You know how deceitful a music album can be. You’ve all tried it: You listen to the first song and think ‘hey! this is cool!’ and move on to the next couple of tracks only to find out that it’s the same old song and dance, or, even worse, a load of crap.

German Cold Rush’s debut CD is not exactly a load of crap, but it is far from perfect.

The opening track, Der Beginn, and first track proper took me by storm: majestic, doomy and electronic. It all lands somewhere in the interface between Die Krupps and some of the newer Goth metal bands like Lacrimosa Profundere or Jack Frost. The sound is somewhere between 80s and 90s.

I like that - despite the fact that singer Sebastian Müller is clearly not the strongest vocalist.

Next surprise is The Moche which sounds like the expression of the CD artwork: metalcore, thrashy, still with heavy electronics and a screaming Müller.

And that’s where the positive surprises end. The rest of the album is a mess of Euro Techno with guitar riffs that sound like, well, traditional German heavy metal riffs. And Müller sounds worse from track to track, directly proportional with the deteriorating quality of the song writing.

What starts out as a promising release all in all turns out to be a rather flat experience. Sadly. It could have been really good, methinks, the songs are just not there.