REVIEW

Industrializedmetal/www.industrializedmetal.tk


Helalyn Flowers, Helalyn Flowers, where are thee, my Helalyn Flowers?! Well, they are still in Rome according to their press-package, but the good news is that this Italian electrorock duo has a new release out! ?E-Race Generation? is the name given to this three-track promo/single which can be seen as the follow-up of their rather succesful debut EP ?Disconnection?. With that debut EP Helalyn Flowers managed to find a place somewhere in my mind labeled with the description ?very promising stuff ? keep an eye on them!? (which I did indeed) so I opened my CD player immidiately to let the sounds of this new release enter my mind.

In soccer they say sometimes: ?Never change a winning team.? I am not 100% sure if they sometimes say in the music scene ?Never change a winning formula?, but if they do Helalyn Flowers has definitely listened to that quote. The basics are still there, compared with their old stuff. Take some easy listening electro, mix it with some synth pop and gothic influences and the electro-rock is born. Drown it all into a big glass of catchyness and Helalyn Flowers is born. But, to say that this band brings nothing new compared to the old stuff is rather unfair. They clearly spent more time to develop the songs in all crazy details, and the band has became more mature to say the least! ?E-Race Generation? kicks off with the title track, surprisingly with the same name as the release. This is an easy listening track, but with very different elements combined. When the intro reminds me to Swedish EBM band Covenant, a rather poppy song follows with a decent and powerful chorus. Some wicked sampling is hearable all over this track, which gives this song something extra that other electro-rock bands are still in search for. ?Voices? is a darker song, where Helalyn Flowers manage to mix dark and a little harsh EBM stuff with beautiful vocals and a refreshing chorus. The schizophrenic sounding intermezzo fits the song nicely, and combined with the beautiful synths they prove that they know how to let different stuff sound united in one single song! ?Teargas? is unfortunately already the last track of this single. This track is a little less experimental than the preverious ones, and it?s a bit too early to call it an old school Helalyn Flowers track since they only exist for a few years, but I think you get the idea by now. Easy listening electro-based rock with a little touch of the gothic scene, and musically this song stands decently again. In the end, this release confirms something I already knew. Helalyn Flowers are, together with The New Flesh from Spain, the biggest electro-rock talents of the moment. I dare to say that Helalyn Flowers took another step forwards again, and I will not be surprised if a recordlabel picks them up sooner or later. One more thing I would like to mention in this review (which I didn?t mention in my ?Disconnection? review) is about the vocalist. Noemi manages to create sensitive though powerful vocals mixed with eachother, which are as bright as a clear blue sky. And what about the Italian-English accent I hear you ask? When lots of Italian acts have a bad Italian accent when they sing in English, Noemi?s accent is not irritating at all. In fact, her English sounds better than most of the Dutch vocalists too! And yes, that?s definitely a compliment! Oh, and last but not least, if you wish to take some hints from a crazy Dutchie: try to listen to this with headphones when you are fully concentrated, it will show you some new elements in their music time after time. And if you have no idea what a headphone looks like... your eartrumpet will be fine too!
 

/Gerardo Insua

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