And now for something completely different as legendary Monty Python would say. Batboner are hailing from Oslo, Norway, land of fjords, beautiful landscape and black metal. But, do not haste. Batboner are not playing black metal, but deathrock they do and they do it well!
This is their nine song debut album after ten years as a band, after some line – up changes and couple of e.p.-s and singles and represents what the band really is, deathrock theme added with some goth, punk and progressive elements in the song structures. Some songs remind me of Croatian band Phantasmagoria a little bit. The songs are thick with atmosphere, melodic yet heavy and I love the vocals how deep and great they sound. For me personally, the best songs and highlights on this record are Chrysalis and Lala Land. I don´t usually listen to many bands like this one, but this music is great for all darkened hearts out there.
Draven Valentine has a new release out there with four songs ready to melt your face off. These four songs on the e.p. are all different and I love the way how they are done. Intro sounds like a fifties doo wop influenced ballad, the sound I grew to love so much. Eternal Night is a classic horrorpunk song with all the moments and singalong parts, melodies and vocals we love this genre for.
Atom Age Vampire is more of a deathrock even gothic influenced song, especially in vocal lines, with pumping bass, darkened atmosphere of almost touchable sorrow and sombre heart.
She Dines With Wolves has many metallic parts and is again much more different than the rest of the material. Slower parts, eerie keyboard melodies and great vocal melodies give this song something special and this is a great release indeed.
Horrorpunk scene is very small in this ex Yugoslavia area. I know only couple of bands that are currently active, being Saučešće, Goatmare And The Hellspades and Nikolas Boleslavski & Ljubazni Leševi. These guys just released their debut full length album and I reviewed it for our zine.
I knew these guys and they are no strangers on the pages of this zine since we presented their couple of singles a while ago. The full length record contains 10 songs of horrorpunk/death rock and I love it! The title track and Paulina are true horrorpunk anthems with catchy melodies and made for singing along. There are also metal influences like in that fantastic guitar work in Ja siroče, also some gothic dark pop sounding Đavolji pastir. But, the best song on this record for me is the last one being Poslednje kolo.
The vocals are great, not being Danzig clone, but having originality and melody at the same time. The musicianship is great, the lyrics are gory, horror, yet with a bit of humour like for example Izbezumljena zombi-riba. This is a long awaited debut record but the wait was worth it. I love it!
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 