Hilarious boasts of rock ‘n’ roll excess meet extraordinarily generic Euro Metal.
Every so often, it’s worth reproducing an entire press release, if only because of the audacity, wishful thinking and sense of absolute desperation involved. So here we go.
When you mix an attitude that Lemmy himself would sign with a vocal capacity worthy of Myles Kennedy and to that you add a sound that borns from the roots of rock with the power of today’s metal, the result can only be an album not to be missed. That album is “Love, Death & Flies”, the third album by Bárbara Black, a singer and a band born to rock.
The new album Love, Death & Flies is her hardest sound that shows the lyrical influences of Poe, Bécquer and the horror cinema of the 80s. Victorian streets, dark passages and a decadent romanticism drives you to reach the zenith in “Damnified”, a reflection of the band’s approach to wilder southern sounds. You will find one of the most powerful and quality voices that flies through melodies, screaming and opera as well as sharp guitars and a devastating drum.
Well.
An alternative take on this might be that Damnified is a tuneless slice of caterwauling nonsense involving haphazard time changes topped with Ms Black’s vocals that switch from growls to soaring cod-operatic nonsense, neither being remotely convincing or impressive. Then again, I can’t see anyone doing well with lyrics like “I still remember that awful day, your sex condition… it was the reason for your death”.
Still, mid-level Euro-metal comes and goes, and we might have ignored this entirely if it wasn’t for that opening claim. “An attitude that Lemmy himself would sign” is quite the incoherent boast and unless Ms Black lives on a diet of speed and Jack Daniels and absolutely epitomises rock ‘n’ roll in everything she does, then I’m afraid I’m going to call bullshit on it.
“Is life too wild?” screams Ms Black at one point in this, and I imagine that in her case, the answer is “not remotely”. No one is more guaranteed to be tedious and workaday than the person who desperately, continually wants to tell you how crazy and outrageous they are. This feels like everyone is trying very hard, but they’re not fooling anyone.
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