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Band: End Of Green
Album title: The Painstream
Release date: 16 August 2013
Label: Napalm Records
Tracklisting:
01. Hangman's Joke
02. Holidays In Hell
03. Standalone
04. Final Resistance
05. Degeneration
06. Home On Fire
07. Death Of The Weakender
08. Don't Stop Killing Me
09. Chasing Ghosts
10. Miss Misery
11. The Painstreet
German long running band End Of Green are back with their eighth album and like each one of their previous releases also this one brings some really mesmerizing moments and some compulsory fillers. End Of Green started back in 1992 with typical gothic doom metal sound strongly influenced by Type O Negative and Paradise Lost, but with their 2005 album Dead End Dreaming they've sailed into more mainstream and basic MTV or radio friendly waters that brought them quite a lot of popularity in German spoken countries. With The Painstream the story got another chapter, this time with the best, almost perfect production, and some of the catchiest melodies and sing along choruses they've ever done.
I almost gave up to them after their previous uninspired and boring album High Hopes In Low Places, released in 2010. This time there are a lot of dynamic tracks and smooth melodies, based on quite simple, but on the other hand very effective and heavy guitar riffing. End Of Green's trademark is certainly melancholic, strong, dynamic, raspy, deep and very depressive vocal job of Michelle Darkness that in most occasions goes very well together with mostly slow to mid paced crushing gothic doom rock approach. It's also interesting how they achive to maintain their sonic output quite alternative althought someone could find in there some very popy oriented song structures. At moments they are not far away from what Sentenced were doing in their later era, still on the other side they've must learned how to make interesting melancholy paced tracks from Katatonia.
Songs like strong opener "Hangman's Joke", magnificent and dark goth/doom in "Holidays In Hell" with probably the best vocal job the band ever did, then stunning and extremely catchy with great flowing refrain "Home On Fire", are three songs that must be the best the band ever did. Then even "De(ad)generation" with a sing-along chorus and rather upbeat alternative hard rock vibe will obviously be a live hit, not to mention rather faster punk-rock/pop influenced "Chasing Ghosts" or another alternative, yet simple radio friendly, to be a hit "Standalone". Cold melancholic ballad "Death Of The Weakender" has strong similarities with Finnish HIM or Entwine.
If you listen carefully you might notice some nice guitar leads here and there. There's no problem with the instrumental side, everything is played without mistakes, just listen to magnificient drums or strong bass lines. End Of Green know how to keep their music dynamic, but at the same time they fail when they try to make their music appealing to the "want to be" disappointed angry teenagers who wear black clothes because they feel that is cool. Without some unnecessary fillers, like the last song, badly executed semi ballad "The Painstreet", predictable and simple "Don't Stop Killing Me" or acoustic hard rock ballad "Miss Misery" that could be mistaken with one of Bon Jovi's or Poison's songs. But all in all The Painstream is a good album that has its magnificient moments, it's gloomy, yet dynamic with a nice drive and well flowing songs that, I believe, will shine best when played live.
Review written by: T.V.
Rating: 7,5/10
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