Bands Music

I purchased this album after sampling the two free songs downloaded from Amazon, "While We Can" & "Stay!". Needless to say, these two tracks were so wonderfully done and exhilarating that they actually gave me goosebumps. While these two club hits flowed with hard hitting, dance-able beats, the album actually encompasses a surprising assortment of introspective & melodic pieces.

"Sugar Crash" is slow, light and melodic, almost reminiscent of VNV's Airship, or Wolfsheim's Blind, though probably not as brilliantly done as either.

"Eyes like Oceans" is similarly pleasing. The beautiful melody is distant and somber, fittingly performed by the female vocalist. The entire arrangement reminds me of Anything Box's "All These Days Undone", but with a better vocal performance.

"A Thousand Ghosts" is another example of the slower/introspective pieces. The meandering melody is accompanied by a haunting piano score. The background effects on this piece appears to have been intentionally distorted. This may have been the cause for a previous reviewers' comment of "recorded through a telephone". I can see how this would bother some, though it didn't affect me.

Overall I was very pleased with the album. This is a "must have" if you're a fan of dark synth/EBM. It's definitely one of those albums that can stay in your playlist for months without tiring.

The only reason this album does not get the fifth star is really due to a personal preference. Most of the tracks are much too light on vocal. The human element takes a back seat to the elaborate synth tracks, as if the vocal is the background with the synth at the forefront. It's unfortunate, because Graham has a great voice and the songs could resonate that much more.

Droom has SUCH promise! I'm intoxicated by the first few tracks...but then...wait...has the track even changed to the next? I got bored the first time I listened to 128 1/2 Days, because it all sounds the same! And I've listened to it several more times, thinking maybe I'm just not used to the band yet to pick up the various colors of each song, but still the same reaction. Different lyrics...somewhat, but that is about it! I recommend skipping this album. Droom has a beautiful sound but there isn't enough variety between songs. I cannot say anything about the other albums...they could very well be better.

Droom is really one of the best bands outhere, and this album is really amazing! But his second album called "Ten Songs" is even better! Buy anything you find by Droom is what I recommend!

I think that by the amount of praise that this album receives that there's a lot of people out there that haven't listened to a whole lot of synth rock. After reading about how amazing this album is, I decided to buy it. Maybe my expectations were too high, but this is nothing at all above average. All the bad cliches of synthrock are present, along with a lot of bad goth rock cliches thrown in. Jackson is not that great a vocalist, he has an ok voice, but a truly great singer can turn a boring song into a masterpiece, through vocal melodies or charismatic singing, both of which Jackson lacks. On top of that, the songs get incredibly tedious to listen to due to the fact that most range from 5 to 7 minutes in length, and have little or no variation within, so basically, they're boring and repetative. The distortion on the vocals is incoherent and cheesy. This sounds like a really bad version of Assemblage 23 and Bella Morte. I guess this is ok for someone who's just starting to immerse themselves in the synthrock genre, but for the veterans out there, you've heard anything this album has to offer 100 times before.
I saw someone refer to Graham Jackson as the Robert Smith of synthpop??? Please...

I love synthpop and, don't get me wrong, this release certainly delivers. But it is two steps shy of "great" because the production values (mixing) are sub-par. Dunno who produced this puppy, but the mix is muddy. All the synthpop cliches that we love are here (yet a number of tracks borrow too much from VNV nation), and the voice of the singer is lovely, but the whole album sounds like it was recorded through a telephone at times. I see big things for the group in the future, and this album is promising, but as is, its amatuerish.