Leaves Eyes, King of Kings

Leaves Eyes started out like a modest, but pleasant folk band, carried by Liv Kristine’s voice and legacy and, album by album, it became bigger and, I’m sad to say, weaker and duller. So far, the height of dullness has been this hopeless album, but by the way things are going, I’m sure the next one will bring repetitivity and vapidness to a whole new level.  

Sweven – prepare to be deceived. Sweven is so pretty and medieval and Northern and I love it. And, as I am about to find out, 90% of their inspiration for this album was wasted on this cute two minutes song. It was nice while it lasted, I guess. 

King of Kings – the beginning sounds better that half of their discography, but it immediately goes into some generic bullshit. And I’m thinking to myself “heh, at least there’s Liv Kristine with her unique ethereal voice”. And then even Liv’s voice goes to shit. Seriously, what is this thing? What is it with those high mewings that offend my ear? What is it with the 1923857345 repetitions of the same annoying bit? What is it with everything that’s going on and how on earth can you move from something so pretty to something so horrible in less than one minute?

Halvdan the Black – again, the intro gets me to be very curious about what’s happening next. And again, one minute into the song, my curiosity is only directed towards how much of this shit will I have to bear. High scratchy choirs, that same old tractored bass riff I detest in Nightwish, a sugary sing-song on top of that overly simplistic drum beat…. yup, welcome to the world of crappy ordinary symphonic metal. And here comes the mandatory random guitar solo, their creation is complete! You can tell my eyes are already tired from all the rolling, right?

The Waking Eye – I’m starting to lose all hope regarding this album, is this how it’s all going to be? Is there any song that doesn’t follow a recipe that’s been done to death and doesn’t sound like everything I hate about Epica and their two thousand clones? And whatever happened to Liv Kristine, when did she start to squeak so much and why is she using that poorly trained high operatic voice when she has such a lovely medium register with so much personality? Is having any kind of personality forbidden on this album? 

Feast of the Year & Vengeance Venom – I thought Irish folk has the power to always make me happy, but apparently not when it’s coupled with that infamous bass riff! Enough with the freaking bass riff, I heard it in four of the five songs already, surely there’s another one you could use! 

Sacred Vow – I can’t stand that atrocious drum beat anymore. Oh look, here comes THE RIFF! That one riff and one drum beat that this whole wretched album is built on. I can’t even pay attention to anything else, that’s how annoying they are. And I know that Leaves Eyes have never been the height of inventiveness, but I seriously didn’t remember them to be that bad. Now that I started, I might as well finish, but the truth is I don’t even know why I’m reviewing this for, I should’ve gone straight to Amorphis (yes, Amorphis is coming).

Edge of Steel –  I don’t know how is it that every song starts with a few seconds of nice promising folk and then bad metal storms in and kills every ounce of potential. Oh look, there’s Simone Simons, exactly what was missing for the Epica resemblance to be complete. I wonder what brought them together… “We are warriors, we are rebellions, we tear down  walls”. We? WE? You’re Simone fucking Simons and Liv fucking Kristine, the queens of diabetes, just… shut up. I’d laugh if it weren’t so terribly lame. And please stop using those folk instruments, you’re a disgrace to Irish music. And to folk music. And to music in general. 

Haraldskvæði – wait, they can do that? And they chose to fill a whole album with that garbage? Sure it sounds straight out of Secret Garden, but it’s beautiful! It makes me think of magic and the North and it’s dreamy and melancholic at the same time and somehow it makes it even more infuriating that it took them eight freaking songs to finally include one that doesn’t suck.  

Blazing Waters – considering Haraldskvæði and the beginning of this song, I really think they should stick to folk. They do it well, it sounds nice, it’s tolerable. And metal sounds so horribly wrong! There’s an attempt to do something that I can only imagine would count for “beauty and the beast” (but instead it’s a dude barfing in the microphone paired with a lady that’s so syrupy I’m sure she’s the cause for all the dude’s barfing). Then there’s another attempt to be Epica with all the loud obnoxious choirs that are supposed to be epic, but are in fact a disjointed mess. And then… I can’t even bring myself to say it. Then there’s Iron Maiden. I guess the only way to deviate from that stupid riff was to steal it from someone who knows what they’re doing.  And it keeps going and going and when you think it’s finally ending, it goes “nonono” and issues another twitchy attempt at life and starts trailing again…

Swords in rock – yes, yes, stick to folk! At least you’re half decent when playing folk. I may have heard this tune a thousand times before, but at least it doesn’t make me want to cover my ears and wail. 

Oh good Lord, it’s finished. I don’t know whether to congratulate myself for getting through it or berate myself for wasting 40 minutes of my life on this mess. What I do know is that I’m staying the eff away from this tedious band from now on.