Lush synths! uplifting powerchords! sinister crooning! Midway through the third song of The Awakening, the crawling king goth maelstrom that is Love Is Dead, you’ll already have ticked off those three goth metal bingo card entries so many times you’ll be looking for something else to do to occupy the time between, well, the next parp of anthemic keys or the next verseload of low-tuned vocal priapics…

Because what you have here is an absolute compendium of goth rock tropes, neatly fitted into compact and bijou little slabs like Our Misery for your delectation. Swedish duo Outshine– for it is they to whom the compendium belongs – certainly know their onions when it comes to this sort of thing – it’s just a shame that most of those onions have already been used by other cooks in slightly tastier meals. Love Is Dead, for instance, is, on the face of it the perfect synthesis of electronica-era Paradise Lost and Type O Negative at their very height; only the slightly reticent vocals of Jimmy Boman let the side down – his Peter Steel roar doesn’t quite cut the mustard – but, once the recognisable has been scraped away, what remains carries none of the Northern British desolation of PL or the smirking Brooklyn ironics of Type O.

Twas ever thus in the world of reproduction, I guess; She Hates Me suffers similarly as the band force memories of Danzig and Billy Idol to butt heads (with the ever present Paradise Lost keys chiming away in the background, natch); and whilst the Evil Elvis and William Broad are, neither of them, particularly good singers, it’s the character and  idiosyncracy with which they fill their voices – two things sadly lacking here – that carry the day for them on their premium output.

But we do like to accentuate the positive here at Sentinel Daily where possible and, all my carping aside, it’s possible to see why Outshine are now putting out album number five when many bands can’t even get to first base. Boman and bass-playing partner Niklas Ingvarsson clearly love what they do, and, as an entry level goth metal proposition Outshine is essentially faultless in it’s synthesis of all the big names (and quite a few of the smaller ones, too) of the genre into easily accessible morsels of misery. The uber-dramatic intro to Darkness Within (Agony) – quite possibly the greatest song PL never wrote – is worth the price of admission on it’s own, and The Awakening does come as a highly recommended listening option if you’ve always been interested in goth metal but have been to scared to ask…

Outshine releases on May 13th – A Friday, obviously…