LOVEBITES - CLOCKWORK IMMORTALITY (Review)

Before listening to new album Lovebites, I decided to pretend that there was no misunderstanding called “Battle Against Damnation”. But no matter how I pretend, I cannot change one thing: fundamental mistakes are visible even through a thick layer of talent.

My Rating 78/100   Best Song - Pledge of the Saviour

In album title you can see a interesting oxymoron. Also noteworthy is the album structure. At the beginning - acoustic intro and the most powerful songs. In the middle - middle tempo. In the end also powerful songs. The idea of ​​previous full-length album was slightly changed regarding the album structure. It's also noticeable that not all songs are completely original. Empty Daydream - one of the riffs sounds very familiar (it looks like the riff from song Beat It). We The United - here the idea is copied from Aldious. Also, there has not been without potboiler - Mastermind and The Final Collision. And also M.D.O. - quickie, as well as a copy of song The Apocalypse, but with more complex guitar riffs. The rest songs sound very powerful and interesting affect the emotions.

This time composer's work can be called good and even excellent. Composer had the task to compose something epic - this worked out well. However, this release still shows the desire to repeat successful patterns that are several years older than members. I don't want to say anything bad, but in the fourth release it was already possible to designate something more than the 30 years old patterns.

Vocalist is good. It's difficult to hear a variety here, but vocalist shows his abilities well. Just what I wanted to hear: a fairly wide range of strong voice with different emotional colors. This is not an ideal strategy - emotions can be faked. But vocalist shows himself well in such a frames.

Instrumental parts - everything is very predictable here: standard E guitar tuning does not have much variety. However, in this album the instrumental is more interesting than I thought. First of all, there is a lot of attention to guitars. Diverse and complex guitar riffs are not even half of the whole construction. The main part of attention of guitarists is turned towards guitar solos. They occupy a very large part of basic idea, and their duration is quite high. I did not immediately understand how this is played - this is a good sign. Bassist is again hard to hear in the mix. In general, bassist has something interesting in only one track, and everything else is not worth attention. However, another part of the rhythm section - drummer - look much better. There is not a very large variety of drum patterns, but they are compiled very well.

These girls are very talented and it’s useless to argue with that. But in pursuit of high achievements, they forgot one simple thing - the charm of eastern beauties has passed, and each new attempt to exploit such a model looks pathetic. This is a classic “success trap”: yesterday's successful solution had to be applied yesterday - today there will be less benefit. Here again we see increased pressure on a feeling of nostalgia for the period after NWoBHM. Yes, composer created of a slight complication of guitar parts, a slight increase in the duration of guitar solos and a slightly less standard compilation of drum patterns. However, at the level of shades it seems that the album sucked all the creative energy from composer. And for this reason I doubt that in the future they will released something more interesting. The only thing that will always be large for this band is pathos and costs of promotion.