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Violet
[RepoRecords]
Appearances can be deceitful. We could be tempted to grin while hearing the beginning of The Birthday Massacre's album, the first one to reach Europe's coast. With their appearance somewhere between Marilyn Manson's and The Rasmus', their beautiful singer put forward, their purposeful freaky-goth look (once again, we're reminded of Tim Burton) and we might think we're dealing here with a new clone of the insufferable Evanescence. But this would be a mistake because, of the latter, The Birthday Massacre only borrowed the sound power and the guitar's intensity to sustain the thirteen refreshing and modern gothic-rock tracks of this CD. Far from hiding behind a massive, and let's say it, sometimes too clean production, the young formation has got an undeniable sense of melody, and Violet is a pretty efficient juvenile effort. This album, made for the old Continent, is the combination of their first EP "Nothing and Nowhere" (2002) with its great anthem Happy Birthday and four novelties. Combining a virulence which reminds of Sunshine Blind and a synthetic touch à la Suspiria/Rosetta Stone, The Birthday Massacre develops a phantasmagorical universe, perverse and poetical at the same time. In the shoes of Alice descending in Wonderland with a knife in her hand, the beautiful Chibi and her mates seem quite determined to fight childhood's bad dreams and other tall tales. And we surprise ourselves wanting to follow them in their nocturnal walk and in this worrying and dreamlike dolls' universe. If the term "master move" wasn't so misused and deprived of any meaning, then it would probably summarize perfectly this passionate and finely cut "Violet".
Stéphane Leguay |
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