3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Where the "Event Horizon" Went, November 17, 2009
This review is from: Dark Space 3 (Audio CD)
Switzerland's Darkspace is a unique, TOTALLY EERIE band. I scarcely know how to begin to describe their sound, without being misleading. Perhaps we can put Black and Thrash MeTal in a blender with Industrial, Techno and Classical music. Be completely assured that I despise "techno", too! I feel the need to mention that the industrial element is obvious(and tastefully done) but not an integral focus of the music, while the techno elements are just an occasional spice...their presence is as minor as is the presence of Irving Pichel in the pantheon of great Horror film stars. Darkspace create, via not only their compositions but the very sound and production of their albums, a sense of claustrophobic Horror which is even more horrific because this claustrophobia takes place in the icy vastness of limitless space...DARK space. This is no hippy space-worship, but an aural representation of the cold, the emptiness, the utterly unknown, the supra-cosmic THINGS which fill the black, infinite void we call "outer space". But this isn't all "robotic" or "futuristic" music...it is mostly guitar-driven, a very thick, heavy distorted steamhammer guitar that creates a wall of noise akin to a solid steel glacier...but the production is such that the guitar doesn't SOUND thick, rather more ghostly. Perhaps like a buzzing from a radio signal from someone long dead, a signal you receive over your Twilight Zone haunted radio. The guitar does a lot of tremelo repetetive melodies/riffs over both the rhythm guitar and classical bombasts, usually creating a mood of scrabbling uselessly while being dragged toward a massive black hole...or something even more massive and sinister. The usually present-in-the-background classical elements are handled by keyboard...you get the idea of what sounds are supposed to be there, but you don't know WHAT is producing them. The drums are, perhaps most fittingly, non-human, but upon hearing this you'll learn that drum---really ANY instrument---proficiency/presence is unnecessary. It is enough that there is someTHING creating a usually machine-gun "beat", that there is someTHING creating notes that you more feel than hear, someTHING that is making it's vocals heard. Those vocals are utterly inhuman...and purposely obscure. Not ONE iota of human language can be picked out, though there are very obviously "vocals"; they are closest to Black MeTal style than anything...higher register scraping howling shrieks, not obtrusive at all, but not exactly hidden, either. If there is one flaw with Darkspace's albums, it might be the production...or it might be exactly what is needed? It is quite "distant", not to the point of sounding muffled, but it does create an atmosphere of claustrophbia. I've gotten accustomed to it, but it is unsettling at first(perhaps their intent, as disturbing as the rest of their aspects are!) Darkspace take the existing modus operandi of Limbonic Art, and both expand on it AND strip it to it's bare bones (if that's even possible!). The packaging says a lot: the actual album covers are all ALMOST exactly the same, and there are no song titles, only numerical designations (their first album starts out with song 1:1, and the last song on this third is 3:16 or something); the cds themselves are BLACK-backed plastic, rather than the happy, shiny prismatic silver we are accustomed to. Though one can listen to this a song at at time, the entire album is an exhausting journey that will creep you out; honestly, you won't be able to tell which "song" is which, but I enjoyed this so much it didn't matter to me! It is NOT "prog" at all (in fact, the song structures are pretty simplistic, yet cool...kind've like much of THORNS's songs), certainly not "nekro", not "symphonic"...it is not like ANYTHING I've heard. A typical song may have a almost unrecognizable film sample, then an explosive overture of both classical (played on keyboards) and traditional MeTal instruments, then a repeating guitar riff (with commensurate bridges, etc.) then perhaps an abrupt cessation as an eerie passage begins of a classical note with some spidery guitar (or keyboard) melody over, then back to the crushing guitar riff. Some people may find these songs to be too drawn-out, but this is one of the few bands I appreciate that technique in, as it all adds up to this howling maelstrom of utter HORROR. This review is for "Darkspace III"; "I" is similar, if perhaps a bit more "traditional", whereas "II", which I haven't gotten yet, is reported to take the non-traditional (misguidedly, in this band's case, called "ambient") elements to the fore. "III" is a perfect blend of these, with a bent more toward "traditional". But the word traditional is used only as a mockery of itself where Darkspace is concerned. Did you ever wish the movie "Event Horizon" dealt more with WHERE that ship went on the other side of that black hole that caused such gruesome results? Listen to Darkspace and you'll have a pretty good idea!!!
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