Now, call me a psychic, but before I had even pressed upon the play button of the EP I am about to discuss, I knew what was about to come. A mixture of angelically sweet clean vocals and fury filled screams, all topped off with lots of pounding percussion and chug-a-chug guitars.
How did I know? Well, this is ‘Diary Of A Creep‘, the new release from goth-rock outfit New Years Day and that’s just the sound that they have managed to make their signature. It’s great.
Usually.
It brings me great sadness to say that this is not NYD’s finest hour. Particularly after such great work as their stunning 2015 release ‘Malevolence‘, an album that still regularly does the rounds through my hi-fi. This collection of covers really does not show off the skills of a usually brilliant band.
Straight from the off with promising opener, ‘Disgust Me‘, it would be easy to think that this was a continuation of the audible loveliness that we’ve come to know and love from the group; dark, menacing and with Ash Costello’s voice pipes proving she’s a vocal force to be reckoned with. Yet it is what follows that seems to lack any sort of direction. From the pure festival of trying-way-too-hard aggression that is Pantera’s brilliant ‘Fucking Hostile‘ through the almost pop-rock feelings of Garbage’s great tune ‘Only Happy When It Rains‘, a version of Linkin Park’s ‘Crawling‘ which we would honestly prefer to forget and a finale of the legendary No Doubt’s anthem ‘Don’t Speak‘ that just feels wrong in how heavily it is delivered, it’s unclear as to what it is that NYD have set out to achieve here.
What makes matters worse is the knowledge of just how brilliant these guys can be when it comes to their cover versions. If you need proof, then you only have to take a listen to their absolutely jaw-dropping rendition of ‘Sleep‘ found on the ten year anniversary tribute album of My Chemical Romance’s iconic ‘Welcome To The Black Parade‘. it’s easily the absolute highlight on the collection and stands head and shoulders above the rest.
So to conclude, we can only hope that this is a single blip in an otherwise stellar line up of releases from NYD, which whilst not completely without merit (the aforementioned ‘Disgust Me‘ is absolutely great) and it is admirable for a band to put out something so different to what they’ve done before, really does not live up to what came before.
