One look at the photo of Finnish SOULRELIC is already enough to make it pretty clear what awaits us musically: Gothic Rock/Metal of the Finnish kind. The quintet from TAMPERE was founded in 2003, when SNAKEGOD keyboarder Jani Hölli decided to write his own songs and let them go into the “Love Metal” direction. With time he recruited ETERNAL TEARS OF SORROW guitarist Antti Talala, his brother Pekka on bass, former ETERNAL TEARS OF SORROW and back then REFLEXION drummer Reiska Pohjola and singer Tommy Suomala and the line-up was done.

“Hollow Craving“ is the first product of this alliance and HIM shine through almost everywhere, packed into very well flowing and cohesive compositions, as the opening title track shows. On the one hand it is evident that the guys are good songwriters, or rather that Jani is, but on the other hand it is just as obvious that originality is almost completely left out of the equation. A nice touch are the female backing vocals of Maria Lehtisyrjä on the ballad “Dying Angels“, which apart from that stays very true to their style, too, though.

Also on the CD is a video for the title track, which is pretty low budget, there is not much more to say about that. Only time will tell, if SOULRELIC really have a future in the Finnish scene, because there already are almost too many bands of this kind and they do not really differ from them, so time will tell, where SOULRELIC will go to: stardom or oblivion… (Online September 23, 2004)