Darklight Corporation – S/T

You know, the undead like to dance just as much as the rest of us.

They just need something hideously special to get those gangrenous limbs and rigamortis-locked joints to move.  Here it is, Darklight Corporation's stunning debut of horror-scope industrial speed metal.

Industrial speed metal may not sound like something you’d expect the ‘ol Racer to be digging right now.  Those who know me know that I have a low tolerance for metal who's goal is to assault me like a bazooka blast to my temple.  Rather than excite me, it has a bizarre paradoxical effect – it puts me to sleep.  I mean mouth-open, drool-spilling-asleep.  The louder and more bombastic in my face it is, the quicker I nod off.

Not the case with this tremor-inducing slab of depth-charge bass, grinding guitar, and non-stop beat that is the debut from New Zealanders, Darklight Corporation.  Destroying all hardcore dancefloors with a combined assault of equal parts Rammstein, White Zombie, Metallica, enough melody to make it all hang together and some serious fucking groove.  Sometimes the industrial grind of metal can get a little repetitive, but Darklight Corporation throw in enough twists and turns, maniacal choruses, and just flat-out-good songwriting to make the album a burner from start to end.  Like some graveyard spawned combination of Helltrain's death-and-roll and Ministry.  It's what Slayer would sound like if they were set up on a blind date with a zombie and decided to go clubbing.  Imagine that, let your brain lock that down, then prepare yourself and put on the disc

“One Man’s Revolution,” kicks it right off the bat, battering my inner ear like a prize fighter going to town on an opponents face.   Give me some crushing guitar that rages like two pieces of machinery scraping against each other. Tie it together with some percolating synth, bringing in the electronica flavor, and then hit me with that colon-shaking bass and groove.  Oh yeah!   I’m not a fan of larynx-shredding vocals, but they work here.  Big time.  Rough and sputum-filled, this is aggressive, angry, assailant dance music.  Industrial madness.  Electronica for the criminally insane.

Every track here pulverizes with the same homicidal intensity, aiming for full on listener-dancefloor-evisceration, but the standout tracks are so fucking good you don’t even mind that they're splitting your belly opening and stealing something vital.  “Sweet Sickness,” starts off with some mutated guitar, quickly launching into that all-important groove.  Adding enough space and time, melody and synths, to make the song stand out from the previous two tracks, it’s like a breath of fresh air.  Granted its fresh air laced with the stench of the recent dead.   And it could only be the dead who don’t dance to this song.  More fucking infectious than the black plague.  You just wanna get infected with this one.  Never thought someone could come up with a chorus “Your presence makes me sick/I don’t believe your sickness,” that could become a crowd-chanter.  But there I was, screaming the words right along with the band in my best (worst) throat-shredding vocals.  Yeah, my wife left the room, but I didn’t care.  I had my groove on.

“Lockdown,” is about as much a commercial metal song as you’ll ever find that has the lyrics “Eat my blood/eat my body.”  Complete with a massive air-guitar riff and damn-singable chorus, this song will get even the most dead of the undead to crawl out of their earthen tombs and crawl off to the dancefloor.  “Propaganda,” ups the ante with the most Rammstein-esque blitz on the album.  Synths stutter and strut, guitars wail, scream, cry and howl.  Dancebeats swirl in orgasmic frenzies.   This intensity rages with fury all the way to the amalgam of electronica beats and slicing industrial guitar that is the closer “Ramrod 69.” 

Darklight Corporation’s debut isn’t a pretty album.  It’s one horrific, demented, seriously-in-need-of-therapy mess of rotting corpses and anger.  It’s an album of life-pounding intensity, anguish, and ire.  And it’s all served up hot and steaming with some of the best industrial beats I’ve heard in ages.  Not for the faint of heart, but not one to miss either. 

Now leave me alone, my zombie-bride dancing partner’s got her groove on and I ain’t missing it.


--Racer

buy here: Darklight Corporation
or mp3: Darklight Corporation [Explicit]