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Notre Dame > Coming Soon to a Théatre Near You!!! > Reviews > Sean16
Notre Dame - Coming Soon to a Théatre Near You!!!

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Sean16, July 10th, 2007

Ah, Paris, the most beautiful city in the world. The Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, and Montmartre with its sluts, sex-shops and the theatre of the Grand-Guignol. Until the 60’s, this one every evening charmed its limited public with plays filled with mad scientists, surgeons, murderers and zombies, all of course abundantly covered with fake blood. Now Notre Dame are, from their own words, coming soon to a theatre near us, and there’s little doubt this theatre is the Grand-Guignol – but the Grand-Guignol has been closed for pretty long now.

Indeed, while “horror metal” is undoubtedly a stupid subgenre tag, it could however serve to describe this band very well. A band which is equally stupid, anyway. A front cover copied from some third-rate horror movie, a back cover exhibiting Snowy Shaw brandishing a huge kitchen knife: at least you know exactly what you’re buying. Of course, low-budget horror flicks are infecting not only the cover, but the whole release which is filled with terror screams, silly sound effects, churchbells, out-of-tune piano and pompous keyboards – everything being merged into a dusty production where the guitars buzz, the drums sound thin and the bass is either non-existent, either mixed on the forefront... Eventually, lyrics as expected wind through the procession of standard freaks, from His Vampirical Highness Vlad the Impaler a.k.a. Dracula to werewolves and dwarves.

The first problems arise when it’s time to talk about the genuine metal here. Because once you got rid of all the “horror” packaging, meaning the samples and keyboards which charm quickly vanishes – admitting those were ever “charming” in the first place – all that remains are fairly basic songs. If Blacksmith & Co., which pretty much sums up to ONE single riff, is indeed an extreme example, the other tracks aren’t really more developed (the opener The Bells of Notre Dame is a notable exception and thus is probably the best piece of work here). Surprisingly, the main flaw of this release isn’t its monotony: believe it or not, each of the eleven songs can be immediately identified; and even if there is little variation inside a given track, those are overall short (9 over 11 clock at less than five minutes) so they stop before becoming too repetitive.

But this can’t hide the fact the riffs are elementary and unoriginal, that the structures as already mentioned are more than basic, that when there are solos these sound clumsy and predictable, and that the musicians can’t play properly. In fact, they have so little to play it’s indeed hard to judge their real value. Vampirella is a catastrophic singer, for the good reason she never really sings in the first place, but whispers her lyrics in a very atonal fashion – without mentioning her voice is always mixed down. Most of the time her part only consists in answering to Snowy Shaw (who’s assuring most of the vocal duties anyway) so it isn’t a big deal, but when she happens to “whisper” alone it makes songs like Vlad the Impaler totally worthless. Now let’s be honest: Snowy Shaw, in this puddle of mediocre talents, looks like an unexpected revelation. With his semi-harsh, semi-exalted voice all wrapped in Grand-Guignolesque grandiloquence, he manages to inject some life in what would otherwise be nothing more than a poor gimmick.

And as every other gimmick bands, its appreciation mainly depends on the listener’s own tastes. If this one feels a certain inclination for inept horror movies, he’ll most certainly enjoy Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You. But be warned, no one should expect a funny release. It isn’t funny, and wasn’t intended to be so – as neither horror movies nor the Grand-Guignol were intended to be funny. Their might be some hilarious passages, like the beginning of A Misconception of the French Kiss when Snowy Shaw asks for Notre Dame in his worst French ever, or the lyrics of Give Blood/Save Lives where Red Cross doctors are turned into modern vampires, but those remain anecdotic. The whole album however still deserves some points for the sake of novelty – though it isn’t without showing some similarities with Dusk and Her Embrace; a far more theatrical, over-the top Dusk and Her Embrace. But Dusk and Her Embrace is better.

Highlights: The Bells of Notre Dame, A Misconception of the French Kiss