Electric Hellfire Kiss

When you have never heard of a band before, it's kinda hard to come up with an introduction. There's no joke you can make about the band and you can't say how much you were eager to listen to their new album...nothing really. The only thing I can say about this album is that I brought it to work and listened to it over a couple of days. I have an office for myself, well in fact I did, but the other day they added this old guy that just turned 62. I wasn't really keen on that since that meant I would have to turn off my music, but he insisted that I kept on playing my stuff. So I did and after a couple of tunes he asked me if this was... Alice Cooper ! I still can't stop laughing at this comment.... Anyway, Sweden's Tenebre are not Alice Cooper and their music has nothing to do with Alice Cooper. Musicwise, Tenebre is some kind of metal goth n' roll with some touches of Paradise Lost, Type O' Negative, Danzig and even touches of Tiamat and The Cult. In fact their music is full of groove and very pleasant to listen to. After visiting their homepage, it appears that Electric Hellfire Kiss is already their fourth album, but this one's with a new singer. Victor Fradera replaced, for the better it seems, the band's previous singer. I have never heard anything from this band before and don't really intend to because Victor's voices really fits the music well and I don't think I could imagine another singer for this kind of music. Victor has the voice that Nick Holmes should be using for Paradise Lost. Just listen to the song Beauty Destroyed and tell me you wouldn't like Paradise Lost to sound like this one. Anyway, every band choses their path and I have to say I like Tenebre's one quite alot. The album starts off with the title track which is a really good tune that contains a very catchy chorus. Once you have listened to this track you know what kind of music the band plays. A kind of goth n'roll metal à la Swedish sound. The album continues with some of the best tracks off the album which are Alienation, Descend From Heaven, Nocturnal Rhapsody and Beauty Destroyed. Those tracks contain everything metal is all about : great choruses and guitar solos. If albums were to contains only five tracks, then this one would almost be the perfect album. Alas albums contain in general more than five songs unless you call yourself My Dying Bride or Opeth. Track number six She Darks The Sun is a kind of ballad that although isn't unpleasant to listen to will not be played at teenagers parties over northern Europe. I might want to say that this ballad breaks the rhythm of the album. Anyway, things become rock n' gothier again with Starlet Wolverine which they should have applied to X2 original soundtrack if they wanted to climb the US charts (lol). Death Becomes You is another ballad, but the kind of metal ballad everyone doesn't mind listening to. At The Mountain is another mid-tempo song that isn't as great as songs off the first half of the album. The closing song, which is the longest as well is probably the weakest song on the album, is another boring ballad. I wished the second part of the album was as good as the first half of it and that's why I am not quoting this album higher and without any skeletons. This album remains however a very good album and I really enjoyed and still enjoy listening to. There's just one thing I want to add to the attention of the manufacturer. When you come up with a digipack packaging, hell, give a slot to place the booklet in !!!