:: Saliva - Blood Stained Love Story

Saliva

When Memphis hard rock outfit Saliva released their sophomore effort ‘Every Six Seconds’ back in 2001, the band’s popularity skyrocketed seemingly overnight with the success of the hit singles ‘Click Click Boom’, ‘Your Disease’ and ‘After Me’. Although featuring a couple of the band’s biggest singles to date (‘Always’ and ‘Rest In Pieces’), 2002’s ‘Back Into Your System’ wasn’t quite the follow up that most had hoped from the band, while 2004’s ‘Survival Of The Sickest’ did manage to salvage a small number of the fans that the band lost with turn away from harder edged material in favour of hits. After an extended hiatus that’s lasted three years, Saliva have reshuffled their line-up, reunited with producer Bob Marlette (who last worked with the band on ‘Every Six Seconds’), and finally emerging with their fifth full length effort ‘Blood Stained Love Story’. The album’s first single ‘Ladies And Gentlemen’ is a solid start to the album with Swinny giving the song a bit of balls in the guitar department, but it’s far from perfect, with Scott struggling to come up with anything meaningful lyrically, while the chorus itself sounding like a reworking of ‘Click Click Boom’ from ‘Every Six Seconds’. The follow up number ‘Broken Sunday’ is a little stronger sounding, but it suddenly goes downhill fast with the second single ‘Never Gonna Change’. The sampled drums, the sickly sweet chorus and the abundance of harmonised vocals lacks any originality whatsoever, and sounds like a by the numbers boy band song. ‘King Of The Stereo’ attempts to placate fans of the heavier side of the band, followed closely by ‘Black Sheep’ (which sounds suspiciously like a slower version of Nickelback’s ‘Animals’), while the P.O.D. sounding ‘One More Chance’ and cheese inducing ‘Twister’ will appeal to those who like their rock uncomplicated and lightweight. Unfortunately, the remainder of the album (‘Going Under’, ‘Starting Over’ and the Staind like ‘Here With You’) gets bogged down with too many ballads, inevitably leaving ‘Blood Stained Love Story’ sounding limp and too thought out to really rock out. ‘Survival Of The Sickest’ may have had its detractors, but after hearing the direction Saliva have taken with ‘Blood Stained Love Story’, it’ll soon have people changing their minds.