LEAVES' EYES LOVELORN ALBUM NAPALM, SOUND POLLUTION RELEASE: MAY 26, 2004 REVIEW: JULY 2, 2004

Imagine walking in a dark and gloomy, but kind of beautiful and majestic forest. The air is heavy with rain, but somewhere a hidden glen ahead light glitters and beckons. Suddenly a sprit of the forest starts to sing, matching and outshining the light. Further down the path the glen becomes clearer. You can’t quite seem to reach it, but you struggle on, drawn in by the beautiful song.
After a while the thrill of the chase is gone and the spur of excitement you felt when hearing a growling demon – from time to time – trying to catch the spirit has subsided in you. All the trees now seem quite alike and you start to lose interest in that damn glen. Then, the spirit sings again, and you struggle on.
I don’t know if that shimmering freehold in the forest is reachable. Liv Kristine Espenes Krull’s beckoning and Kate Bush-like vocals and the heavy, gothic but at the same time rather poppy music by the members of Atrocity – lead by the spouse of Liv Kristine – Alexander Krull –- maybe promises too much. But as a debut "Lovelorn" is quite impressive. Had Liv Kristine not sung opera-like as in "Return to Life" (but all you Nightwish-fans out there are going to like it) and had her voice and music not reminded me so much of a heavy metal-Enya, this could have been a great album.
But that said, when "Lovelorn", and the trudge through forests and by fjords, starts off with "Norwegian Lovesong" and contains such male-female vocal performances as in "Oceans Way" you can’t really go wrong. Especially when the journey through Liv Kristine's creative mind is this much more interesting than that of her husband and his band on their newest album "Atlantis" – a kind of gothic death metal without interesting twists. Just don’t expect to be led by hand through the trees, and don’t be sad if you can’t make the trip in one go. The heavy guitars of Atrocity paired with the lush and beautiful vocals of Liv Kristine can get a bit tiresome at times.

KALLE MALMSTEDT