Puppy
Pure Evil

It is pure evil when Puppy gives us their second album, and you may be forgiven for imagining that you are dealing with something from the death metal variety. But it isn’t something like that, it is something a bit different. I read in some review that they are like Ghost, stuff like that. Maybe they are, I am not listening to Ghost so I have no idea. I also read that they want to make pop music with love for the heavier stuff, and that this new album comes with both the heaviest and sweetest elements they have done. This is only their second album so such a statement can mean nothing if the first album was very flat, so what about it?

The castle on the covers says nothing about how it sounds, neither does it sound evil. It is more of a pop rock sort of album, pretty nasal singer that I don’t like very much but he plays a big part in giving the band a fairly fresh sound. They aren’t exactly breaking any new musical ground so a slightly different vocal style is one way to be different. It is often pretty catchy, fairly dynamic in the play between the heavy and less heavy, but nothing groundbreaking. The variation is probably good enough to make the 39 minutes seem like 39 minutes and nothing more.

Good but not impressive, not exactly evil, and not brilliant. I can listen to this one, I even find some of it great, but not a whole song and I think the album lacks a bit of flow. It is a bit too many abruptions and such for it to feel fluent and fresh. You can’t exactly claim that Puppy is reinventing the musical wheel here, but they could have been quite exciting if they played more on their strengths and less on the attempt to be valid commercially, unfortunately there is rarely a connection between great music and commercial success – this album is leaning more towards the commercial that artistic. What this album needs are some excellent tracks and at least a few fresh ideas, unfortunately it is a fairly flat release that doesn’t impress me that much.

You will probably not go very wrong with this album, it is probably good enough to work for many. Problem is that the same is true for countless other albums and there is nothing setting this one apart from them. Many albums have flashes of brilliance, instances where you imagine that the band will be capable of a masterpiece in a future, so why would Puppy be any different from them? That is a good question, one for the future as I now conclude by concluding that Pure Evil is a pretty good album that doesn’t do very much for me.

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