Quick Reviews: Venues & The Divine Vanity

Slow week, so let's do this quickly:

Venues - Transience

There's a vein of modern metal Venues fits in that both pulls me in and pushes me away. I love the heaviness and crushing tones Venues is capable of, and they have a great ear for melodic hooks that give every song something strong for me to latch onto. As a thoroughly modern melodic band, Venues is great. That's not the whole of the story, though.

To get to those great moments, we have to get through the verses to most of these songs, which feature harsh barking. I know it's a trope that started back in the days of metalcore, but as I get older, I find myself less and less able to put up with that approach. It's frustrating to hear a band doing such good work, only to spend the run-up in so many songs barely treading water. Aquatherapy might help in physical rehab, but it's a poor metaphor for making your songs better.

This record has a lot going for it, and I truly want to say I love it. I can't do that, though, because the flaws are too front-and-center to ignore. When the album is on the short side, the closing ballad is the weakest song of the lot, and on top of it many songs have sections that add little to the mix, it doesn't add up to enough quality moments to carry me through. It's the sort of record you listen to, and you file away as a band to keep an eye on in case they ever move more in your direction. This album is close, but not there yet.

The Divine Vanity - Emergence

It feels like band clones are less common than they used to be. There was a time when anyone who became big would get imitators, but that doesn't happen quite as often. Ghost seems like a hard band to clone, because they exist outside the norm of what the metal world expects. Between the atmosphere, and voice, and the pop affinity, they're entirely unique. Or at least they were.

This new band is a Ghost clone through and through. Put this record on, and it's only a few seconds before you can hear how much this group is pulling from the first Ghost record. It has the same rough production, the same bit of sinister cheese, and a vocalist who is the closest thing to Tobias Forge we're going to get. For commitment to the bit, I have to give them credit.

However, like Ghost, there's something about this style that is too difficult to pull off over an entire record. All but one of the Ghost records have a handful of amazing songs sandwiched between filler. This record is the same, with a couple of wonderful sound-alikes, and then a bunch of songs that try to get by on the charm of the gimmick. It might be enough for a wry smile, it isn't enough to make the record worth listening to in full again and again. If even Ghost struggles, the odds of a clone being better are next to zero. This doesn't buck the trend, even if it is interesting as a curiosity.