Flowing Tears

Goth metal in a much more literal sense than many female-fronted bands who, less deservingly, seem to end up with that classification by default, Flowing Tears beef up a new wave-inflected darkness with the thick undercut of heavy, distorted guitars. Helen Vogt’s deep, sultry voice is near genderless at times (the average power metal vocalist sounds more effeminate) and near hypnotising most of the way through an album as ambivalent in theme as its title, Razorbliss, suggests. Although almost every song displays some charms of its own, Razorbliss goes for broke with the opening title track, and nothing else cuts quite so deep. But when it works, it really works, and those few euphoric moments are close to enough to justify the surrounding languor.