Eleine
Dancing in Hell

Last year I was quite critical towards Eleine and their recent EP All Shall Burn, not so much perhaps for the musical quality but the sheer meaninglessness of it. We talk of the environment and it is fairly easy to find out all the problems with plastics, something that is used when selling physical EPs, had All Shall Burn been only digital I wouldn’t be so annoyed with it and probably wouldn’t even bothered with it. The stupidity of that release is even more evident now as the only tracks that made sense on it are on this album – so why did they release that EP? To steal money from those dumb enough to buy it, no other reason but greed – and I have to wonder if the motivation is the same for this album because I can’t see that much care and love has been put into the music, artwork or photos of the band members.

Musically it is a pale copy of bands like Epica, like a worse version of Epica I wrote in an earlier review of the band and it feels quite accurate here as well. It is female fronted metal with some symphonic undertones and some growling to spice it all up a little. The growls are terrible, and the female vocals aren’t terrific but at least they are decent. I think the production is unspectacular, generic, kind of an unpersonal radio-pop kind of sound. And the album is quite long with a fifty-minute playing time, at least fifteen minutes too much as many of the songs feels like fillers. I would say that if you are looking for generic female fronted metal, this is it – the archetype of unpersonal wannabe kind of unimaginative metal that just makes it harder to find the few spectacular albums that are released.

Dancing in Hell isn’t a bad album in the respect that it induces vomiting or makes you want to turn it off immediately. It is fine as background music but you lose interest very quickly, sure it is accessible, sometimes catchy and it probably appeals to some less critical music fans, those that doesn’t sit through several hundred of albums for tens of times every year – where most of them sound more or less the same. Most albums just make up the numbers and obscure the few great albums that are released only four albums have gotten the two highest marks by Hallowed this year, four out of about 250 this is one of seventy to get 3/7, more than half of the albums I have reviewed this year are either three or four – a big grey mass, and I really recommend that you don’t buy this album as it will only collect dust in a shelf or a box after you played it a few times initially before forgetting about it.

All Shall Burn is a decent song, very good if it hadn’t been too long, it grows pretty dull towards the end. Memorian is another one that is pretty good, but most of the songs are just generic filler tracks that could have been rejects from almost any female fronted band. I think albums like these should be allowed to remain in a storage shelf or record store shelf as a lesson to bands and labels that quantity is harmful to quality, it is sad that they sell any of them. If Eleaine took the best songs from their three releases they might have enough to make a good album, instead they have released three generic ones – and surprisingly enough they have done pretty well, that makes me think that greed is the only reason for this album – it sure as hell isn’t made from a desire to create great music. Listening to and reviewing Dancing in Hell was a more than 500-minute dance in hell, and now I am happy to delete these tracks – I will not miss any of them.

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