Poisonblack Album: “A Dead Heavy Day”

So, Poisonblack started as a side project of Villa's, but when Sentenced decided to call it quits, Villa chose to do Poisonblack full time. Their first album, Escapextacy was excellent, and J.P. did a wonderful job on the vocals. Lust Stained Despair had some pretty good hits but overall felt lacking. Now they just released A Dead Heavy Day and I couldn't be more excited. 90% of this album is excellent and the other 10% is pretty good. There isn't one song here that I wouldn't listen to and be happy to do such. The best of this album are all the songs in the middle, tracks 3 to 9 and especially "A Dead Heavy Day", "Me, Myself, and I", and "X" are the best this has to offer. It blows away Lust Stained Despair and has better structure than Escapextacy. It's just the right mix between melodic and heavy, a must have for any fan of the genre.

First of all, I'm being kind giving this 2008 effort two stars! Lust was a very good effort, with Escapextacy being excellent. A Dead Heavy Day sounds like something that you would hear from any run of the mill garage band, seriously! The songs sound thrown together and the production just sounds plain empty! There is NO MORE gothic left in this band. Frankly, I thought Sentenced was utterly boring, so now Poisonblack has suffered the same fate. With that said, stick with the first two releases from Poisonblack, then check out the band To/Die/For.

I got into Poisonblack after learning that Charon's lead singer took lead on "Escapexstacy"... and that album was awesome! Even after J.P. left and Ville took over on vocals, "Lust Stained Despair" (while not having quite the same feel as the previous album) was still very good. In fact, there are more songs on "Lust..." that I like than on "Escape...".

So leading up to the release of "A Dead Heavy Day", I was super stoked! And the day I got that cd in the mail and popped it in my cd player... I was horribly disappointed. Memorable melodic riffs and choruses: GONE. Simply put: "A Dead Heavy Day" took the 'gothic" out of Poisonblack's gothic-rock sound. In actuality, the album sounds more like Sentenced than Poisonblack... but like a not-very-good Sentenced album.

If you liked Metallica's "St. Anger" then you might like this album. But if you're a big fan of Poisonblack's earlier work then check out Charon (my favourite), For My Pain..., or anything by Lacrimas Profundere between 2002 and 2006 (thier new album is pathetic).