Not Necessarily Next Wave (To/Die/For)
Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 6:41 amTo/Die/For are perhaps best described as Melodic Finnish Heavy Metal Goth Duran Duran. Most people would hate this, but since I like goth rock and love Duran Duran, I get a kick out of it. I'd say some of it is similar to Type O Negative's October Rust album (with songs like Be My Druidess, My Girlfriend's Girlfriend and Cinnamon Girl). I see T/D/F get compared to HIM a lot, but I've never listened to HIM so I wouldn't know.
While Type O tends to be more Black Sabbath influenced on a lot of their albums and go overboard with the tongue-in-cheekiness and also do more mid-tempo stuff with very long, drawn out notes, To/Die/For's music tends to soar a bit more in its metallness and likes to kick you in the head with those duel bass drum attacks, tends to be faster than Type O with some actual soloing a la Iron Maiden, and T/D/F take themselves more seriously I think.
The 80's electropop/New Wave sound comes in in the lead singer's vocals which could be mistaken for Simon LeBon's on occasion, and the fact that much of their work is seriously tempered with 80's keyboard flourishes, majorly hook-laden. That, and the band does some 80's covers on their albums (Pet Shop Boys' 'It's A Sin', Depeche Mode's 'Sea of Sin', Cutting Crew's '(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight', U2's 'New Year's Day' on their forthcoming album). Also, the second song on Epilogue ('Vale of Tears') blatantly rips off first few bars of Duran Duran's 'Planet Earth'. All of this, plus the fact that T/D/F really, really do write some kick ass pop songs that are totally sing-along-able in their catchiness.
The biggest downside (if you qualify all of the above as the upside, that is) is that much of the lyrics are your basic, morose, angsty lovelorn variety. This is not as big a deal as it would normally be with me, because when the hooks of a lot of these songs dig in, those catchy choruses go a long way to keeping me grinning. Also a negative is the "Nu Metal" scream some songs are nearly ruined by (you'll recogonize this gurgly backing vocal yell from songs by Linkin Park or Evanescence).
Regardless, there are a LOT of really good songs on the two albums I have ('Epilogue' and 'Jaded'). The first three songs on Epilogue are totally awesome (Crimson Twins, Vale of Tears, Hollow Heart) as are 'Frail Without You' and 'Immortal Love'. And the Cutting Crew cover is great from Jaded as well as the title track and 'Fall Strains'.
Here's the video for 'Hollow Heart'(not so much for the video, but for the complete song audio):
http://mikkoo.free.fr/ui/To%20Die%20For ... 0Heart.mpg
While Type O tends to be more Black Sabbath influenced on a lot of their albums and go overboard with the tongue-in-cheekiness and also do more mid-tempo stuff with very long, drawn out notes, To/Die/For's music tends to soar a bit more in its metallness and likes to kick you in the head with those duel bass drum attacks, tends to be faster than Type O with some actual soloing a la Iron Maiden, and T/D/F take themselves more seriously I think.
The 80's electropop/New Wave sound comes in in the lead singer's vocals which could be mistaken for Simon LeBon's on occasion, and the fact that much of their work is seriously tempered with 80's keyboard flourishes, majorly hook-laden. That, and the band does some 80's covers on their albums (Pet Shop Boys' 'It's A Sin', Depeche Mode's 'Sea of Sin', Cutting Crew's '(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight', U2's 'New Year's Day' on their forthcoming album). Also, the second song on Epilogue ('Vale of Tears') blatantly rips off first few bars of Duran Duran's 'Planet Earth'. All of this, plus the fact that T/D/F really, really do write some kick ass pop songs that are totally sing-along-able in their catchiness.
The biggest downside (if you qualify all of the above as the upside, that is) is that much of the lyrics are your basic, morose, angsty lovelorn variety. This is not as big a deal as it would normally be with me, because when the hooks of a lot of these songs dig in, those catchy choruses go a long way to keeping me grinning. Also a negative is the "Nu Metal" scream some songs are nearly ruined by (you'll recogonize this gurgly backing vocal yell from songs by Linkin Park or Evanescence).
Regardless, there are a LOT of really good songs on the two albums I have ('Epilogue' and 'Jaded'). The first three songs on Epilogue are totally awesome (Crimson Twins, Vale of Tears, Hollow Heart) as are 'Frail Without You' and 'Immortal Love'. And the Cutting Crew cover is great from Jaded as well as the title track and 'Fall Strains'.
Here's the video for 'Hollow Heart'(not so much for the video, but for the complete song audio):
http://mikkoo.free.fr/ui/To%20Die%20For ... 0Heart.mpg