Oceans of Sadness – Laughing Tears * Crying Smile
Damn, why the hell doesn’t this band throw away the keyboards and get a real vocalist? Musically this Belgian act churn out some pretty solid death/thrash with a great sense of dynamics. There’s a lot of melody, good shifts in tempo, excellent acoustic passages, etc. They’re drawing on a very wide range of influences and instrumentally they’re making it work at the core. However, the entire mix is drowning in (what should be backing) keyboard textures that do absolutely nothing for the songs, and the vocals are completely atrocious. They range from high screams to the usual delivery of midrange singing/growling in a “death rock” sort of sense, but they just sound awful and don’t do the compositions justice. My only problem with the actual writing is that a lot of the songs drag on for far too long. Most every track is more than five minutes, with several leaning towards 10 minutes, and they’re just not keeping things interesting long enough for that to work. The recording is also pretty fucked up, and that hurts them too. The mix is really messy so it’s hard to identify what the real problems are, but I know the keyboards and vocals are far too loud. The bass is slightly audible, and the guitars are there, but the drums lose a lot of definition and everything sounds sort of fluttery and distant. I just think everything was probably recorded improperly somehow. The guitar tones change a lot, and they always lack crunch and clarity, the mix isn’t as muffled during the calmer clean passages, the more layering they get involved with the weirder things get, etc. The cover art isn’t that bad, and I like the background textures used behind the lyrics, but the typefaces are too plain and the band photos are all completely cheesy and stick out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately the lyrics are completely retarded as well “We’ll make love as much as you want to, We’ll reach every sky, oh so high, I’ll bare, I’ll share all that you want, I’ll heal and dry all of your tears…” No thanks. They also ruin any credibility they might have had by farting into the microphone about five minutes or so after the last song ends. No, I’m not kidding. Fucking morons. The guitarists, bassist, and drummer ought to start a new band. Unless one of them was the farter. Whoever did that should be ousted immediately. – Andrew Westerhouse
LSP COMPANY
Worm Gear 