Violet Cold - Noir Kid (2020)^{Release ID: 18901}

I'm not usually much impressed by a lot of Blackgaze, it being a bit too twee in a lot of cases for my taste, but I was quite a fan of Violet Cold's previous album kOsmik. This.. nah, not so much. It's merging of blackgaze with 90's-style electronica and trance just doesn't click for me. Most unforgiveable is the horrible "helium gas" voice that is employed on a couple of the early tracks that make it sound like some sort of shitty novelty record. The black metal parts are still pretty decent actually, but for me, this album is a huge disappointment and a backward step, following on so close after last year's far superior release. I guess I'm really just an old traditionalist at heart, in which case this was probably never meant for me. As with kOsmik there is an instrumental version available, so I might give that a try at some point to see if it works any better.