Songs after sundown
Before I get going I'd like to thank whoever wrote out the lyrics to this album long hand and then printed them as an artistic booklet in white text over a bright orange background, thus making them the surest way to a migraine as you strain yourself trying to read them. Genius.
This is an odd one actually, it is a re-release of Sunrise's first two albums put together on one disc and then released in a rather fetching digi-pac. The fact that this band no longer exists doesn't seem to have bothered the record company, after all Elvis still releases records doesn't he? The problem is, who outside their native Poland has heard of them? This smells of the three day dead fish of cash in. Which is a bad thing by the way. The press release compares them to At the Gates and that got me ripping the disc from it's case and slamming it in my CD player I can tell you. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the press release has been economical with the truth. Yes there are some similarities in the guitar work but the iffy production puts paid to that. There's also the problem that where At the Gates' 'Slaughter Of The Soul' was a tour de force of mad riffage bonded to strongly structured songs that ripped your ears off, 'Cursed Not Alone' merely irritates after a while with lacklustre monotonous shouting over muddily recorded instruments.
This is a damn shame as there are some great musical ideas in there, you can just hear them struggling to rise from the murk, they are well played and would have come up a treat with a bit of spit and polish in the studio. The quality is more noticeable in the second half of the disc when album two comes in, they took a step up and possibly could have climbed to real quality had they not disbanded.
This has it's fast moments and can come alive in places. I'm not too keen on the growling though, don't get me wrong I like a good growl with the best of them but this sounds a little half hearted like the singer couldn't really get up a head of steam. Maybe the band realised they needed to go their separate ways in order to make the next step musically, I'm sure some one out there knows, send me an email if you know where the guitarists went, they were the best bits.
I can't recommend this, it's a cobbling together of two albums by a band that aren't around anymore, average at best and smells of a flogged horse. Oh yeah and even with the two albums on one disc it still only adds up to fifty two minutes.