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Lifelover: Pulver

27/08/08 || theProphet

You know how you occasionally feel a little down? Sorta like the only thing making you hold on to the thread of your wretched existence is the dying hope that maybe, one day, the escalating troubles of humanity reaches their inevitable, unbearable climax and you get to see society tear itself apart through sheer desperation. Now, being depressed is nothing to be ashamed of, quite the contrary, it’s a kind of proof that you’re intelligent enough to realize the sorry conditions of human life. Anyways, sometimes you get depressed, and when you do, there’s at times the will to sink deeper into this ocean of melancholy and bleakness. You watch sad movies, read sad books and listen to music such as Lifelover.

Lifelover plays a mix of dark pop-rock and black metal, seasoned with samples from different kid’s shows, sorta like Darkthrone covering a Nick Cave song with somebody watching Disney Channel in the background. It works surprisingly well at times, the sample part, sometimes it feels kinda uncalled for and isn’t really worked into the music that well. Other times though, they manage to work it into the songs and they lend a bizarrely morbid feeling to the music, blending the contemporary misery with the uncorrupted youth. Like a junkie, passed out on a playground, with children playing all around him.

The black metal element is mainly in the vocals, some of the guitarwork and the drums. The vocals isn’t quite your standard black metal shriek, more of an agonized wail cutting through the music like a razor through a teenage girl’s wrist. They also employ spoken vocals, sometimes distorted, sometimes not, and this leads me into one of the downsides of this album, namely that the lyrics are in Swedish. This may sound lame and all, but some lines sound decidedly cheesy in Swedish, when they would have sounded pretty rad in English. You’ll encounter this same problem with Shining, and I really dunno why it’s so.

At times, there’s also actual singing on “Pulver” and that’s not working too well, also much like with Shining, these guys simply aren’t good enough singers to convey adequate emotions into the songs. I’ve compared Lifelover twice to Shining in this review already, and there’s definitely some common elements, but actually the bands are (relatively small) worlds apart. Where Shining is diabolically sinister and with no self-irony (or self-distance) whatsoever, Lifelover is a little more sarcastic and cynical in their approach. Personally, I find them to be a better soundtrack to depression because they seldom go for brutal heaviness (‘cause they’re not entirely metal duh) and consequently listening to “Pulver” is not self-empowering in the slightest. Just so hideously fucking bleak and morose.

The production on “Pulver” is rough and unpolished, see how I’m giving a bad production a positive description here? It’s just one of those cases where a bad production is more fitting to the songs being played, and the overall feeling of the album, anyways, every instrument is distinguishable in the mix.

If you like to feed your depression and don’t need your shit to be mind-numbingly brutal all the time, or even metal for that matter, I warmly recommend Lifelover, and “Pulver” is a great album to start out with. A couple of highlights are “Nackskott”, “M/S Salmonella” and “Herrens Hand”.

8 benzo pills out of 10.

Information
Released: 2006
Label: GoatowaRex
Website: www.lifelover.se
Band
( ): vocals, guitars, lyrics, speech
B: guitars, bass, piano, lyrics, speech
1853: lyrics, additional vocals, speech
LR: lyrics

Tracklist
01. Nackskott
02. M/S Salmonella
03. Mitt Öppna Öga
04. Kärlek – Becksvart Melankoli
05. Vardagsnytt
06. Avbrott Sex
07. Stockholm
08. Söndag
09. Herrens Hand
10. Medicinmannen
11. Nästa Gryning
12. En Sång Om Dig

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