CD Info

2012
Blue Freya / Australia

4 Tracks

English Lyrics

It’s funny how we get interested in a particular musical entity. Sometimes it takes a few listens, usually to a full CD worth of material. Other times, you already know the sound and are pretty much certain you’re going to like it. Other times, it’s just a bolt of lightening. And that’s what happened here. I got turned on to a video of the band, a song that’s not even on this EP, and was hooked. The song was Open Your Eyes and it pretty much provided everything I find interesting in this kind of music, both musically and visually. I mean, if you can look at this video and not have a serious interest in the band, well, there’s always Country Western. Beyond the obvious visual attraction, there is some truly interesting music, both vocally and instrumentally. The Eastern Europeans seem to have a thing for the violin and that keyboard, well, give me a break. The production is correspondingly first rate, well mixed, nicely produced. Anyway, after viewing this thing, about 30 times, I was hot to trot to get in touch with the band. . . which was not all that easy. You see, although my Ukrainian, that’s where the band is from, is not totally non existent, I was married to a Ukrainian for a number of years, it does have it’s limits. I can say "svenia" quite well; it means "pig" and was my ex’s favorite term for me, a strange term of endearment to be sure. But, beyond that, the language escapes me. So, my initial interactions with Alice were less than fruitful, she sent me to a page to download the material and it was all in Ukrainian. And they don’t use the term "download". So, it took a while to get the rest of the material. Same for lyrics, no tenemos. But, I do have the lyrics for Open Your Eyes and one other track, so we’ll just go ahead and pretend Open Your Eyes is on the EP, for lyrical purposes, that plus it’s truly a great song.

Alice Shakor, vocalist and band founder, seems to be the honcho around here. The band was, originally, an all girl thing, Alice in Wonderland. Grace Slick, where are you now? Actually, she’s 70 and still looking good, probably still doing "White Rabbit". But this Alice began this project about 2005, and, eventually expanded things to the current lineup which, I think, is about 7 people. Again, hard to get information in English, actually, hard to get information in anything. So, I’m guessing here a bit, but, I’ll do the best my limited abilities will allow for. And, if we focus initially on that video above, we can get a pretty fair idea what the band is about, musically and lyrically. The music, it’s obvious, is pretty much at the top of the heap. And lyrically, we don’t fall far, and that Eastern European accent only makes it that much sexier. Not that she needs any help. It’s not the darkest Gothic I ever heard, but it certainly goes in the right direction:

One touch to your eyes / Your tears fall in my sea
I can hear in their flight voice of your dream / I can sew up your wounds
And you can sing again / What do you lost in your fight?
You lost your heart, you lost my heart
Open your eyes / Free your ideas and you will know....
Open your lies / Release them where their place to be

Clearly, Alice’s English vastly surpasses my Ukrainian.

And the EP carries on this musical and lyrical direction.

The little you get about the band is from a two or three paragraph introduction found on a couple sites. They all say about the same thing, but it does give you some understanding, probably from some English speaking PR type in Zhytomyr, a location beyond my ability to find on most maps. What they say, however, is "The band’s sound is a distinctive blend of gothic metal with elements of doom, decorated with a symphonic wrap and multifaceted semantic filling. Lyrically, the main themes deal with the concepts of time, human feelings as reflection of real life experiences, and philosophical questions." There you have it. Beyond that, it’s guesses by yours truly.

However, the four tracks do provide some first rate Gothic, IMO. We begin with the title track, Clock of Eternity. It begins with what sounds like some reverse engineered sounds that provide a haunting, sci-fi kind of thing. But, we eventually get to the music, some guitar work over keyboards supporting the vocals. There’s some spoken material here, again, done over a Gothic sounding background. Alice has one of those voices that whisper at times, providing a distinctly individual sound. That and the accent make this a very different vocal line. Sexy and highly entertaining, especially when we get a little of the violin behind it. There’s some layering of the vocal, some harmony that demonstrates some tight production work. But, the parts I like best are towards the end where we feature the violin and the keys, backed by the guitars. Essential components of much of the contemporary Gothic sound we hear from Eastern Europe, and one of the things I like most about it.

Tomb-like Silence follows and this is the one I thought I had found lyrics for, but, either I had had one too many Cuba Libres at the time or someone has absconded with the web site. They damn sure ain’t there no more. Oh well, whacha gonna do. You can always listen to the video a few times and pretty much get the picture. Again, the vocal here sort of steals the show, although there are some nice parts where the guitars provide a crunching background. There are also some nice piano parts; they seem to run through the song from start to finish. But the overall impression is one of "epicness" mainly based on the keyboard work and the vocals.

The third track is The Son of Nightmare and Pain. This is one I really wanted the lyrics to, I can figure out a lot of the theme from a careful listen. But this one does seem to provide the most "Gothic" look and feel. It’s also more metal in flavor, but with that solid Alice vocal to remind you who’s in charge. And, like the other three, it’s not a particularly short rendition, about 5 and a half minutes. Nicely developed with the multiple musical components brought together nicely by the production folks. Alice’s accent is more pronounced here, but, even with that accent, it just seems to make the story all the more interesting. You can understand what she’s saying; she’s just doing it a little differently. And, as with the other tracks, there are interesting side ventures, generally instrumental, that provide a haunting introduction to an even more haunting vocal line, in this case, spoken. This is a nice one, maybe better than the single mentioned above.

Door in Autumn is the most thoroughly developed track on the EP, it runs about 6 and a half minutes and again provides a variety of musical directions. Lots of strings here, solid keyboards and the guitars get a little more action than usual. In fact, there’s a killer guitar segment that really demonstrates the metal capabilities of the band, something not always evident in the preceding tracks.

I wish I could provide more information on this solid potential. We’ve got talent here, writing, production, vocal and instrumental. I suspect we’ll hear more about Sad Alice from other reviewers before long, they’re just too good to ignore. And, in the best of all possible worlds, maybe we’ll see a more complete product before too long. In the meantime, well, there’s still that video, which you just can’t get enough of. A solid introduction, now we need more.

9 / 10

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