Bittersweet by Killersoap

Killer Soap – “Bittersweet”

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With all band members born and raised in Hong Kong, Killer Soap’s music has been strongly influenced by Asian and Western bands, providing a wide variety within the music itself. Killer Soap reminds me of the Japanese band “Ellegarden”, who also produce songs with both Asian and Western taste.

“Get Rid of You”, “Reason” and “For the Lost Souls” gave a heart-pumping opening to this album, all three clearly shows Killer Soap’s J-rock style, a very unique style which allow listeners to immediately identify that “THIS IS KILLER SOAP”. However, putting three songs of similar style together makes them sound a little repetitive. After listening to all three songs, I found it hard trying to recall which song was which.

Bittersweet does contain some surprises, unlike the English songs Killer Soap usually creates, there are two Chinese songs. “Love Me for Who I Am” managed to merge Killer Soap’s edginess and uniqueness from their English songs into their Chinese songs. “Singing in the Rain” however, was rather disappointing. The vocals were less powerful than in the other songs, the song also lacked uniqueness, making it sound like many other Chinese pop love songs. But overall, Killer Soap creating Chinese lyrics was definitely a surprise.

I would not say the packaging is user friendly though, the lyrics were on separate sheets and were not numbered, which makes it hard for buyers to organize them according to the song list. It is also difficult to take the CD out of its package without scratching it, which is ironic because aren’t CD boxes supposed to protect the records?

The recording quality of the album, I found was a little disappointing. Perhaps Killer Soap’s true beauty still lies in their live shows. In some tracks, the volumes of different positions were quite unbalanced. The powerful vocal and guitar distortion easily covered other elements of the song and was not too pleasant to the ear. However, this is still Killer Soap’s first album. Hope to see improvement regarding recording quality in future productions

The CD artwork was extremely impressive though, especially for the wax stamp which was used to seal the CD package. Ten lyric cards with lovely paintings also gave credits to the whole package. It is definitely an appealing package worth collecting.

Recommended Tracks:

2. Reason

6. Love Me for Who I am

9. Did You Hear That

10. Once Again (Bonus Track)

Michelle Leung

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