Dommin are a band led by and effectively embodied by the homonymous Kristofer Dommin, a walking, breathing name-and-likeness lawsuit, if ever there were one, due to his clone-like impersonation of
Glenn Danzig, from his "Evil
Elvis" crooning to the
Misfits-patented Devilock hair style he sports. But
Dommin's identity issues don't end there. Although, by and large, the songs included in 2009's
Love Is Gone album contain neither the primal horror punk of
the Misfits nor the Spartan hard rock of
Danzig (the band), token numbers like "My Heart, Your Hands" and the title track boast a post-emo, synth-entangled goth rock style akin to watered-down
Type O Negative. What's more, the pilfering of existing musical ideas only gets more egregious as
Love Is Gone unfolds: "Closure" emulates the softcore nu metal of
Evanescence; the frankly hilarious "Dark Holiday" essentially rewrites the Munsters theme as cabaret; "Without End" and "I Still Lost" resemble
Paradise Lost for wimps; the moody intro piece "Evenfall Hollow" cops from
Depeche Mode before setting up "Tonight"'s jaw-dropping marriage of
the Cure and
Smashing Pumpkins; and the simply named "New" basically plagiarizes "Superman" by corporate rockers
3 Doors Down, with a dash of guy-liner! And so it goes, unfortunately, as an additional batch of dispiriting electro-goth exercises ("Within Reach," "Honestly") bring us to the tepid balladry of "Remember," all the while dooming
Dommin to ever greater iniquity. In all fairness, and not unlike
the Strokes,
Dommin arguably deliver some catchy, concise, even compelling songs to virgin ears, but the fact that every last note has been ripped off from someone else -- blatantly so -- makes
Love Is Gone virtually indigestible to listeners with any knowledge of music history. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia