Crematory - Just Dreaming (1994) [Japanese 1st Press, TECX-25802]

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Crematory - Just Dreaming (1994) [Japanese 1st Press, TECX-25802]

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Here we go with Crematory's second album. Before I start, for those that don't know Crematory, they are a German metal band that started out as a total death metal act that sounded like Massacre, Sinister, and Nocturnus due to the keyboard usage and overall horror feel of their music. After their first album, they slowly disintergrated into a cheesy goth metal act that still used death metal growls from time to time and then completely turned into a goth/industrial act which isn't worth checking out unless you are a fan of those styles of music. Now I AM a fan of real Industrial music such as Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Swans, early Front Line Assembly, etc…but it's extremely hard for a metal band to perform industrial-influenced music unless you are Fear Factory, Aborym, Meshuggah, etc in my general opinion.

For "…Just Dreaming" we see less death metal ferocity as we heard on their demo and debut LP. Here we see even more goth keyboard usage and different tempo guitars, less double bass, almost sounding completely less of everything that would have them in the same level of ass-kicking music as the bands mentioned above. Oh, we still have vocalist Felix Strass with his killer growls, but the band aint doing the same. Here we also start seeing cheesy song titles that make you go "WTF?"…I mean "Only Once In A Lifetime" and the gay-as-fuck "I Saw Angels Fly". Need I say more? It's a far cry from killer song titles such as "Hall of Torment", "Deformity", and "Engulfed By Darkness". Even the artwork makes me scratch my head…their classic album in deceiving the listener "Awake" had better artwork than this even though it was a total Hypocrisy rip-off. A giant fucking melting face being pulled apart by chains over an endless cemetery? It's more cooler than a green monster with an image of a what looks like a dream-like heavenly paradise in it's mouth.

But aside from the usual complaints and bitching in regards to the band's evolving(more like devolving, IMO) the music is still good and listenable. One a small percentage of me is having trouble understanding this, but for the most part, I can listen to this and actually head bang to riffs here and there. The first half of the album keeps everything consistent while somewhere in the middle of "In My Hands" the music starts to change direction. "Dreams" starts off with tehcno-sounding arpeggios before the total tranformation of gothic/tehcno death metal. Oh and some lame-sounding yelping style vocals. The intro and outros are short.

Stick to the demo and first LP by Crematory. If you can handle this as well, pick it up. Just sucks at what Crematory COULD have sounded like instead of totally wimping out.

~ http://www.metal-archives.com