Razorbliss
[Century Media]

With Razorbliss, Flowing Tears have made a slight jump in their sound. At their core, they are still a dark, gothic, metallic rock band with deep female vocals, but this is definitely the heaviest album I've ever heard from them. The one problem I had with their last two albums was that the songs meandered quite a bit. One or two songs would really rock and the rest would just sort of be there. I enjoyed the dream-like quality that all their songs shared, but it felt like too many of the songs just relied on that atmosphere and ignored songwriting. Razorbliss has more than fixed that problem and will hopefully be earning the band some well-deserved attention.

Flowing Tears' claim to fame was their deeper than average female vocals and really, that was about all they had going for them. While their new vocalist Helen Vogt does sound fairly similar to previous vocalist Stefanie Duchene, Helen brings a great deal more energy to these songs. It's as if the band had to write more energetic music just to keep up with her. Whatever happened, it works. This is the best album they've ever recorded.

There is a unique quality to Razorbliss that is due to a distinctive atmospheric touch that each song has, but they don't wallow in those atmospheres to the detriment of the actual song. The songwriting itself is simply light years ahead of the last album. Every song is memorable and catchy without ever really feeling dumbed-down or even commercialized. In essence, they are still just as dreamlike as they ever were, but now they are playing with darker, more potent dreams. I highly recommend Razorbliss to anyone who enjoys good gothic metal.