A Kiss Could Be Deadly

A Kiss Could Be Deadly (2005)

Jordan Rogowski

Everyone remembers their first kiss. I mean, their first real kiss, not when that weird girl with the Coke bottle glasses slipped one by you while you sat on the see-saw. I'm talking about a kiss after you washed that weird girl's saliva off your face, and after you stopped running away from those deadly cooties that kept you hiding from girls for years. Could a kiss ever really have been deadly, anyway? A kiss, maybe not, an overabundance of synthesizer use, now that just could be crazy enough to happen.

The foursome clad all in black known as A Kiss Could Be Deadly use enough synth guitars in their self-titled album to drown a small army. At first listen, they very much sound like a product of the 80's, and all of the unfortunate musical developments that took place during that time period. There's moments where the guitars are free to not wear their synthesized masks, but they're too few and far between to take more than a minor notice of. It comes down to whether or not that's the sort of thing you like in your music; heavy usage has never really done a lot for me. Though, through the time I spent listening to this and not liking the some of the synth effects, I realized something:

The singer has a really, really solid voice.

Through all the crackling, A Kiss Could Be Deadly's female vocalist has a very powerful voice that rises over everything in the background. "The First And The Last Time" exhibits a very bouncy and danceable groove, while the vocals remain far above all the ups and downs of the backing instruments. These are the first moments on the album where the synth accents everything well, rather than repels it. The five-piece really shows they can gel on this track, and that continues into "I'll Be Your Anti-Hero, Baby" where the distorted guitars start and stop until providing a powerful undercurrent for the vocals in the chorus.

This disc really grew on me with each passing listen, even while I kept it on repeat while writing this review. This isn't quite as original as it's being billed as, but the latter half of this EP provides a lot of fun, danceable moments, and their singer has the perfect voice for it all. Powerful and present, but not overbearing, as song and album ends with a repetition of "because the hero never dies."

For fans of Alkaline Trio, there's a dancy cover of Good Mourning's "All On Black," and while that was never one of my favorite tracks, the band is able to turn out a decent rendition of it, with some moments seemingly straight out of the Cure's Disintegration. If you give this EP a chance to grow on you, it most certainly will. This album is not the kiss of death, but instead signs of better things to come from a band who manages to impress, synthesizer and all.