Review: Liv Sin – Close Your Eyes

Seek and Strike (August 8^th, 2025)

Reviewer – Jason Hopper

Oh boy…where do I begin?  Guess I’ll start with a bit of history. I have been a fan of Sister Sin since before their major label debut album in 2008, buying their initial EP from the band’s website. I bought all their subsequent albums, got to see them live a few times, and even a meet and greet. 

I was disheartened when the band broke up, but Liv Sin carried on making music and released three albums  I found her debut, ‘Follow Me‘, to be heavier but lacking in strong melodies.  ‘Burning Sermons‘ was much better and contained some songs that I still play routinely.  I had the chance to review ‘KaliYuga‘ (review here) and found it had some equally strong songs.  However, I did show criticism towards her vocal gymnastics and how she incorporated a lower register growl, lowering her octave in a sort of death/black metal styling. I noted it was the worst aspect of the album.

Liv has decided to double down on that approach and released ‘Close Your Eyes‘, an album that is quite a departure from what she has previously released. I don’t listen to death/black metal, but I believe it sounds something like this and that is the reason I don’t listen to this genre.  Lacking in melodicism and choosing down tuned guitars, speed drumming, and deep throated growls, this is everything I was hoping she would not do.

It starts with opening track, ‘Praise The Winners’. Four seconds in and I say to myself, “WTF??” as my senses are assaulted, and not in a good way. Growling and machine gun drumming are two aspects that do not appeal to me. Thankfully it settles down a bit and the chorus is decent, but Liv’s vocals are all over the place. When she sings in her normal register, she’s great. Her growling and deep-throated screams do her a disservice. Combined with all the time changes, this song can only be described as schizophrenic.

The next song was the initial single. The first time I heard ‘Run’ I was admittedly worried. While the musicality is strong, Liv’s vocal gymnastics grate. This time she not only lowers her register, but she also adds what I can only describe as a cutesy/whiney phonation to some lines that sound ridiculous. This is also repeated briefly in other songs and it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me every time.

The most egregious example is ‘It’s Not Your Life’. Everything about this song is annoying. The cutesy vocals, the screechy background keys, and lines like “I want to be free as a bird can be” sung with an aggressive tone make this the worst song on the album.

There is only one song that I came remotely close to enjoying. ‘Louder’ minimizes the extreme vocal changes and has a solid groove, but that’s about it. There are elements of various tracks I enjoyed, but it was undercut by the excessive vocal ranges, hyperbeats, and whiplash time changes. 

It’s amazing to me that the greatest weakness to this album lies in Liv’s vocal approach. I use to love her vibrato and inflections and her decision to perform vocal gymnastics here diminishes the entire album. I was telling a friend of mine about this album and how far it strayed from material we’ve heard from Liv before. He pointed out that Sister Sin is in the middle of recording a new album, their first in over ten years. That’s when this started to make some sense. If Liv truly didn’t want to take away from her reunion with Sister Sin, it would only seem right to release something that sounded quite different from that band, which is what we have here.

This album is for devout Liv Sin fans only. This music is too brutal sounding for me and delves into metal genres that I abhor. With that said, if you are a fan of the darker, heavier side of metal, this will certainly appeal to you.

Tracklist:

1. Praise the Winners
2. Run
3. Close Your Eyes
4. Louder
5. It’s Not Your Life
6. Above the Line
7. The Shadow March (Interlude)
8. Shades of the Sun
9. Raven
10. I Refuse
11. The Mask
12. Hold It Together

Line-up:

Liv Jagrell (vocals)

Per Bjevoluk (drums)

Daniel Skoglund (bass)

Sonny Larsson (lead guitar)

Ante Mäkelä (rhythm guitar)

Web Links:

Official Website

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