A departure from their original sound and a little disappoin
Steward Willons | Illinois | 09/16/2007
(4 out of 5 stars)
"My introduction to Black Strobe was through the nearly perfect "Chemical Sweet Girl" EP. I'm a huge fan of their combination of vintage 80s synths and a very dark, aggressive sound. My least favorite thing about Black Strobe is definitely Arnaud Rebotini's voice. However, my favorite thing about Black Strobe is Arnaud Rebotini's compositions.
Unfortunately, Burn Your Own Church is basically a showcase for Rebotini as the front man of a rock quartet. The songs are enjoyable enough, but his vocal work really brings them down a few notches and at times makes them somewhat annoying. The album retains the dark, aggressive sound, but with the synthesizers being replaced by guitars.
In my view, this is a major bummer. The 80s synth sounds were the defining characteristic of Black Strobe and as nice as it is that Rebotini wants us to know he's multidimensional, removing the synths also removes the essence. He as, in effect, turned Black Strobe into a rather ordinary rock quartet with a woefully inadequate vocalist.
There are few tracks that remind us what Black Strobe used to be and at times Rebotini's new direction works. Here I'm thinking of his cover of "I'm a Man". Other songs like "Shining Bright Star" would be awesome if Rebotini had a better voice or wrote better lyrics. It's not really even his Franglais delivery that irritates me - it's more basic things like intonation and depth.
It's a decent album and if you loved their previous material, this is worth picking up. I've said it's like an average rock quartet and I don't quite mean it literally. You can still tell it's electronic and it's still got an edge over a typical pop record, but it IS a departure from "Me and Madonna" or "Chemical Sweet Girl". If you're picking your first Black Strobe album, choose the Chemical Sweet Girl EP instead."