I have fairly enjoyed Lyriel since the German band’s third album ‘Paranoid Circus’ turned up via Femme Metal in 2009. From there the group got snapped up by AFM giving us ‘Leverage’ in 2012, an album I appear to have referred to us ‘mostly harmless’ in an “OK nothing really challenging” kind of way. The one thing that it had in its favour was that it was a pretty compact listen at just longer than half an hour but now with Skin And Bones they have gone and upped that, expanding the amount of tracks and running time to just shy of an hour. The worrying thing about all this is just how much ‘mostly harmless’ can one feel comfortable with?
At least attention is caught quickly with a nice brash opener ‘Numbers’ booming in before sweeping us off on a jig with Celtic sounding strings. As things settles down it goes into a catchy but somewhat bland Euro rocking beat with the sweet vocals of singer Jessica Thierjung coating it in sugar. The chorus is either going to have you wanting to be at a cheesy concert in Europe watching Lyriel open for someone like Delain or Within Temptation waving a lighter along to it or running for your life in the other direction. It’s all a bit twee and very commercial in a way that said concert may have some embarrassing dad dancing going on whilst said guardian escorts their young teenagers to the show. One thing that I have to say is when they are good they can be very, very good and second song ‘Falling Skies’ sees the band at their best with a chugging bass line driving way towards an anthemic chorus which slams in and is guaranteed to have everyone singing along in that stadium and yes it is a song big enough to see them supporting the aforementioned bigger bands in a venue that size. At times Lyriel remind a fair bit of Pythia from our own shores but they don’t quite have the chops or the hooks of their songs on the whole. The title track is OK, nothing more and the main problem here is that on the whole (and there is the odd exception) songs just don’t have the staying power, once heard they have gone back into the ether of distant memory.
Although nothing here lasts more than 5 minutes the album definitely needs some trimming of a few songs. It could also do without some barking growls from a male singer on ‘Black And White’ without them it could almost be a Eurovision contender; with this in mind perhaps it could be one of the songs up for the chop. You are fully aware there are going to be ballads surplus to requirements here too, cue ‘Days Had Just Began’ which is depressingly bland by anyone’s standard. By now we are 5 songs into a 13 track album and you will probably have made a choice whether you want to sing along with the rest of the album including an obligatory song in German and more numbers that simply seem to be trying too hard to get radio play (Dust To Dust) being particularly yucky in a sick romantic way. At least that one’s not entirely harmless, every time I hear it I want to break things. Guess I should leave this one here.
(6/10 Pete Woods)
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