How Did I Miss 'The Birthday Massacre'?

I was surfing YouTube one night recently, letting the algorithm guide the music selection. It's gotten remarkably good, and remarkably accurate, narrowing in on my specific tastes. So far it had presented me with a host of amazing, often obscure singles from bands I'd never heard of before, yet that operated in the kind of genres I frequent, and I'd been liking a lot of these heretofore unknown-to-me songs. But I had so far never been presented with an entire band that I had fallen for.

Well, that all changed when YouTube presented me with a song by the group The Birthday Massacre. My ears perked up, "oh, this is pretty good". Then YouTube showed me another song by The Birthday Massacre, and hey, it sounded pretty great too. And then another song, and another, and, holy shit, this band is really good!

Hailing from Canada, the six piece The Birthday Massacre has been around for nearly twenty years with a whole bunch of albums under their belt. Fronted by lead singer Chibi, and accompanied by bandmates with names such as Rainbow and Falcore (I wish they'd drop the monikers and use their real names, but hey, I'm the one writing under a pseudonym so I should probably just shut my mouth), their sound is a terrific blend of goth rock, retro 80s synth pop, darkwave, and metal. I've seen their music referred to as 'synthrock'.

The band is labelmates on Metropolis Records alongside my absolute favorite band VNV Nation. I had technically heard The Birthday Massacre before - I'd had their cover of Limhahl's "The NeverEnding Story" on my old iPod for as long as I could remember, but I had never really given them much thought. But now, suddenly, I'm finding myself falling for the band fast and hard. How did I miss The Birthday Massacre?

The band has crafted a distinct and consistent visual look, using copious amounts of pinks, violets, and purples in their album artwork. They couple this with a sort of Edward Gorey meets Donnie Darko theme, which, along with their name, creates this cutesy yet macabre image (just take a look at their album covers and you should understand pretty quickly). I've long been drawn to bands with consistent visual imagery (see the aforementioned VNV Nation or KMFDM) so the fact that their image intrigues me comes as little surprise.

The Birthday Massacre's earlier offerings are rooted in goth rock. Their early sound is gloomy, kinda Disintegration era The Cure but more pop leaning. Take a listen to "Horror Show" or "Video Kid" from their second album Violet. The former reminds me of something from Switchblade Symphony but more friendly, while the latter, once you get past the initial burst of heavy guitar, adds a dance beat and with its little hand claps between lines sounds like something spawned from 80s new wave. These two songs might be more easy to digest if you're already into this style of music, but I've found with their follow-up album they really began to embrace the pop elements lurking under the surface here.

Their next full length album, 2007s Walking With Strangers, with its bunny ear wearing children cover art appropriately adds a bit of childlike whimsy by adding a good dose of pop. Originally appearing on their first album, Nothing and Nowhere, and remade for this album, the song "To Die For" is a light bubbly bit of bouncy pop with a rhythm that kind of sways. The repeated "ahhh-ooohs" during the chorus seem designed for live show audience hands-in-the-air arm waving, and I dig the entire bridge part from 2:30 to 3:20. You almost wouldn't even know it was the same band from their previous album.

Maybe because they're just more accessible, but I find myself drawn to their more pop or dance oriented tracks, though I do like the more guitar heavy songs too. The song "Calling" from their album Pins and Needles is, as far as I can tell, pretty much a pop song, even with its there's-something-under-the-bed lyrics.

By the time we get to 2014s Superstition the band seems completely confident and comfortable in this unique sound they've crafted. The song "Oceania" is straight-up pop and strongly reminds me of the dance-rock of the band The Naked and the Famous while the title track "Superstition" is wonderfully lean and mean, with an extraterrestrial sounding synth. It's one of my favorites.

The final song I want to point out is "Beyond". I want to bring attention to this song only because I find the way the band presents itself is sometimes in opposition to the kind of music they actually make. "Beyond" is a wonderful mid-tempo dreamy pop song that sounds like it could come from someone like Carly Rae Jepsen. It's video, however, with its funereal imagery, makes it look like some moody goth anthem.

I'm honestly slightly annoyed that YouTube's algorithmical gods hadn't proffered The Birthday Massacre to me earlier. Here's a band that lies near the very center of my network of interests. Just look at the covers they've recorded. There's the previously mentioned cover of "The NeverEnding Story". They have covers of Madonna's "Open Your Heart", Tommy James and the Shondell's (but likely meant as an ode to Tiffany's version) "I Think We're Alone Now", both of which capture my love of infectious 80s pop. The real kicker for me however is when I discovered they have a cover of Faith No More's "From Out of Nowhere", a band that filled a large part of my teenage music listening days.

It *is* possible to get closer to the heart of my interests, but the triangulation here comes pretty dang close. I mean, I listen to or am at least versed in all sorts of bands that orbit The Birthday Massacre. I listen to women-fronted metal bands like Within Temptation and Nightwish, goth rock, synth heavy 80s inspired pop like Chvrches, and basically anything that's danceable that might be played in a goth club. Why did YouTube take this long to say, "oh hey, you might like this?".

I do have a few small complaints. While they have a consistent sound, at times their songs can almost sound too consistent, maybe even a tad repetitive. Though they've developed this amazing sound, after chugging through their albums I've noticed that they do, at times, have similar sounding songs, or, perhaps more accurately, I find that many of their songs tend to follow the same structure.

I also wish the band were a tad more ambitious. A thing I've noticed is a lot of their songs just come to a sudden end. It's almost as if their songs are the shortened-for-time radio versions. I wish they'd let the music breathe more. There's rarely a song with a lengthy outro, and not a single song that fades out, and that second point really stings because some of their tracks are just begging for a few more repeats of the chorus ("Calling" comes to such a sudden end it sounds like the last 30 seconds got cut off). This results in a certain uniformity when it comes to the length of their songs. This is a band where most songs clock in around three and a half minutes, with songs over four minutes rare, and those over five few and far between. I long for a song of theirs with a bit of an extended outro. I've also yet to hear a ballad, or anything gentle or slow. I suppose in one way that the brevity kinda leaves you wanting more, and they do end up with short, easily digestible albums. But still, I'd like to see them push themselves just a little more.

I also can't shake the feeling that I've stumbled upon a kind of Hot Topic band that's meant for gloomy teenagers (I actually checked the Hot Topic site and thankfully did not find any TBM merchandise). Because their dark, gloomy music is so approachable, and because the visuals are so purple and cutesy I could see how they could come across as something like "my-first-goth-band". On that note, judging from the band members' actual looks, I don't think they actually look all that "goth" (besides Chibi). They dress more emo in my opinion (don't ask me to explain the difference, it's a subtle nuance), This makes me think that this could be the reason I hadn't quite been exposed to them before - they ended up attracting the emo crowd more than the goth crowd, but I really don't know if this is something I might just be making up in my head.

It's interesting reading the comments under their videos. I see three main types of comments. The first seems to be a lot of "wow, I used to listen to these guys in high school, good to see they're still rocking!" sentiments. The second is the hard core fan "I've been a long time fan and even have a tattoo to prove it!" die-hards. And the third type of comment I see a lot of is, "wow, how have I never heard these guys before?" which about sums up my experience with the band.

One last curiosity, there are several times where I've been listening and... I swear I've heard the melody before. Now, both their Wikipedia page and comments on YouTube confirm some of my feelings here. I don't want to throw accusations of plagiarism around, but sometimes they have parts of songs that come *awfully* close to other songs. There are some outright acknowledged samples, such as the chorus on their song "Weekend" lifts the chorus from U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday", and their track "Without You" steals its chorus from U2's "New Years Day". Also, the previously mentioned "Calling" features elements from Nine Inch Nails' "God Given", though the NIN version is so schizophrenic it's a bit hard to tell. There's times where just for a second I feel like they're stealing someone else's vocal delivery. I swear I've heard moments of Pat Benatar, Gotye, and others.

The most egregious unacknowledged instance I've found though is from their song "Midnight" where the chorus seems, surprisingly enough, directly lifted from the chorus of Sarah Brightman's "Deliver Me". Listen to the section of Brightman's here and TBM's here and tell me they're not exactly the same. I don't know how I feel about this. As one review I read stated regarding this practice: "Is this a deliberate nod or an unintentional reference?... [the] references should probably be integrated and assimilated more thoroughly so they don't run the risk of becoming unintentional quotes." I agree.

So that's what I've got to say about The Birthday Massacre. If you're a fan of dark, synth-laden music, there's a lot to like here. There's even some very good pop music here as well. They're not the most intriguing or lyrically complex band, but I've really enjoyed what I've heard so far. I just wish I had discovered them ten years earlier.