Final Selection - Heading for Graceland

I must confess that I really fell for Final Selection's debut album 'Antihero'. Now the band is back again with a new E.P which is a little appetizer for the second full length album that will be released later this year. What I fell for in their debut album was the perfect melancholy that attacked you like a bloodthirsty insect on a kamikaze mission. Unfortunately this new material feels a little happier in some way and it's not quite what I have expected.

Even though the tracks are great and the melancholy is still there, the singer Riccardo Schult uses his voice in a slightly different way this time. He has put it a little bit higher and I don't think it really suits his way of performance. According to me he should use the dark, muffled voice which we hear way too little of in this production.

"Heading for Graceland" contains eleven tracks of which five of them are completely new and the rest are remixes of tracks from the debut album or from this E.P. The second track "White Star" completely goes in the spirit of "Antihero" and is really fantastic. Still I'm a bit disappointed at the third track "Fade Into You", the fourth track has the same name as the record, and the instrumental fifth track is not that great either.

The only remix I find interesting is the danceable mix of the track "Never Wanted More" from the debut album made by Aslan Faction. Our Swedish contribution from Z Prochek on the song "Tears", which I personally think is the best track from the debut album, is in this version kind of dull and boring.

Despite the small changes in the performance I must say I really do long for the new full album. Look out for Final Selection.

This review was written 2003 and initially published on Neurozine.com Jan 01 2003