I probably am doing this because I hate myself.

Lyriel - Leverage

Release: February 24, 2012
Genre: Some kind of metal with female vocals. I don't know what genres are anymore anyway, why are you asking?
Label: AFM Records
Length:

Nick's Rating: 3.5/5

I'm really not at a point where I'm anticipating albums much anymore, at least, not for the year. There's a new Diablo Swing Orchestra forthcoming, and new Rush, but otherwise, most of my favorite bands are either defunct or have released an album in the past two years and take long enough crafting their works that it's unfair to expect an album this year. In fact, in some respects I almost wouldn't be surprised if Clockwork Angels, currently set for a May 29th release, got another delay. (Okay, not really; they're far enough along with the album that another delay would require tapes be destroyed in the middle of the night.) So far, also, there's only been one album this year that I've really given a good listen to, that being Glass Kites' debut (which I might review eventually).

That said, I was outright shocked to hear about Leverage, considering Paranoid Circus was as recent as 2010. It wasn't an unpleasant surprise, but thanks to America being a little too ready to keep me from getting hold of a decent album, I had a bad feeling I'd have to wait for a hard copy. I won't comment on that, suffice to say that I, sadly, was saddled with a downloaded copy at release day. Yeah, I can't get ONE damn copy of this album weeks later, but most of the now limited options I have out where I live for actually picking up hard copies of albums sure did have a ton of copies of Megadeth's TH1RT3EN, the biggest disappointment of the year, at release day.

In short, this isn't actually a review of Leverage, but rather a lamentation about how FUCKING BACKASSWARDS the brick-and-mortar element of the music industry is in America. Is it because Dave Mustaine is a squeaky clean, Santorum-backing Christian who does this just to troll the metal community, while Jessica Thierjung is a strange blend of Siouxie Sioux and Tarja Turunen whom, people would assume (probably for all the wrong reasons), thinks present-day American politicking is a festering Gordian knot of raw psychosis? (Not that I would likely have a chance of picking this up in a German record store, anyway.)

Okay, I need to cut that out. I'll start to hate looking at this crap. Anyway. To some the Siouxie Sioux comparison might seem odd, but in what is perhaps the exact opposite of a surprise, I think I can reason this out. Think for a few moments about just how wide of an area the Banshees covered musically, even though they were mostly confined to that "goth" sound or group of sounds. Compare "Kiss Them For Me," a pop song, to "Melt!" -- which... is in a genre all its own, really (well, it's kind of post-punk, so). In some respects, this is the comparison between this album's title track and the last album's. Leverage's title track is an arena-ready creation that could probably have been written and performed by any number of talented bands (albeit still keeping a bit of the artist's signature on it). "Paranoid Circus," instead, was comparatively unique, something that only a band in the same genre could make, and probably not most bands in the same genre. (Also, I feel that Thierjung could probably cultivate a similar "obsessed with the era of black and white film" look to Siouxie -- perhaps taking inspiration more from Polaire? Oh, I'm overthinking this.)

Though it does look like she's getting to style her looks after Florence Welch.

The lone problem I have with the song "Leverage," really, is that it's almost devoid of personality. More so than the aforementioned Banshees tune that I drew the reference to (which is, in terms of style, nothing like this song, before anyone says anything). It's one of those songs that a band like this would make to sell records (not that it'd help). At this point, you need an identity in this industry, and Lyriel has a perfectly good one. Why throw that away just to, supposedly, get listeners? (For all I berate this song on the matter though, it probably did help; Barnes and Noble allows me to order it off their online store, when they haven't got any of the other albums and stock only maybe one or two Threshold albums -- Threshold being, if last.fm is anything to go by, a far more popular group, albeit also nearly unknown in America).

At least they seem to gather up personality again on some of their other songs, like "Parting" and "White Lily." The album, overall, is a little more energetic and loud than I remember Paranoid Circus being, but I remember only a little of that album, which is probably a massive travesty. I couldn't really say because I don't remember. I also am not sure how this measures up as "folk metal," since I guess I don't really know what that's supposed to mean, but I will say that it's really not the Nightwish rip-off that people on Youtube keep talking about. Which I think I mentioned last review, but it needs to be said again.

Geez. I've spent a lot of time complaining in this review. Really, though, the album is far more solid than I act. The only thing here that I could live without is "The Road Not Taken," adapted from a famous Robert Frost poem, but a large reason for my distaste for it is from having the poem crammed down my throat. I went to Northside College Prep, a reasonably famous Chicago public high school known for being smart. They basically wore Frost's "The Road Not Taken" on their sleeves, possibly even by its incorrect title "The Road Less Traveled," wearing it as some badge of honor that you, student, took the road less traveled. And they paraded their high end standardized test scores around the school like that were some kind of actual accomplishment! It was a little distressing, to be polite. I guess it's a little silly, my reasoning, but I don't want to hear the words ever again. I probably could recite them from memory, but I'd have to do it while sucking a jezail and flailing for the trigger.

Ugh. I tried to stop, okay? Also, "Wenn die Engel Fallen" makes me glad for the program function of CD players and the capability to make playlists. It's not that it's not pretty, as it really is meant to be -- it's just that it's not very interesting unless you're in the mood for pretty things, and by that point, the album has basically ground away your desire for that. I'm using "pretty" in a rather generic sense, here, since even the noisier bits of this album could be considered pretty if you're predisposed to it.

I think that's one of the major downfalls of this album; it does try to be too things at once. In the end, it suffers immensely for that. Much like Lyriel's previous album, the result feels less than the sum of its parts. But some of its parts are good. Or at least fun. I kinda hope that "Leverage" brings this band a bit of actual airplay. This is one of those groups that I'd love to see go places, honestly.