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Band: SadDolls
Album title: Happy Deathday
Release date: 20 January 2012
Label: Lunatic Asylum Records
Oh, come on... It's even possible to sound more unoriginal than this? It's like listening to Razorblade Romance vol.2 from Finnish HIM. Every refrain, every note screams out "how much I like Ville Valo and co.". I wonder why this band is even making their own songs as they could be easily HIM cover band (they started like this) and nobody will resent this to them. Let me try to explain what is going on Happy Deathday.
First of all SadDolls are not another Finnish or German gothic pop or like this genre is called today "love metal", they are actually coming from Greece and I read great things about them. Their first album About Darkness showed quite a lot of potential for them with much more gothic metal oriented sound aiming towards The 69 Eyes, Deathstars, Type O Negative, Paradise Lost and similar bands. SadDolls gained quite a lot of fans, opened shows for big names like Paradise Lost, Lacrimas Profundere, they even appeared many times on their national tv. Now they completely lost it. Happy Deathday opens with a nice atmospheric intro, after that we are witnessing to "Killing Sorrow" and "Bloodred", the songs which show big musical ability and talent of this combo, also nice synths and guitars, but... HIM and a little bit of Lacrimas Profundere and The 69 Eyes. "Be Darkness" and "Psychedelic Love" are the only two among thirteen tracks up here that are worth listening to, probably saved by special guests who are appearing on this record. "Be Darkness" is a little bit direct gothic metal with harsher vocals in the vein of Saturnus mixed with female vocals and instrumentation in The 69 Eyes heavier style. The next "Psychedelic Love" opens up with nice electronic keys and continues with quite good, again The 69 Eyes meets HIM drive. Here we can witness also some black/death metal kind of screams. Everything else is like mentioned before: HIM. Even two bonus tracks "Watch Me Crawl Behind" which is a track from their debut, recorded anew with guest appearance behind the mic by Morgan Lacroix from Italians Mandragora Scream disappoints in a big way. The second bonus is Mandragora Scream remix for the track "Bloodred" which sounds like, no way, electronic nonsense, probably meant for club play, but believe me, there are many better songs out there for that purpose. Beside Morgan, other guests featured on this album are Robert Karlsson (Scar Symmetry), Juska Salminen (To/Die/For, ex HIM), Jape Peratalo (To/Die/For), Alex Flouros (Fragile Vastness, Seduce The Heaven), Sakis Darkface (W.E.B), John McRis (Anorimoi – the album producer as well), Manos Fatsis (Dark Nova), but this fact doesn't help that much. The lyrics, just read this verse: "Screaming for your soul, let me die forever in you, when I see your eyes I sigh, come now baby, don't you cry..." understood?!
SadDolls have talent, but they are wasting it, or maybe they totally lack in creativity. This kind of albums can only appeal to those who can't wait for another HIM album and to young goths who haven't discovered what else is also on the market.
Review written by: T.V.
Rating: 5,5/10
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