Suicidal Romance - Whisper Goodbye

The Suicidal Romance we meet in their new EP is much more on the harder side than we experience with their latest release 'Shattered Heart Reflections' or even their earlier 'Love Beyond Reach' album. Dmitry's vocals are heavily distorted in the title track "Whisper Goodbye" in true Harsh standard (found in the vocal standard document IEE242, paragraph 666). While the male vocals have made a transformation, the female vocals are still intact and I feel that they somewhat clash. With such distorted vocals, the distance to the clean and almost angel like female vocals seems too far to overcome. For you as a listener, it feels unnatural and forced.

All and all, I'm not saying that it it's a bad track, because it's not, but I actually prefer the remixes of the track in the form of CeDigest that have made an electronic version of it with a true metal track structure added to the formula, or why not Psy'Aviah's much cleaner version where despite the clash of the distorted vocals still is intact, the female vocals fit in much better when the track is lacking the south American harsh sounds.

I sense that Dmitry is somewhat going to trough an identity crisis with Suicidal Romance. Not only with the leap from Dark Electro to Harsh EBM, but also the fact that we in the second track "Slave Slave", here remixed by Die Sektor, also get a taste of Aggrotech with screaming vocals by Pete Crane from Shiv-R. What surprises me is that the female vocals are cut entirely from this track, a track where I feel the female vocals would have worked amazingly well in this arena of undistorted vocals and a much more clean sound and melody structure. Even though Incubite's remix is good, it's overshined by the amazing Die Sektor remix that get a spot in my charts of the greatest dance floor songs of the year.

As the last track on this EP is the strong "Deserving of our Sadness" where Dmitry screams out in anguish and is singing like he was crying while recording. Together with the soft and the emotional atmosphere created by the strong, but yet laid back, melodies it creates something beautiful. Here, the female vocals work perfectly and together they put music to a heartbreaking breakup between a couple of lovers.

With Suicidal Romance upcoming album, I hope that they've figured out what they want to do. With this EP, we are shown that the band is able to pull of many different subgenres within the electronic world, but I simply hope for a less schizophrenic experience. Sep 01 2011