Violet

Five Inch Nails Parrot-more Evian-essence Ain’t Ettiene

Violet is a rock album by The Birthday Massacre. It is the kid of rock with some electronic, shoegaze and emo influences. The singer sings with a little girl voice that gets on my nerves. What I do like are the whispered singing parts (f.e. in "Happy Birthday" and "Lovers End"). That is not enough to make it original and the compositions are average and all songs seem the same with the same guitar+synth sound.

Perhaps a bit ahead of its time at release, but woefully dated now. The lyricism feels somewhat cheesy in its attempt to be edgy, and the songwriting is firmly rooted in the Evanescence-like pop goth of the early aughts to the album's detriment. Did enjoy some of the guitar parts here and there, but the lack of any real mixing meant the tracks felt top-heavy without any nuance. Credit where credit's due, this LP does commit to its thematics and execute on them – just not something I would personally deem 1001-worthy.

Parts of this are potentially intriguing - mood shifting, the often-annoying-yet-also-creative and intentional mood swings of the vocals, simplistic keyboard melodies over industrial "guitar" wall of sound... Alas I just don't connect with this at all. The song structures end up boring me and honestly that absurdly processed massive wall of guitar is really not my thing / too much. Points for a unique take on image/style and I kinda love their overall purple motif/artwork. 5/10 2 stars IMO: Belonged in the book? No.

Am I allow to give negatives? I wish I could give negative. It is just so lame. A poor man's Evanessence (which is already just a terrible band). 1/5

okay this fucks, like the individual ideas just don’t really seem like my kinda thing, but it actually comes together in a really great way - 9/10

Somewhat heavier electronic rock music, with pop-influences. Liked it a lot!

Has kind of an 80s girl power group thing going on but occasionally kicks it into a much harder gear. Cool!

4 enjoyed

Didn’t think I was going to enjoy this as I read the reviews. I get the comparisons to Evanessence and Nine Inch Nails and some of that ilk, although The Birthday Massacre seems a little lighter than those groups. Maybe not my new favorite band but I did enjoy listening to it.

This is very cool. 4 stars.

Tech-noir, in lyrics and vocal delivery self-serious, kind of mopey. I didn't despise it but very much not my thing.

Favorite Track: Happy Birthday

Nothing super groundbreaking or memorable but still pretty solid alt rock. The vocals are nice and clean and there's some good production here.

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: Happy birthday

Idk fun kind of 80s vibes

The cover made me think this was some sort of Kingdom Hearts soundtrack or something. Overall I found it a bit dull. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No

Goth

Not my style but it’s pretty catchy

When the vocalist is called Chibi you know it’s 2004

Not bad

This seems like that kind of album you grow up with and deep in your soul know that kinda sucks, but it means too much to you personally. I'm sure I'd love this if I'd heard it as a young lad with a propeller hat on my head and a big lollipop in my hand. Alas what can you do. 2/5.

Violet sounds older than 22 years ago, not that it sounds 80s-esque or anything, it's just quite a dated record from the genre or adjacent types and seems quite shallow as a result. It's not heavy enough to be metal, it's not quite emo, it tries to throw in some electronic, it tries to throw some indie at times too, I saw a review say it's pop-goth which is probably fair but it's not really one of the better examples of that genre either. I don't like the mixing much, the vocals are constantly drowned out and it seems intentional, doesn't work for me. Some it is overall an okay listen, Black was my favourite track, but it doesn't do enough to get above a middling 2/5.

How can I write a proper review when the one currently topping this section so *hilariously* sums up the whole affair? Actually, I had already given that take a thumbs-up a couple of weeks ago, as I browsed through the generator, because of how funny those puns were. And since it was a "neutral", three-star review, I wasn't taking a big risk "liking" it without even listening to the album at the time, you see... In truth, I would take The Birthday Massacre over Evanescence any single day. But that still makes the bar so frigging low, of course -- far lower than the requirements demanded by this list, imho. For a record that probably only had a fraction of the budget thrown to an Evanescence album, the production of *Violet* still has enough slick and glossy characteristics, I'm gonna give it that. Yet the sound in this 2004 release also has its two feet firmly planted in the era that saw it happening, here in a dated fashion that yields zero overall charm, unfortunately. Worse, the compositions are subpar or predictable (a clear exception with the Garbage-adjacent "Holiday", which is great overall!). And that main singer's performance is close to awful. The warts on it are so visible: the forced inflexions, the unimaginative vocal lines, the micro-seconds when that singing is out of tune... And in such slick surroundings, those flaws become unforgivable. Actually, the whole shtick of that singer would sound far better -- or at least come off as less annoying -- if auto-tune had been used for it. It's quite astonishing that I'm coming up to this conclusion -- I guess that years and years of use of that digital tool in music as of 2026 have taught me a little about its aesthetic assets for that sort of umbrella genre The Birthday Massacre dabbled into. You can bet your boots a band in that genre would not think about it twice and use this tool today... To put it in a nutshell, and as another perceptive reviewer summed it up, *Violet* feels both dated (the sound, the performance, most arrangements...) and ahead of its time somehow (the use of black metal grunts next to the pop shenanigans on "Blue", foretelling the more unhinged mix of styles you can hear in some acts right now, for instance). And even if you put all of that aside for a minute and assess the songs for what they are, you don't get much from the formula anyway... I would suggest to the user who submitted this to listen to the albums Grace Ives, Charli XCX, underscores, Fire-Toolz and Boards of Canada released this year to hear how those sorts of tones and textures they seem to enjoy can be harnessed to create some artistry that *really matters in the grand scheme of things*. The arrangements, stylings and performances are wildly different on those records, true. But they share one thing with *Violet*: they mix up pop and melodic impulses with an amount of grit, and they do it in a manner that can truly speak to your imagination. The person I really want to address here is not the user who submitted this album, though. No, if I could, I would stare and frown at the singer from The Birthday Massacre instead... "You don't get any dessert! Go to your room! You've been obnoxious for close to an hour now, and I am fed up with your constant wailing! Go to your room and don't get out of it until tomorrow morning! Off with you!" Oh, and... happy birthday. Cruel? Probably. But kiddies should know better than stepping on my toes when I try to find good stuff in the generator. You've been warned! 😜 1.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 2. 6.5/10 for more general purposes (5 for the musicianship and production values + 1.5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 117 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 120 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 271 (including this one) ---- Émile, *quatre* nouveaux messages pour toi au dessus, du *Solid State Survivor* de Yellow Magic Orchestra au *Atrocity Exhibition* de Danny Brown

The cover art matches the album well. Both computery and lightly goth. Childish. Quite cool on first impression but the "deeper" content is a bit simplistic. I do like the idea of a bunch of songs with color names. They actually could have leaned into that a bit more.

Interesting but not something I’ll go back for more of

more parma than beauregarde #dnf

Guhhhhhh. This was difficult for me because I'm going into this not liking it because this genre just isn't for me at all and it's always horrible to me and I fear this helped solidify that opinion. I absolutely hated the whispering in my ear while all chaos was breaking loose music wise. Like what even was happening. There was a singular cool moment where there were some cool sound effects but then got ruined again. Massacre is right.