Artist: Angel's Perfect Dream
Label: Chill Pill 99
Release: 2009
Length: 41.29
Rating: 3.5/5
Perfect Dream is the studio baptism of Angel’s Perfect Dream, a string-slinging outfit from Škofja Loka. With it, the guys set about restoring old grunge moves, which, in search of a more distinctive identity, they’ve freshened up with a dash of inspiration from heavier rock. Sounds familiar: cross Pearl Jam with hard rock pomp, stir in some typical Alice In Chains morbidity, and you’re done. Well, luckily the situation with Angel’s Perfect Dream isn’t quite that simple. Or rather, with the album Perfect Dream the guys point to a constantly widening view of music, without forgetting the musical influences that schooled them through puberty.
The album boasts excellent production, with the vocals and guitar clearly pushed to the front, carrying the bulk of Angel’s Perfect Dream’s message. The result of their three-way partnership is a mighty, towering wall of sound, the kind Slovenia’s music scene chronically lacks. So Angel’s Perfect Dream know exactly where they’re marching, orientation is no problem for them, and that ticks off one of the prerequisites for the band’s continued creative growth. Long story short, there’s potential galore here! In Kupidus’s string-kneading there’s enough guts, passion, and arrogance to stir up envy in plenty of his overinflated fellow guitarists. Then there’s the vocal delivery, whose wailing color brings to mind the famous baritone howl of Glenn Danzig right from the intro. Nor can the other half of the Angel’s Perfect Dream orchestra be ignored, namely the guys delivering the rhythmic undercarriage, who offer nothing spectacular, but still confident, simply built rhythmic support.
Perfect Dream reveals another considerable quality of the band, namely the ability to flip old-school structural templates, from which, with a well-placed dose of lively melodic decoration, a bit of extra musical sparkle emerges every now and then. The album’s added helping of potential lies in its highlights, “My Love Reigns” and the opener “Do You Want It”, while with a synthetic backing layer of ambient filler the guys here and there even dare to weave in some teasing orchestral arrangements. With such bold maneuvering in terms of arrangement, the album keeps building on a solid dynamic ebb and flow, which stubbornly pulls far away from the expected assault of spoiled, adolescent frustrations revolving exclusively around an obsession with deep depression. Make no mistake, there’s no shortage of glances in that direction on the album, with “Cry And Whisper” and the tireless, wailing finale courtesy of the title track taking care of that, but once you manage to push through the thick layers of melancholy, you’ll get a distinctive original musical treatment that will successfully keep you from feeling indifferent.
So Angel’s Perfect Dream’s debut is a multidimensional album, at least when viewed through the lens of grunge’s basic framework. The fact is that on their very first try the guys managed to launch an organic product with many facial features and moods, which understandably didn’t happen without labor pains. The album’s quality level is stubbornly spoiled by “Funky”, for instance, which immediately reveals that our Škofja Loka stallions don’t manage to escape the clutches of clichéd, boring, and unoriginal sawdust, typical of the sheer spiritual deadness of the Slovenian music scene, on every occasion. But as already said, with their debut Angel’s Perfect Dream hit the mark harder than you might have expected at first glance from the proverbial predictability of their musical direction.
Lineup
Bertholmeus: vocals
Kupidus: guitar, backing vocals
Blaszh: bass
Yasmin: drums
Production
Jure Krajnik
Track list
1. Do You Want It
2. She Smiles
3. Guilty
4. Can’t Bring Me Down
5. Little Child
6. Reason
7. Funky
8. My Love Reighs
9. Cry And Wisper
10. Perfect Dream
