Viola – Anything Can Stop Us CD
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Viola – Anything Can Stop Us CD
"As a recording unit, Viola, who has shrunk to two men, is taking her sound in a more electronic direction with her new album. The machines are racing and programming is angular in the spirit of retrofuturism. Meininki is still in the midst of 80s black lip pop, which has an effect sucked from the genus of dinosaurs (New Order, The Cure, Smashing Pumpkins, Suede).
The basic look of the album is more briskly popping than jerky gloomy. At times, the melodies and arrangements even slip into the side of naivety, to which the cover art of the album also refers. The melodies sway in bitter minor, the chimes and synthesizers ring affectionately. Such irony is rare and refreshing for the genre. Life`s Too Long and Deadweights stand out as the clearest hit tracks on the puck. The last actual song Elevator Into The Sky is like tailored to put your Gothic daughters to sleep in sweetly gloomy dreams. However, this illusion is ruined by the homodisco Dance The Distance, which will be the last bonus track that should have been left off the record.
For Anything Can Stop Us to become a really good record, the band would need more aces to sing. It does commendably master the aesthetics of the genre, but the most important, unforgettable melodies, are rare. The structures of the songs are often unexpected and the melodies clichéd. Indeed, it seems that Viola and other gothic poppies like him are stuck too much to worship their iconic role models. On the other hand, this is understandable, as Gothicism (with all its connotations) seems to be a misunderstanding curse word and a fashion phenomenon today that real Goths don’t think should be confused with that genuine mood. However, artists following the more modern path cleared by Nine Inch Nails, for example, have produced far more interesting gloom music. In any case, the sympathetic Viola is one of the best representatives of her style in her home country." - Sami Nissinen