Niva
Incremental IV

Better Just Forgotten is the name of the third track on this new album by Niva, I wonder if the title is referring to last year’s album Magnitude, after all the following track is called Magnitude and is better just forgotten. But before I get ahead of myself, this is the new album by Niva, an album I was looking forward to listening to as soon as I downloaded it. It has taken time to get to a review though, time and some tracks that has run almost a hundred times while others have run only five times. But this album, the fourth by Niva is looking good with a great cover art, just like last time. The fact is that many things are like last time, even reviewers points out that thing.

It is the same as before, overpolished melodic rock with insanely catchy choruses and melodies. Easy to take in, the songs are simple with standard structures and the regular assortment is to be found on this album. An album which has a production that I really enjoy, the sound is excellent. The singer is also very good. I think that Niva has more or less everything a good band should have. But having those things and delivering on such promises is two different things. Question is if Niva’s 40 minutes of music is better than last time. I would however say that these two recent Niva albums sound more or less the same, which makes me think they were recorded at the same time and released a year apart. They probably didn’t but I think you could interchange songs between the album and not really noticing that the songs comes from different albums.

The first five tracks open this album well, only the fourth track is boring. The third track Better Just Forgotten along with the fifth track Reason Why are the best on the album. These two are amazingly fantastic and a joy to listen to but then after The Reason Why the album turns to fluff and in the end I don’t know if I am to celebrate or hate, half of the album is great and the other half of the album is amongst the most forgetful music I have ever heard. So, how do you rate such a performance, fantastic with boring and uninteresting? Well, if I let them meet in the middle we end up with a mid-rating which I think is the fairest rating for this album. It is after all an album that is quite good but it offers absolutely nothing that we haven’t heard a billion times before.

Where are the ideas? The daring songwriting? the clever musical ideas? the detours to paths less travelled? Niva doesn’t seem to bother with any of that, he just writes the same stuff as everyone else in the genre does and sometimes he hits gold (once or twice on an album) and when he does it is amazing but more often than not it ends up with a shrug of the shoulders, or as fluff in the pocket. Fantastic at times, fluff at other times - not really an album that shows what this guy should be capable of. Maybe he should have killed some darlings and combined these two albums into one using the best songs from each album, if I do that I end up with something fantastic. Too bad Tony Niva didn’t think of that.

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