Dover Album: “Late at Night”

This album was probably the best one I bought all year. Even though Dover is a Spanish band, they really have it all over the bands that are currently putting out albums in the states. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone.

This is the best album I've heard all year. Dover have a style that I like a lot, on one side a really loud guitar, another guitar, an incredible drummer and a fantastic bassist. This is their third and best CD. I really love how they suddenly change from the distorted guitar to a clear tone and bass solos. This CD's got some catchy tunes, like Dj, Cherry Lee and Free Kitten, to name a few. If you're into punk rock, I serously recommend it, it's worth it. I think it's a shame that they're not well known outside Spain, because they've got talent, at least much more than other european groups like Guano Apes, etc. And too in this album there are a far superior number of songs I like than the ones I don't like, which hasn't happened before except with the Beatles CD's I have. I serously recommend it.

I'm writing this review in the feeble hope that anyone from the US ( or Britain, or Canada for that matter ) hears about Dover or even unintentionally crashes into this page.

The best reference for someone who hasn't heard about this female-fronted Spanish band is L7. Like L7, Dover is a grunge-y blend of metal and punk, with thunderous metal guitars thrown over what are basically short, simple punk songs. But whereas L7's strength lies on their instantly memorable guitar riffs, Dover feature much stronger songwriting and catchy pop hooks galore to which their messy, grunge sonic storm guitar noise is just a background.

Dover has something of a formula (in the good sense) going, and not a single track on this album falls flat. The songs "DJ", "Four Graves", "Cherry Lee", "Free Kitten" and "Sea Witch" all have extremely catchy choruses.

But Dover also suffers from two major flaws:

The first are their lyrics. These - in (very poor) English, as with so many pop/rock continental European bands today - are so ridiculously pedestrian that one is actually surprised that no one in Seattle (where "Late at Night" was recorded) bothered to point that out to the band. Though some can have fun with this mindless heaping together of senseless and unrelated sentences by reading them as surrealist poetry, I'm giving a fair warning to possible listeners.

The second is Cristina Llanos' voice. Whereas Cristina's thin voice and somewhat limited vocal range is enough for this kind of material, it should be noted that she is no Maria Callas. Dover's unplugged show for MTV Spain was downright embarrassing, and displayed her vocal limitations. But since the songs on "Late at Night" don't ask that much of her, she is consistently on key and her voice isn't as much of a problem as it could be.

Judging by what I saw in one of their videos, Dover don't take themselves too seriously. And perhaps that's the best attitude towards this album. Sometimes, it's really better to indulge a little and enjoy. So, buy this CD, forget about the goofy lyrics, put on your headphones and play the track "DJ". You will immediately realise how pleasant and entertaining Late at Night can be.

This album purely rocks. The lyrical and musical quality of every song is amazing. Dover shows us that women can make darn good hard rock vocalists; forget that, the lead singer is in my top 5 pure rockers of all time. When I first picked it up, I listened to this CD more than 100 times in the first month, and sense then it's never been far from the CD player. This album is from Spain and hard as dung to get here in the US, (don't worry its all in English) and I'm glad Amazon finally picked it up. Now all they need is to get Dover's first and second album (Sisters & Devil Came to Me) and they'd be gold. So if you're a rocker make sure you pick up the tasty "Late at Night".

I think this si a great band, they have a very own style of Grunge, but with a lot of influences of nirvana, i loved it.