Album Review: April Art - Rodeo

We all know the taste of disappointment, that moment when your hopes are dashed in an instant, and your stomach falls into the depths where your soul was supposed to be. Some of us live there for most of our time, but I think it's safe to say all of us have felt it for at least a short spell. In music, that happens when a band you thought was going to be great turns out to be not bad, but average. Why average? Because there is nothing worse than having almost no reaction to something.

Anger isn't healthy, but it gets the blood pumping in the same way that love does. Apathy is the real killer, because that is when we can struggle to remember if we are human or not.

I'm exaggerating here, but disappointment is the feeling I got listening to April Art's new album. When they started this cycle with the single, "No Sorry", I was all-in. I absolutely loved the high-energy assault, especially Lisa-Marie's gravelly vocals. It was one of my favorite songs of last year, and the album went in bold print on my schedule when it was announced.

So what went wrong? Before anything else, let's start with the issue of the album as a format. The record clocks in at a short thirty-six minutes, which is becoming more and more normal. I wouldn't penalize them for the length if the record was as good as expected. In those thirty-six minutes, we get the aforementioned "Not Sorry", but we also get an acoustic version of the song. Yes, two of the eleven tracks on this record are the same song, which is a step too far for me. It isn't even a bonus track added at the end, it sits before the closer so it can't be avoided.

Those choices become more glaring as the record plays on, as the band delivers time and again. Some of the songs might go a bit far with breakdowns for my taste, also some modern glitchy and hip-hop bits, but each and every song is anchored with a huge sing-along chorus. Their knack for hooks is amazing here, and Lisa-Marie is exactly the voice I want to hear belting these numbers out. She won't be for everyone, but she hits the sweet spot of what I hear in my head when I imagine new strains of music.

We're in similar territory to Amaranthe, which lacks a defining term, but for our purposes can be distilled as ultra-heavy hyper-pop metal. You can hear what I mean better than I can say it. Amaranthe also put out an album this year, and while it was another fine entry that delivered on their trademarks, April Art's album is a more engaging version of that sound. When April Art gets heavy, you can feel the power of the guitars hitting you, and when the hooks come, Lisa-Marie's voice is able to scour away the sheen of our skin so those melodies can easily sink in.

That gets us back to the idea of disappointment. This album is disappointing because there is enough here for it to be one of the best albums of the year. There are also inherent flaws that probably keep it from doing so. To hear that potential falling short is exactly the sort of thing that has made this a year where I have spent far more time listening to old favorites as opposed to new music. The lower bar of nostalgia isn't a fair fight, but I can't control how the past lives on in the present.

What I can say is that April Art has made a record I'm hoping will overcome my initial feelings as I listen to it repeatedly between now and the time I choose the best albums of the year. If that happens, I will happily eat crow. But right now, I can only tell you how I feel in the moment, and that's tempted by the allure of a truly great album that was one or two slight changes away from being what we have.

Album Review: Cemetery Skyline - Nordic Gothic

I think I made it clear when Creeper released their last album that I have never been a fan of goth. In fact, I harangued that album for so blatantly aping goth rock without seeming to understand the ethos at all. Goth is more than sounding cold and croaking a baritone vocal, but that is often what we are given when someone tries to revitalize the scene in a more mainstream way. Creeper failed at it spectacularly, but perhaps a group of people from the icy world of Nordic metal will have better luck.

They do, and I'm not going to waste any time getting to that point. These veterans may not play goth as obvious as some other imitators, but they have been around long enough to know when a good song is a good song, ad they deliver plenty of those. The mood is dark, and rather cold, but the choruses have the semi-uplifting tone to be a black velvet blanket we use as a vampire cape. It's smooth, and soft, and damn comfortable.

The key to all of this is Mikael Stanne, whose baritone crooning has the requisite dark feelings we expect, but who can also give the choruses the scope they require, and perhaps even a bit of tenderness. That gets juxtaposed with the music, which is more metallic than perhaps I would expect from a goth record. Their roots shine through, as the synths play their usual part, but do so atop muscular guitar chords. The result is a sound that feels both musically and emotionally heavy, which is far more striking than a more image-focused approach.

As the record unfolds, we are struck by the proposition that the darkness is merely the space where light has been blocked. Often, that has been done by our own hands, because we don't want to see the truth more clearly illuminated. In the musical sense, that means this much might be trying to be icy and goth, but ice shines quite brightly when light hits it at the right angle. That is how this record comes across, as the melodies of songs like "Never Look Back" are sweet and enveloping.

There's a shared ethos between this record and Katatonia's approach, where beauty and darkness are entwined together to create a lush expression of the human condition. Cemetery Skyline is on the brighter end of that spectrum, but the similarities between this record and "Sky Void Of Stars" are quite strong. It isn't easy to make something beautiful out of the sadder side of our emotions, and bands that are able to do so should be commended.

The only misstep on the record is the closing "Alone Together", which stretches on for nearly eight minutes. That running time means the song is the slowest on the album, and without the energy of the rest, it feels like a drag in comparison. That's a shame, because it leaves a slightly sour aftertaste for what was a perfectly balanced record up to that point. I assume they were trying to end on a more epic note, but the extra time and space doesn't turn into a bigger sound or a bigger hook, which means it hits the cliches of slow music so many metal fans have always had.

Don't let that dissuade you, though. The rest of the album is a wonderful blend of slick and sad, giving us songs that remind us that in the zombie apocalypse, the half-brained becomes a treasured commodity. There's almost always an upside, even if we can't see it. With this record, we can at least hear it.