Swedish band The Murder of my sweet took their name from the 1944 ‘film-noir’ “Murder, My Sweet”. They released their debut single in 2009 and followed this with their first album ”Divanity” in January 2010. Now two years later they are ready to release their second album
Singer Angelica remembers the creative process: ”Bye Bye Lullaby” has been a long time coming. We wrote nearly enough songs for two full albums and had to carefully choose these thirteen to truly represent the new, updated The Murder Of My Sweet. This album includes performances from close friends Jesper Stromblad (who you all know from In Flames), Fredrik Akesson (from Opeth) and Peter Wichers (from Soilwork), so it’s a really brave record. The major difference for me is the variation in the songs; we’ve taken them down a darker path, as well as on a more commercial path. It’s unorthodox maybe, but since there are so many female fronted bands out there, we felt that this combination had never been tried before, and would be breaking new ground, which is way more fun.”
The album kicks off with ”Armageddon” which is quite synth heavy in the opening moments before the guitars kick in. The vocals are clear and smooth and the song has a very polished commercial feel to it, but for me it feels a little bland and lacking anything to make it really stand out.
”Fallen” is an improvement, with a bit more power, but its still got a bland, over-produced feel to it that’s removed the raw edges that would otherwise have made the song more interesting.
To be honest the whole album suffers from this problem – its pleasant enough, but it’s just too bland and over-produced to appeal to me. Very disappointing.
I’m surprised that the band don’t have a full time keyboard player in the band given how reliant their sound is on synthesiser/keyboards/effects – I really can’t imagine them sounding like this live unless they have a huge reliance on a laptop to play most of the sounds in which case I wouldn’t be impressed.
”Bye Bye Lullaby” will be released on 25th May via AFM records.
The Murder of my sweet are:
Angelica Rylin (Vocals)
Christopher Vetter (Guitar)
Teddy Westlund (Bass)
Daniel Flores (Drums)
Track listing:
1. Armageddon
2. Fallen
3. Unbreakable
4. I Dare You
5. Violently Peaceful
6. Meant To Last Forever
7. Idolize
8. Kind Of Lousy
9. The One
10. Resurrection
11. Waiting For The 27th (Booh Prologue)
12. Black September
13. Phantom Pain
