Pleasureagony
s/t

The name is an oxymoron and their music is rather oxymoronic as well, that is a good thing as they don’t really conform to the regular and established patterns but go down a road that is much less travelled. The quartet should also look at how they use graphics; red text over black and white photos isn’t good if they want it to be easy to read. This is the debut of this German band and it shows a lot of promise, and they do manage to make something a little bit of their own in a music world that is littered down with copies of copies of copies, so at least they get a thumbs up for trying something of their own.

Their music range through a wide variety of styles and influences from thrashy stuff, dark things, poppier things and more melancholic rock things and anything in between can be heard through this album. The vocals are also varied and range through more or less the same stages with some growlier things and some much cleaner singing, and I would say that the vocalist does okay. Decent production is another thing; I think the soundscape is good. However, it strikes me that this is a very long album that feels very long to listen to – kind of like it never ends and with a long silence between the end of the last song and a short, pointless hidden track that sensations grows even stronger.

So, they could have skipped some tracks and at least kept it under an hour, that would have improved this album from being a good album that doesn’t quite sound as interesting as the ideas of the band. There are some rather useless songs like Desaster and Nerves Like String and some great tracks mostly like the last song (before it falls silent) Did Him a Favor, so it is a incoherent album in many regards. That is always a bit of a weakness for an album even if the stronger points outweigh the weaker to give us a decent album in the end. But it is hard not to think that it could have been better, especially since they put out an album with that ever sought after fresh thinking – they just don’t put it to very good use.

They have a good foundation to build on and this debut has some great highlight but in the end I am more looking forward than looking back at this one. Hopefully they learn some darling-murdering and to think in terms of fitting pieces of a puzzle better together than just cramming many pieces into a frame like they have done here. Pleasureagony is both successful and unsuccessful, the band has ideas but the album is somewhere around average.

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