Tokio Hotel
Scream

THE REVIEW

Not knowing what else to do, yesterday afternoon I had the unfortunate idea of watching MTV and found four kids playing (?) something more plastic than Britney Spears' wig. They were obviously Tokio Hotel, the brand-new yet utterly useless German band. Their live performance allowed me to appreciate their new work, titled "Scream" (perhaps because it's the reaction people have when seeing the cover...).

The first thing you notice is definitely the singer, Bill Kaulitz, who, despite all his efforts to prove otherwise, is a boy, moreover without a voice, who manages to be overshadowed even by the least pulsating bass of his friend Georg Listing during the live performance. Moreover, the bushy-haired, highlighted singer is the author of a really clever trick: when the song's note is too high, evidently well aware of his limits, he decides to let the audience sing!

The album, despite the miraculous help of the studio, is horrible, so don't even try to download it, you'd just be wasting your time. Defined by the band itself as emo rock influenced by Motley Crue (for the heavy makeup?), AC/DC (for this blasphemy they deserve public flogging...) and Linkin Park (perhaps the only ones really referenced by the music of the four...), their sound is distinguished by an evident syrupy coating that is occasionally alternated with slightly more decisive moments, immediately nullified by the mellow voice of the screaming hermaphrodite. The symbol of the band's sycophancy are two songs, different from each other, but simply because they are two different sides of the same coin, "Monsoon" and "Break Away". The first is the annoying hit single that delights us at least five times a day on the radio, characterized by a flat and repetitive rhythm, a background guitar that increases (a little, truth be told) in intensity as the refrain approaches. The refrain is the most horrifying part of the song, because where one would expect a high note (or at least something similar... come on, if he doesn't try to scream now that he’s 18, what will he do at 40?) from the singer, the voice rises by half an octave and then retreats timidly. "Break Away" is instead structured on the alternation of empty moments, with only voice and bass, to fuller ones with voice and guitar repeating an insistent loop followed, on the same notes, by the bass, but all this isn't new to me, I wonder why... Ah, maybe because "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin and "Alive" by Pearl Jam are built in the same way?

In a period where the music of new bands like 30 Seconds To Mars, Interpol, Strokes, Arctic Monkeys & co. is hitting the skids, the four German lads decide to follow suit and quickly end up in oblivion. How sad...