Para Lia are a German Duo who hail from Falkenburg in the old East Germany, This is the bands second album and they
The album opens with My Muse a rather intense and rapid shoegaze song with a rather deadpan vocal delivery as Rene Methner tells us exactly why she's his muse and why he needs her as the guitars fly all over the place and we get a cool bass led breakdown.
Fade To Grey isn't the old Visage classic but instead a slightly gothic shoegaze song about them wanting to get away from a boring grey situation with interesting howled backing vocals.
Children Of The Flood is the first of two songs with Fady Haddad's ethereal vocals and synth adornments being the first of the songs telling tales of living near the Dikes as the strings swirl like that heavy rain.
Riders On The Dike is a soaring song of love adventurers with backing vocals from Amanda Kim Sanderson as they take flight looking for adventure.
Kassandra has lead vocals from Cindy Methner that makes this sound like Curve as the story of Kassandra unfolds over complex guitar squalls and rock solid drums and keyboards that come to the fore in the breakdown as they like the quiet loud structure.
Fools is a dark wave string led dream scape with extra help from Terry Wigmore as they lovers make Fools of each other as the Cello marks the ending of the pleading, as it becomes more elegiac.
Time And Again is slower almost a ballad that starts to soar as I wonder if anyone would raise a lighter in the air to this as they search for a way forward that doesn't repeat all the same mistakes over and over again. I think on this song the vocals might work better if they swapped roles so Cindy as lead and Rene on backing vocals, but that might just be me.
Fire (My Chemical Imbalance) is the second song that features Fady Haddad as well as Rene on vocals on a song that seems to owe a debt in the vocal delivery to 25 Pills by 28TH Day and of courses they share subject matter, but this is far more widescreen and dynamic.
Kaleidoscope is hampered by not being the Rain Parade classic of the same name, that said this is far less acid drenched and far darker than that this is more like you are falling into a bottomless pit with the fractals splintering as you fall and the vultures tear your dreams apart with bitter recriminations.
The Painter is darkly gothic tale of the light of the artist in the times of the Kaiser the vocals are a little bit and I hesitate to say it reminiscent of Morrisey (In a good way) although singing in a searing swirling splash of colored goth rock.
No Time For Butterflies is laid back and cool with all sorts of guitar dynamics and textures draped around the drums as the nerves leave them and it all comes to a head.
My Muse (Radio Edit) is shorter and more succinct than the first version. The song is also part of the Gone With The Flow art installation by Louis Renzoni that can be viewed here https://www.sophisticatedape.com/gone-with-the-flow-exhibition/
Find Out More at https://soundsofsubterrania.com/shop/shop.php?pid=17565 https://paralia.bandcamp.com/album/gone-with-the-flow https://www.facebook.com/paraliamusic
