Larva – The Sun Has Set Over Russia (CD Album – ScentAir Records)
Genre/Influences: Dark-electro.
Background/Info: Larva has been active since 2003 and is actually finishing their eight official full length. They became one of the most recognized dark-electro formations from Spain, which lead ‘Inquest’ and ‘Anoxia’ to play in different countries abroad their country. This album is meant as a gift to the Russian audience, which has always give them a warm welcome. That’s why it has been also released on a Russian label. You’ll get 9 remastered songs and 2 exclusive cuts.
Content: Larva is a band, dark-electro heads perfectly know. So this compilation is a great way to get back to their (h)el(l)ectro driven by furious rhythms, icy sequences, overwhelming leads and enraged vocals/screams. Both exclusive songs perfectly fits with the rest of the tracklist featuring some of their most famous songs.
+ + + : Larva is an interesting formation I’ve seen growing throughout the years to finally become an established band in their music genre. The sound is a rather ‘classical’ format of dark-electro and yet there’s something very personal and recognizable running through their songs. There for sure are explicit links in the sounds, leads and even some parts of the lyrics with Suicide Commando, but globally speaking Larva sounds more tormented and definitely harder. The songs are well-crafted and especially one of the exclusive tracks (cf. “My Old Demons”) is worthy of examination. Last, but not least Larva is definitely enlarging the sonic horizon of ScentAir records, which is mainly devoted to electro-pop music.
– – – : I’m not always a huge fan of the extremely distorted vocals as it becomes a little bit repetitive after a while. It’s nearly impossible to understand the lyrics and even the language –most songs are sung in Spanish, but there are a few English sung as well.
Conclusion: Larva doesn’t bring anything new when it comes to music genre, but at the other side they became very talented ambassadors in their genre.
Best songs: “A Piece Of Me Is Dying (Without You)”, “Save Up”, “My Old Demons”, “Frio Y Oscuro Amanecer”, “You Are Alone”.
Rate: (8).
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