Liste der Bands Avantgardiste Black Dreariness (ITA) My Mind Is Too Weak to Forget

With what could have been something really rather good, Dreariness made the unfortunate mistake of recording the most obnoxious and down right painful vocals known to man over emotional and quite excellent music. It's such a shame that Dreariness decided to utilise vocals of this specific calibre, if it wasn't for how excruciatingly bad these vocals are then this album would warrant a higher rating from me.

The music on My Mind Is Too Weak to Forget is quite nice and soothing, taking the blackgaze approach that's become increasingly popular as of late, Dreariness have succeeded in creating highly emotional and quite beautiful music. The musicianship is nothing short of stellar for this short of music, the guitar playing is perfect for the genre, it's suitably melodic and creates an emotionally powerful atmosphere suffused with a sense of introspective beauty. The use of clean guitars is tasteful and highly depressive with the tracks One Last Wish and the title track being particular highlights. They're quite original and well written, offering a nice backdrop to the shoegaze inspired guitars. The music manages to maintain a high level of emotion throughout, it's fairly gently by black metal standards, the distortion is never overdone and the melodies are heart wrenching to say the least. The atmosphere created by the music is phenomenal, it's very hypnotic and absorbing, creating a bleak yet somewhat soothing view of the world that's easy to get lost within. There's the perfect balance between beauty and depression of My Mind Is Too Weak to Forget and I really appreciate that.

So the musical front is very good, but the vocals on the other hand are most certainly not, they're terrible plain and simple. Taking the approach of a ridiculously high whining shriek, the vocalist (who shall now be referred to as cat woman from now on for the purpose of this review) completely shits all over the album, ruining everything with her cat like wailing. Cat woman's vocals are some of the worst I've heard in black metal, they have this annoying tendency to force attention away from the music and to place it firmly on top of the vocals. If that isn't bad enough, her strained spoken word vocals are really what hammers the last nail into the coffin for me, with the song Lost being the worst offender where she sounds like she's forcing out a gigantic dump. It's not emotional, it's not depressive, it's just down right obnoxious and pathetic. Oh, and the way in which they fade in and out on the beginning of Lost is sure to garner some giggles, I guess they tried to make it sound ghastly and eerie, which it totally doesn't by the way, it sounds tinny and cheap as hell. In the song Dysmorphophobia the vocals aren't as annoying because they're somewhat subdued in the mix. The best track on here is no doubt the instrumental One Last Wish where cat woman thankfully shuts the hell up for once and it allows the music to do the talking, rather than having some cat like little girl shriek in your face obtrusively.

My Mind Is Too Weak to Forget is a really irritating record, the music is fantastic yet cat woman completely shits all over this album, ruining any chance of creating something worth while. If Dreariness want to get somewhere in the black metal underground then for the love of god get a replacement vocalist, I can barely tolerate listening to her crying.