By: Anders

Posted: Jan 7, 2006

Quiet and heartfelt gothic rock is what the Finnish band Sinamore presents for us, here on their debut full length. This is a genre that is very hard for the band’s to excel in, due to most have been done and the innovation more or less isn't present, if the right gothic rock feel needs to get through to the listener, and that is both the strength and the force of Sinamore as well as many other bands in this particular style of music.

The band paints bleak, melancholic atmospheres with a slight flash of hope in them. The bottom of the tunes are good and catchy rock music, the guitars have a nice feel over them, catchy and melodic, some good "classic" riffs that do their job good. The rhythms are good and the songs are moving along in a nice and pleasant pace. The rhythm patterns and compositions aren’t that varied, they offers more or less what one can expect from a band like this, not that there is anything bad music on the album, even though it gets a bit boring in the length. Katatonia-light would be a suiting description of this album's overall presence.

The vocals are one of the highlights on the album… It is as the music pleasant to listen to, though there are some good hooks delivered and the emotions shines through it. A good performance which seems true, and there is put a lot of emotions into what there is being sung.

This is harsh said your typical gothic rock release, though Sinamore does make it more interesting than the most, though that is the before mentioned link to Katotonia that adds the last spark. The band does display some great things, like the outro to the track 'Misery Carnival', which consists of processed drums, being toned down, why not use such effects more in actual songs? And a couple of times they are using vibrato on one of the guitar tracks, which also adds a nice feel to the music. Though when thinking of this is a debut album, I am pretty sure we will hear a lot more to Sinamore in the future, the have some of the right in their music, and it’s both catchy and emotional!

Rating: 5,5/10

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