Shining "Lots Of Girls Gonna Get Hurt" Cassette

"Lots of Girls Gonna Get Hurt" is a short EP and break filler before the release of the emotionally stunning and musically diversified main release "Redefining Darkness" where Shining covers three bands from Sweden and one band from Finland. The interesting thing is that this short release presents us Shining in a new light as the controversial Swedish band chose to cover more or less popular tracks from bands that rather belong to the alternative or folk rock genre than to the metal scene. The tracks still have a very slightly dark, eerie and melancholic touch but it all feels like an uninspired light version of the main band. This touch is not due to a rework of the band but because the originals already sound this way.
Instead of adapting the four tracks to the harsher and progressive sounds of the band, Shining chose to perform four songs that are quite close and almost similar to the original songs. The instruments are more laid back while the vocals are clean and very melodic throughout the entire release. This proves that the band has multiple influences and has no boundaries for their inspirations which is a quite positive sign. The enchanting clean vocals prove that Niklas Kvarforth is one of the most variable extreme metal performers around and he does a very decent job on here. I must even admit that his versatile vocals are often better than the vocal performances by the singers of the original bands but apart of this, there isn't much of a difference.
The tracks simply don't vary much from the original performances and all sound rather similar. This short record lacks of astonishing passages or outstanding moments. The four songs are definitely not bad but can't be called quite spectacular either. The special certain something Shining stands for is completely absent on this release that lacks of extreme contrasts, profound emotions and progressive breaks. This experimental EP is a little bit too relaxed and unspectacular to be bought by anyone outside of the faithful Shining fan basis and has nothing to do with what this band has done prior to and after this release. It can be described as a little experiment and an attempt to break out of the usual structures but it lacks of profound inspiration and true motivation. In the end, this just feels like an odd mixture of a few relaxed jam sessions and some sort of an identity crisis as these four tracks go straight nowhere. Every band needs to break free from time to time and try out something new but they should have done this for themselves in their basements instead of professionally releasing this kind of average material to a rather confused fan basis. On the other side, the band likes to provoke by chosing a disturbing title for this EP for example but this time there was really just much ado about nothing.

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