Camarada, King in the Dark

Camarada should be charged with the crime of Attempted Emo. Or maybe Assault with a Deadly Weapon, ’cause listening to it nearly killed me. On King in the Dark, the band’s debut album, the singer thinks everything is a big power ballad and sings accordingly. There aren’t many strong songs here, and Camarada gets too ambitious with the production, to boot. They’re just trying way, way too hard throughout the album.

The biggest problem is that their melodies try too hard to be catchy, and the result is a bunch of mush. Most of the songs are just tedious, but some of them are really bad — the bridge of “On the Fire Escape” has this really stupid call-and-response and harmony bit. “Love Yer Lover Too” tries to be this stately high-school graduation piano anthem, but the melody is sappy and obvious and terrible (of course, so are a lot of high-school graduation anthems). It should be a sign when even your title song (“King in the Dark”) is bad.

As I said, the production doesn’t help, either. “Patience” features this strange vibe sound with way too much vibrato and this annoying scratching sound which distracts from the song. “Overtime” has a big Cure-style keyboard part with way too much chorus on it and which sounds pretentious. “No Se” has this weird triplet riff thing that throws the song off, and in “Love Yer Lover Too,” the band mixes the lead guitar part so loud so that you can’t hear the song (although, all things considered, it’s not much of a loss).

The one redeeming part of this album is the song “The Ballad of Blue Collar.” It’s got a good melody and minimal arangement and even a sadly funny line: “Dead on the 10 in the afternoon light / All just enough to make rent and get high.” The singing is still overwrought, but the song is okay. It’s too bad that they went overboard on the others, ’cause it just made everything worse. Not that the songs are that good to begin with, but at least they’d be listenable. If they have one decent song, then in theory there’s a chance they might grow out of it, but this album doesn’t give anyone much hope.