Exposing the Sickness

Diva Destruction started out as a solo project by singer, songwriter and keyboardist Debra Fogarty, who combines her classical training and love of goth, industrial and darkwave electronica to create dance music that is simultaneously aggressive, cerebral and angry. The problem, based on the evidence of her second album, is that she doesn't seem capable of writing melodies. Joined by second vocalist and keyboardist Sharon Blackstone, guitarist Benn Ra and drummer AntheM, Fogarty hits almost all the right genre buttons — minor keys, echoey textures, 19th-century literary references, wailing vocals — and her band whips up an impressively dense and detailed darkwave groove. But most of the songs feature three- or four-note tunes that grow tiresome within a minute or two; combined with her unvarying lyrical obsession on an evil former lover ("You never thought to care," "You're so selfish," "you're so blind," "How did I let you tempt me once again," etc.), this melodic dryness leaves you tired and irritated by about a third of the way through the album. By far the best track on Exposing the Sickness is a dance remix of"Trees," produced by Julian Beeston (of Nitzer Ebb fame), and it's exciting more despite the source material than because of it.