Diathra - My Endless Sorrow

Diathra has changed quite a bit since their first album which came out some six years ago, three members have left the band, leaving room for their new vocalist Marina Volovik and second guitar player Michael Sobol. They also got help from two session musicians to fill the bass and drum duties. If you have never heard of them, they are yet another female fronted Gothic Doom band and the question has to be asked why is this style of Doom Metal so popular especially in countries like Russia where this band resides. Don't get me wrong here, I like some Gothic Doom stuff but there seems to be a real in-balance with the amount of these releases coming out. The problem is so many of them are so generic and so predictable from the musical pattens they follow right down to the image. Diathra are a classic example of this, the band follows the same path as 100's of other bands in the genre without attempting to put their own sound to anything. The opening track "Autumn" is a good representation of what this album is about and sounds like. The band concentrates on delivering some good melodies and tries to add some catchy-ness to the sadness and emotional tones of their songs. The guitar work is kept pretty clean and the crunchiness is kept to a minimum while still sounding very much like a Metal band. "Autumn", "My Autumnal Images" and "I Feel" sound like the strongest tracks on the album because they at least offer up some strong arrangement and vocal melodies, its on the rest of the album where the problems emerge. One big problem as I hear it is while the lead vocals of Volovik are very good, they for some reason put in keyboard player Dmitri Laptenok doing some growls in places that just don't fit the melody or the song. His vocal work is very average at best but at least his vocals are not represented a lot on this album. The keyboard work of his is orchestral, and involves some melancholic piano but thankfully it works well within the context of these songs. The strongest part of the band seems to be guitar leads which are inspired by 70’s and 80’s hard rock sounds. This at least gives the band something different to offer you Goth-Doom heads out there.Another problem with many of the songs is that they are too long and the simple songs structures are pressed so hard that there is simply not enough stuff in the songs to keep the 6 minute plus songs interesting. The band seems to be trying to get a sound happening that will land them on MTV or something much like "Nightwish" but unfortunately, the songwriting is not there as yet. Fans of the band had to wait 6 years for this so you would have expected something special to be produced but instead they have released a stock-standard Goth-Doom release which is too heavy on melody and too short on musical ideas. I am sure that some people will like this for the vocals of Marina Volovik and some of the guitar work which features some very highly skilled tricks including arpeggios and other Ritchie Blackmore type mastery. This is a album that I listened to 5 times before commencing this review and to be honest I don't think I will ever listen to it again for the reasons I already stated. 5/10

www.myspace.com/diathra