard to find a better definition, and the fundamentally unnecessary dark metal tag can be forgotten as redundant.

The music on this four-track independent EP is definitely metal, and borders several genres, but has a sort of "darkened" feeling to it. The foundation has been laid in some kind of rather masculine gothic metal. Instead of the Kyle Troy-tinged pretty boy syndrome of most gothic boy bands (the finnish heroes Charon and End of You spring to mind), there's a definite, precise and rather heavy rhythm guitar foundation. The vocals have growled and clean baritone parts, of which the growls are so much better that it's almost embarrassing to hear the contrast the clean vocals provide. The drums, bass and synths are nothing special, and have a sort of garagesque feel to them; the synth sounds are unfortunately somehow "so 80s". There are hints of black metal scattered around, but nothing concrete enough to mention specifically.

The songs themselves, while rather demo-sounding, are not that bad creations, and despite the basic nature of the songs, with very little extra frills, they work rather well. The riffs, nicely rolling on the underside, have been stolen from the Big Book of Basic Heavy Metal, and the combination of the gothic aspects of the songs, i.e. the melancholy and the clean vocals with their lyrics, with the dark part, i.e. the aggressive depression and the attempted gloomy atmosphere, actually works well and shows some interesting vision on the band's part. Unfortunately, the whole is a bit too demo-level concoction to really achieve the objective, but still definitely does prove the existence of ambition and vision.

What Drown Me Blue should do in the future is to either drop the clean vocals altogether, or find a more skilled vocalist to sing them. Also, changing the way the synths are used would be a good idea; definitely a different tone, and perhaps some more fundamental ideas are needed. There nothing deeply wrong with the music.

Yup, this is a nice little EP, not a chore to listen through in any sense, but nothing groundbreaking, either. Some nice riffing, nothing too fancy in any sense, but a decent listen, and of a perfect length. Pathetic, but perhaps not quite in the sense the band meant it to be; Drown Me Blue does not hit the bulls eye, but it does not miss the target completely either.