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The Birthday Massacre - 'Violet' EP Review
Violet is a colour born from two, the tepidity of red and the melancholia of blue.
Therefore it seems a fitting title to further the concept of The Birthday Massacre. A band who have always managed to capture the essence of contrast with their epic eighties inspired electronica and modern pop sensibility. Fused together they construct songs that tap into the emotion of your childhood faith in fantasy and tug the strings into the present, letting it all bleed in song with the tragic cynicism of later broken years.
It’s like finding out the Easter Bunny is no more real than George Bush’s intellect but you still choose and want to believe in chocolate eggs delivered by abnormally sized furry creatures anyway…
Their second release 'Violet' continues where 'Nothing & Nowhere' left off, however, leaves no disagreement over the fact that this is a record by a band that have vastly matured and evolved over the past two years.
The songs are relatively simple in melody and structure, yet extremely dense and overwhelming. The score to every childhood dream seen on silver screen and now playing from the stereos of the disaffected youth who never lost that conscious vision of the key to an escape.
The romantic fabrications have now taken a slightly darker and edgy tone with the personal attributes of the music projected through a sharper spotlight; the words themselves that we can identify with are violently meshed with this lasting portrait of another world we’ve always thought The Birthday Massacre existed in. Always carrying the contrast through every aspect, the fiction and non-fiction have now leant more towards the indefinable as this world of TBM has become ever more increasingly believable.
Nine tracks on this EP find you feeling the emotion of scripts from the books that were never written.
Glued together by ethereal interludes (‘red’ and ‘black’) each track seems to gracefully seep into the next and yet over these nine tracks comes nine individual star inducing punches all packed into one record. ‘Violet’ is not a record that can be wholly digested or outlined within the first few listens merely due to the fact that it’s content is so overpowering and diverse throughout.
From the outset the ‘Prologue’ pulsates menacingly with short bursts of what sounds like rapid breaths, possibly in fact be the sound of scratching…Cue the appropriate and all familiar intro of ‘Lovers End’ that escalates into this epic struggle between empowering and seemingly sadistic fairy tale ending (of one) and the insecurities of a realistic break-up. With the eerie repetition of “1234, underneath the cellar floor, 5678, lover will suffocate” and powerful chorus, the song confirms all hopes of what else is in store.
’Violet’ explodes and synthesisers cascade and run into a more upbeat rhythm that repetitively dips to heavier territory, romancing us with sad truths and yet still elevating spirits with its bouncing beat and crushing spellbinding soundscapes.
‘Play Dead’ is a stand out track, a heavy-driven song that, without being particularly hostile, hits you hard with the theme of self-validation and the death of a union of hearts through never understanding our own to begin with “behind our lipstick smiles”. It deals with the principle without being condescending or overly clichéd and in short becomes a modern day ambiguous requiem for the death of identities.
‘Blue’ on the other hand creeps in distrusting and introduces us to Dr Jekyll and Ms.Chibi with an alternating flicker of sweetly serene vocals and light percussion to demonic bitter incantations over a heavier barrage of guitars. The song then cuts to a musical box-esque spell of sound conjuring youthful memories of mechanised toys and harmless secrets before detonating into more stringed onslaught that loses you somewhere in between a bedroom full of stuffed bears and a broken heart.
’Holiday’ is another sure-fire standout track that will send sentimentality packing to a new level of nostalgia and lament. If this song fails to jerk a tear from underneath eyelashes or at least get your heartbeat racing then consider yourself soulless. “On an on, the music plays, memories in paraphrase”…Could this sum up how the band make us feel any more so?
Closing with ‘Nevermind’, The Birthday Massacre conveys their use of contrast with an alluring ease. Chibi’s charming reminisces “I think we’ve met before, it was last Christmas on our parent’s accord...” cast against the cold realisation of finality and fading takes your emotions to the last note and colourless silence.
Don’t ever let Violet fade.
Violet is a colour born from two, the tepidity of red and the melancholia of blue.
Therefore it seems a fitting title to further the concept of The Birthday Massacre. A band who have always managed to capture the essence of contrast with their epic eighties inspired electronica and modern pop sensibility. Fused together they construct songs that tap into the emotion of your childhood faith in fantasy and tug the strings into the present, letting it all bleed in song with the tragic cynicism of later broken years.
It’s like finding out the Easter Bunny is no more real than George Bush’s intellect but you still choose and want to believe in chocolate eggs delivered by abnormally sized furry creatures anyway…
Their second release 'Violet' continues where 'Nothing & Nowhere' left off, however, leaves no disagreement over the fact that this is a record by a band that have vastly matured and evolved over the past two years.
The songs are relatively simple in melody and structure, yet extremely dense and overwhelming. The score to every childhood dream seen on silver screen and now playing from the stereos of the disaffected youth who never lost that conscious vision of the key to an escape.
The romantic fabrications have now taken a slightly darker and edgy tone with the personal attributes of the music projected through a sharper spotlight; the words themselves that we can identify with are violently meshed with this lasting portrait of another world we’ve always thought The Birthday Massacre existed in. Always carrying the contrast through every aspect, the fiction and non-fiction have now leant more towards the indefinable as this world of TBM has become ever more increasingly believable.
Nine tracks on this EP find you feeling the emotion of scripts from the books that were never written.
Glued together by ethereal interludes (‘red’ and ‘black’) each track seems to gracefully seep into the next and yet over these nine tracks comes nine individual star inducing punches all packed into one record. ‘Violet’ is not a record that can be wholly digested or outlined within the first few listens merely due to the fact that it’s content is so overpowering and diverse throughout.
From the outset the ‘Prologue’ pulsates menacingly with short bursts of what sounds like rapid breaths, possibly in fact be the sound of scratching…Cue the appropriate and all familiar intro of ‘Lovers End’ that escalates into this epic struggle between empowering and seemingly sadistic fairy tale ending (of one) and the insecurities of a realistic break-up. With the eerie repetition of “1234, underneath the cellar floor, 5678, lover will suffocate” and powerful chorus, the song confirms all hopes of what else is in store.
’Violet’ explodes and synthesisers cascade and run into a more upbeat rhythm that repetitively dips to heavier territory, romancing us with sad truths and yet still elevating spirits with its bouncing beat and crushing spellbinding soundscapes.
‘Play Dead’ is a stand out track, a heavy-driven song that, without being particularly hostile, hits you hard with the theme of self-validation and the death of a union of hearts through never understanding our own to begin with “behind our lipstick smiles”. It deals with the principle without being condescending or overly clichéd and in short becomes a modern day ambiguous requiem for the death of identities.
‘Blue’ on the other hand creeps in distrusting and introduces us to Dr Jekyll and Ms.Chibi with an alternating flicker of sweetly serene vocals and light percussion to demonic bitter incantations over a heavier barrage of guitars. The song then cuts to a musical box-esque spell of sound conjuring youthful memories of mechanised toys and harmless secrets before detonating into more stringed onslaught that loses you somewhere in between a bedroom full of stuffed bears and a broken heart.
’Holiday’ is another sure-fire standout track that will send sentimentality packing to a new level of nostalgia and lament. If this song fails to jerk a tear from underneath eyelashes or at least get your heartbeat racing then consider yourself soulless. “On an on, the music plays, memories in paraphrase”…Could this sum up how the band make us feel any more so?
Closing with ‘Nevermind’, The Birthday Massacre conveys their use of contrast with an alluring ease. Chibi’s charming reminisces “I think we’ve met before, it was last Christmas on our parent’s accord...” cast against the cold realisation of finality and fading takes your emotions to the last note and colourless silence.
Don’t ever let Violet fade.