Classix Nouveaux

You can almost tell from the group's image they play 'goth'. But whatever 'goth' there was then or is now, this is a fairly mediocre electronic pop with Ultravox pretenses, additionally trying hard to look like a combination of Nosferatu and Z'ev in their frontman's image...

Music has its moments - although it is neither french nor 'french' in its delivery; 'Night People' undoubtedly remains a sympathetic debut but don't be fooled by all of its 'electronic' credits - there's far more to rock than dance like a robot (except for the excellent reggae-synthie '623' with multilingual title references in predominantly instrumental track). Not that they were one-hit wonders - CN did manage to produce some memorable songs that won't be remembered just as 'hits' - 'Guilty' (which is far better in this album version than altered single cut), menacing midnight-ish 'Or a Movie' and 'Soldier'... the rest generally kills the potential it actually has - mostly due to Sal Solo's often theatric high-vocals demonstration that borders very close to self-parody instead capturing the essence one 'Phantom of the opera' has...

'La Verite' dips further into programming-cum-rock affairs where songs like '1999' give very little to often pathetic style the band provides. Bizarrely, both records kick off with 'Forward', of course - not identically; while the original opener for 'Night People' crashed promising techno intros for horrific almost-heavy metal guitar experiments, 'La Verite' variant fools you with its subtlety - of course 'Is It a Dream' (ironically their biggest hit?!) starts a rather clumsy journey of 'Three Tenors into one' getting nowhere with most of it - the title track is a disaster; besides '1999', 'Never Again' (a deserved hit THIS one) seems to provide suitable space for what would've happened if CN only functioned as a band instead being a driving vehicle for their bizzare frontman...

'Secrets'... dunno, really.