DEATHSTARS

Night Electric Night

(Nuclear Blast, 2009)

It has been three long years since the last album by the Swedish gothic industrial metallers Deathstars, and what a wait it has been. Sure, the band has been on the road a lot during this time, and the anthems born on their previous two records scorched themselves into the ears and hearts of many a metalhead looking for some death glam, but to say that this album was eagerly anticipated would undoubtedly be an understatement.
Night Electric Night draws its foundations from the same blood stained well as Termination Bliss – orchestral arrangements aligned with deathstaresque industrial noize, while Whiplasher’s vocals warmly coat the songs, making them his definitive statements of power, pain and sex on a mortician’s table. His voice is one of the most recognizable ones in today’s harder music genres, and combined with Nightmare Industries’ keyboards visionscapes, it’s a skeleton of the characteristic Deathstars sound.
New songs are odes to poison, quick cold death, smell of a gun and high poetry. Ballrooms now burn in “Chertograd”, darkness makes a re-appearance in “The Mark Of The Gun”, and “Death Dies Hard”, which has been chosen as the first single, swiftly confirms what strength Deathstars represent in current EBM metal circles. Female back vocals (wonderfully provided by Ann Ekberg) are again present on the album, especially in such songs as “Blood Stained Blondes”, while “Opium” pays an interesting tribute to highly controversial conspiracy-theory laden Zeitgeist documentary. One of the highlights of the album is “Via The End”, a powerful raw balade if this band ever made one. Bernadotte screams, hisses and whispers throughout the album, but in this song he cries the lyrics “I cast the dust into the past to really see/ The bonds of my blood turn so cold/ All the childhood’s memories scream inside of me/ The pain for this world sets the other free”.
Night Electric Night offers a rich tapestry of strong tracks for every fan of gothic/ industrial metal, and a killer new addition to DS setlist. If they were but a step away from mainstream with the previous record, now with Night Electric Night they will make it to the top and take over the world – probably literally as well!

www.deathstars.net

Recenzija: Ilhana Škrgić