Artist: Cardiac Casper
Label: Transhumanz Records
Release: 2011
Length: 48:12
Rating: 2.3/5
Being inoculated with rhythm- and melody-saturated, pop-ish metalcore is nothing strange north of the Alps. Remember the once fairly well-tuned youngsters Emil Bulls? Cardiac Casper are stylistically quite similar to those guys, but have a shade more commercial appeal. Between the guttural growls and classic guitar breaks hides a touch of electronics and a batch of songs built with radio play in mind. It’s as if the metalcore genes climbed into the same wagon, got genetically spliced with the melodies of Live, Candlebox and Creed, and crossbred their way to common denominators for upgrading the most promising bits of all these rather different mental worlds. And that job demands less spontaneity than clever combining of patterns and colors we’ve seen a thousand times already.
Cardiac Casper are masters at creating the illusion that what you get, from the heartbeat of the intro and the first bars of About Withered Love Confessions all the way to the anemic close of the record with Running In Circles, is a totally natural, unfeigned outpouring of emotion onto chrome platters of perfect sincerity, yet it’s all far too polished and sweet to just knock back in one go without a second thought, without feeling a slight burn of elevated stomach acid creeping up the esophageal wall. The recipe is meant for winning over crowds of naive young girls more than for pampering the robust, hairy representatives of the proverbially stronger half of the human race.
The sextet from the little town of Koblenz consists of trade-trained guitarist and vocalist Simon Z., who is matched behind the keys by keyboardist Simon R.; the low end is handled by bassist Richie, and on second guitar the strings get scrubbed by a guitarist going by the nickname Schosch. Then comes a game of word association with the names of the two remaining members. Behind the drums sits Lars, and no mistake — his last name isn’t Ulrich; the vocal focus of this rather lady-loving, estrogen-outburst-inducing bunch of creators is rounded out by singer Manu (no, not Chao …). But let’s move on from the superficial looks and shiny hairdos to the substance itself. As expected, front and center, as so often before, is the heartache of leaving, emotional mind games and the pain of parting, which the heart-referencing cover and album title already hint at. Related To The Heart is a construct of unhappy love that every teenager gets over, leaving deep marks burned into later, less sensitive and less tender patches of skin. I don’t know if Germany is in a different time zone or whether the young enthusiasts, in their urge to create something unique, stumbled into a space-time wormhole and, in shock and fervor, forgot that these weeping sagas backed with heavy guitars were already done more than a decade ago by Linkin Park, while the synthetic hymns to artificiality are also tightly bound to the garish-colored boredom of Sonic Syndicate, and amid the foggy flicker of already slightly neurotic repetition of what’s been said, the image of Jared Leto and his musical ejaculate with 30 Seconds To Mars creeps into a corner of your cerebellum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y22bIs9EiOg
So you can strike the purity-of-ideas criterion off the list right away. You can also, with a clear conscience, cross out the Christmas/New Year wish of getting a revelation from this record, something nothing already heard or seen can offer you. The dance-sparkly onanism is well produced, admittedly, and on first listen, without digging too deep, it comes close to a feeling of conditional likability. Despite all that, the goblets and chalices of enjoyment are filled with lukewarm water instead of wine, and the apple of knowledge tastes too stale to send you straight into ecstasy, and if it does, the above needs one quantitative correction. The wormhole the young Germans so confidently strode into by moving the first fader on the mixing desk during production, and even earlier, during the recording of the album, has undoubtedly stayed open, and besides the young enthusiasts, it has sucked you in too. It’s a matter of taste and, yes, there’s no arguing about taste, so enjoy this quick snack, and good luck digesting it.
Lineup
Richie – bass
Manu – vocals
Schosch – guitar
Simon Z. – guitar, vocals
Simon R. – electronics, keyboards
Lars – drums
Production
Cardiac Casper
Tracklist
1. Intro
2. About Withered Love Confessions
3. Believe in Me
4. Things Have Changed
5. A Touch of Rayon
6. Red Skies
7. Countrysides
8. Still with You
9. Radio! Radio!
10. Won’t Let This Die
11. Unwinged to the Ground
12. Can’t Hear You Sing
13. Fade Away
14. Running in Circles
15. Outro
