DARKSPACE

Darkspace cram their third album with more ambient black metal compositions more or less in a similar vein to those on their second album, though they tend to be uniformly 10 minutes or so in length with the exception of a shorter track and a couple of longer pieces at the end. A lot of the time when bands put out CDs crammed to capacity like this the end result can be disappointing, with a lack of editing resulting in an album which is overlong and guilty of containing filler. Not so Dark Space III; the band maintain a tremendously consistent quality across the entire album, and whilst their schtick does at points threaten to get a little samey, on the whole this is another fascinating journey through the black metal void.

Refining the approach of their first album and spreading it out over epic tracks, Darkspace's second album finds them hooking up their spacey style of ambient black metal with the sprawling compositional structures of classic ambient artists such as Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Brian Eno. At points verging on blackened doom metal with its crushingly slow riffs, the album also features more artful use of sound effects, with the final track Dark 2.10 tapering off into a long sequence of space noises. On the whole, the album is reminiscent of a shooting star - it begins in tranquility, then there's a chaotic, roaring, firey thing passing across view, and then you're left with the cold emptiness of space again. Another very good example of ambient black metal.

The first Darkspace album is an ambient metal piece which essentially operates on two levels - on one level, you have the conventional metal instrumentation churning out a rumbling wall of guitar noise, and on the other level (usually in parallel with the other one) you have curious ambient effects overlaid with bizarre, alien screams and atmospheric samples (often from 2001: A Space Odyssey). The overall effect is something like the sort of ambient black metal approached by Burzum - but without the sort of incoherent rage and barely-restrained hatred that characterises Burzum's work, replacing it with a sense of cool, spacey detachment and dissociation. I wouldn't call it a classic, but it's a very interesting experimental black metal piece which certainly makes me want to hear the rest of this band's work.

Dark Space - I is a demo release by Swiss black metal act Darkspace. The demo was released by the band themselves in May 2002. Dark Space - I is available for streaming on the band´s homepage. the demo is 25:05 minutes long and features two tracks.

The music on the demo is dark, cold and ambient black metal. Darkspace is quite an unconventional black metal act as their lyrics evolve around space themes. The vocals are raspy/ screaming and low in the mix. It has the effect that the vocals almost work as an extra instrument. The band consists of two guitarists and a bassist. All members provide vocals. The drums are programmed and work very well in the context of Darkspace cold sound. There are keyboards in the music too which adds to the often epic ambient atsmosphere. The lo-fi sound quality, which is pretty noisy, means that the drums are often completely drowned in the mix. But even with a sound quality like this, the charm of the music shines through.

The first track on the demo called Dark -1.-1 is a generally fast-paced track, and while the song is pretty repetitive and ambient in nature, there are several sections in the song that provides variation. The second track on the demo called Dark -1.0 is a bit more industrial tinged and even more ambient and repetitive than the first track. The cold and harsh atmosphere is greatly enjoyable though and all in all the demo provides enough variation and interesting ideas to never become tiresome even though there are a lot of repetition going on.

If the demo featured a slighty better sound quality I would have rated it just a bit higher than I do, because the music on this release is of high quality. The music conjure up images of endless dark space, alien solar systems and futuristic spacecrafts, and in that respect I think the band succeed very well in their mission. A 3 - 3.5 star rating is deserved. One of the more interesting black metal acts I´ve heard in a long time.