by on

This year English duo, Unquiet Dead had the release of their second album, Anima Ignis. Located in Bedfordshire, Lora Maze is vocals and synths while Jason Kahl plays guitar and bass. Both are responsible for programming.

So the intro is “Flames”, which welcomes you into the style that is Unquiet Dead. Soaring harmony with a tribal sound, punctuated with the guitar, giving it a whole lotta oomph!!!

“Ash” was a single and has an almost White Zombie, Southern American feel to it until the vocals from Maze kick in, seductively slipping into your ears. A psychedelic trip in a limosine, in leather with a devil may attitude.

Yet another single off the album is “Legend”. Do I detect the use of didgeridoo? Kahl’s driving guitar work throttles this forward. And the remix by London based electro/industrial group, Machine Rox for the single is absolutely killer. Vocally this reminds me of Faith And The Muse.

Keeping up the unrelenting pace is “Puppet Strings“. You have to love the harmonization Unquiet Dead utilize. No one is pulling their strings with this danceable number.

Now for a change of pace. Of course “Cat People (Putting Out Fire With Gasolene)” was written and performed by David Bowie with Georgio Moroder back in 1981 and has been covered a multitude of times. The whole thing with covers is to make it your own. A purposely slow beginning which changes up with the power vocals.

And back to the head bobbing ferocious beats. Burn My “Head Down” is about getting out from underneath someone’s control… which might be a theme of this album. Hints of electric T-Rex litter this.

Track seven is “Bitter Pill“, where they have to be ‘careful what I say or they might put me away’ and any song mentioning pitchforks is worthy of monster movie staking.

“Build A World Worth Dying For” is pure swirling vocals entwined with guitar and backed up with synths. A plea to make this world a better place that we know it can be. A beautifully crafted song with and equally beautiful sentiment.

The synth sound mimicking a theremin in “Is This War?”, Is almost hypnotic. Not the fastest track but this will definitely keep the audience entertainered, especially waiting to hear Maze’s vocals to take them away.

“I Can Hardly Wait” is slower, more dirge style piece which drags the corpse along behind it still kicking. Languid guitar riffs bubble in the cauldron.

Last track is “If You Don’t Want Me” and true to form, if you aren’t wanted, there are no constraints on what you can do and be who you want to be. This fades to a mantra of almost southern Baptist proportions.

On Bandcamp, the band have quoted Toyah Wilcox as saying ‘Really rather remarkable’. I can tell you now that in the music scene, Toyah is a very hard woman to impress as she is a bit of a perfectionist.

Whatever style you want to try to place these two, it is undeniable that Unquiet Dead are really very talented. They take the psychedelic sounds of a bygone era and marry it to a modern electronic/ industrial genre with those amazing vocals to create something just a little special.

The bastard child of Bolan/Bowie/Eno and Inkubus Sukkubus with no apologies. Check Unquiet Dead out.

https://www.facebook.com/unquietdead/

https://open.spotify.com/album/0KO0hqCUtvxZaA0BrNIuZ7

https://unquietdead.bandcamp.com/releases

http://itunes.apple.com/album/id1321653244?ls=1&app=itunes

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B077YC5SPC/ref=sr_1_1…

by on

Distorded Void is the Russian label bringing you the new album, “Trakl Trauma Tracks”, by Eumourner, an Italian musician.

Eumourner has 6 tracks to convey his historical story, set in World War 1, all in the form of music. Someone commented the album cover was creepy…. but then that is what happens when we exhume the dead.

“Track I. Der Schlaf” is like moving into darkness and the unknown. The sound scape builds and undulates with impending doom. Unseen and unnatural creatures chitter as a voiceover announces details of the Great War.

Cuckoo clocks and chimes bring on “Track II. Stunderlied”. It s0 the feeling of desolation and swirling loss in a terrible fairytale with wind swept whistles intermingling with musical box tunes, until the mood changes and becomes more insistent.

Like the muffled horns of Valhalla blasting into the void heralds “Track III. Neil Krupp und Krieg”. This could be the rumbling of giant mortar cannons on the Eastern front, the orders to move forward into a hell never seen before by mankind. A machine churning through men and forever changing them and sirens sound marking the hostilities.

“Track IV. Grodek” is the longest track at over 10 minutes long. It is not so much the sounds of violence but rather, the spirits of men leaving their tortured bodies, or at least this is what it feels like to me. The terrible aftermath left on a battlefield, which few forget amd even fewer wish to repeat. The lament of ghosts of the fallen, crying for what they have lost.

Birds chirp and maybe chimes or cow bells in the distance. We hear the words of Georg Trakl‘s poem “All Roads Lead To Black Decay” wavering over this piece, “Track V. Landschaft”. It sounds so calm and yet there is a sudden burst of a gatling gun to break the serenity.

“Track VI. Die Ungebornen Enkel” closes this album. It is the void filling with near distant rage and cacophany with pieces of violin flitting in and out before a plateau, decending into unearthly screams of that which sounds not human. Oppressive and swelling. The character, Trakl’s descent into madness, with his overbearing feeling of depression due to his inability to cope surrounded by the damaged and massacred, fueled by his overdose of cocaine, pulling him into the depths of hell. It finishes with the innocence of children singing and the music box.

For the uninitiated, Georg Trakl, born in Salzburg, Austria was a poet who suffered from depression for most of his adult life and found refuge in the army life as a trained pharmacist, until the beginning of the Great War where he found himself serving in the Austro-Hungarian army.

While in the Battle of Grodek, against the Imperial Russian Army, he was forced to look after approxiamately 90 wounded soldiers, which overwhelmed him and Lieutenant Trakl attemped to shoot himself, however was thwarted and resulted in his being hospitalized. Not long after this he was found dead of a cocaine overdose.

Eumourner has taken a small piece of dark history and put it to dark ambient and experiemental music, to paint you a life cut short in a time of war due to mental breakdown, even using the poets own style of evoking spirits in the quiet recesses of what is not said. It is an evocative soundscape on a grand scale.

https://distortedvoid.bandcamp.com/album/trakl-trauma-tracks

https://www.facebook.com/DistortedVoid

by on

Third Realm are back with a brand spanking new album and I have been lucky enough to have been listening to it before the release date, thanks to the main driving force and frontman, Nathan Reiner.

Since 2000, Reiner has been creating music with this project and the latest album is out on the darkTunes Music label with bandmate, Luis Felipe Blanco, from their hometown of Buffalo, New York.

Let the insanity ensue with “Bipolar Pop” featuring CHIASM. Emileigh Rohn is the solo artist behind CHIASM, an electro/darkwave project but here backing up Reiner. Slower more deliberate beat with the atmosphere that you could be stalked by some sex crazed (well there is a little sensual moaning) porn pop princess or prince. This is still raw in its electonic style which is a nice way to start.

‘I tried to be myself and suffer…’ is the start of the chorus, “Be Myself” which I am guessing is the fear of putting your true self out there…. and then finding rejection or indifference. I hear hints of Chris Pohl‘s Blutengel influence, especially vocally which is no small feat as many wish to be Pohl but often fail.

The first single from the album is the amazing, “When The Sun Goes Down”. Third Realm couldn’t have picked a better single to introduce their latest work with. Totally danceable and more to the point, you will find yourself singing away in no time to the vampiric chorus. The beat is driving and the vocals just weave themselves into pleasure centre of your brain.

Fourth song off the rank is “Banshee” which gives a slight nod, it feels, to Sisters Of Mercy’s “Vision Thing” crossed with Blutengel‘s flare for the dramatic supernatural.

“Gazing At The Stars” is a ballad with a beat. It’s a sweet ode to dreams of love and wishing. It is poignant tribute and the synths sing out true over this catchy number.

A more techno start for “Garden of Lust” gets the body moving. There is a strange electronic moog like synth in the chorus which is a tad distracting while Reiner is singing but in all its an agreeable song, with spooky intonation.

“Background of My Mind” has a punky retro feel. It’s bouncy and very two fingers waved in the air in sentiment…. ie you cannot rule my life by playing me.

Love the synth beginning with a disco beat for “Who’s Really Listening?” and this lends to the claustrophobic nature of the album, fraught with paranoia.

With the release of the album is the second single, “Tides of the Sea” featuring again CHIASM. This is just a beautiful electronic number and vocally, Reiner and CHIASM interweave so well and compliment each other. Expressing love as being as constant as the tides, that pull and rush, the heartbeat and pulse of the seas.

I can hear the infuence of Marilyn Manson in “Deviant”, in the way the song is structured. The chorus is a persistant and tenacious stream of conciousness which pushes to be heard. One man’s deviance is another’s normalcy because we are who we are.

First impression of “Medusa” was it is going to be a power noise piece until the melody kicks in. Even though Medusa was a gorgon, this is another homage to vampiric beings and reminds me very much of the 90’s goth/electronic sound.

“Passion” has air light keyboards and that great constant danceable beat, with the slight VNV Nation smoothness that makes their older songs just soar. This is EBM at it’s best.

Some believe that soul mates are awaiting us, also known as “Twin Flames”. The ultimate partner that completes you and that joy can be heard in the jauntiness and pop sensibility given to this piece.

Slowly, the title track, “The Art of Despair” crawls darkly across the floor, a vision of murky oblivion. It is insistent and pokes at your reality.

The last three songs are remixes of “Bipolar Pop”, “Be Myself” and “When The Sun Goes Down”. Aesthetic Perfection‘s Daniel Graves, really injects himself into “Bipolar Pop” which brings extra raw power. “Be Myself” mixed by Subliminal Code, just leaps out as an electronic dance number and last “When The Sun Goes Down” is given the super slick treatment by Panic Lift.

Third Realm‘s sound is developing over time. Originally, a harsher industrial music style which has become a bit more electro and synth savvy but hasn’t lost any of its intensity.

It is not lost on me that you can almost taste the heavy German EBM, darkwave and gothic influences and especially, Blutengel and L’Ame Immortelle.

Nathan Reiner‘s Third Realm has unleashed for you a gothic horror album of inner demons, monsters in human guise and immortal love, all to a wonderous industrial beat.

https://thirdrealm.bandcamp.com/album/the-art-of-despair

https://www.facebook.com/ThirdRealm/

https://www.darktunes.com