RED SUN REVIVAL: Identities (Selfreleased 2015)
I met this British at last year’s Semana Gótica de Madrid. I had hear a few songs but I admit they haven’t grabbed my attention.
Classic British Gothic music, male and dramatic voice, occasional violins… A lot of the same old. But the Madrid Gothic Week came as their show. With a lack of a “real” drummer, subject to the drum machine, they made a spectacular show. I ended in the hands of this Victorian Gothic that they play, and I felt in the nets of incontestable songs like My Child or Mistakes, just to give only two examples. From there, to soak up with Embers (their 2014’s EP) and Running From The Dawn (the debut álbum in 2012), and my ears couldn’t stop waiting to hear their new works.
While waiting, a few weeks ago, it came to us Identities. And since then, this record has been played over and over, trying to get into all its nuances, in all it has to offer: Premonition, the opening song, is an amazing litany, full of epic and 19th-century’s decadentism, for me one of the keys of the band. The luminous guitars on Echoes don’t hide the underlying darkness, the intensity and melancholic in a some-kind-of procession of feelings that Poe could sign if this was a tale: “Should I remember you today? The sacrifice you made. I’m helpless but I’m not afraid. Are you an echo of the past, returned to me at last from all these years apart.”
Four walls comes with the same target. Relatively slow rhythms, between mid-time and the typical epic tune, melodies supported by Mr. Leydon voice and in the guitar lines of Matt Helm, the bass pointing the way (great work of Panos Theodoropoulos) and, in general, a taste for a well know romantic feeling of ruffle and top hat.
It may be easy to compare them to The Mission but, in from my point of view, they have a lack of histrionism and less preference for 70’s rock. Maybe they seem to me more complete. The Reckonming is slowest, even more “heartfelt”, with the piano emohasizing the voices and the cescendo underpinning Christina Emery’s violin, one of the Identities’ most exciting songs (and there’s a bunch inside this record).
Fade in Time, with the battery of Simon Rippin, once again the epic, the tear, a non cheesy romanticism and all the melodic force of the quintet. And the voice, better than ever. Are we forsaken here today? And will our legacy remain? In undiscovered vaults and shrines beneath the surface in decline.
In my opinion, “In Your Name” is another key of the CD. Intense, passionate, once again with the importance of the keys and some very raw feelings that make you travel to this aforesaid eras. I don’t know if the violin is more present nor more transcendent and the epic adventure on the vocal interpretation are the others keys of the song. And, of course, “Mistakes.” Mixed for the occasion, slightly different from the original. Maybe more complex but with the same thrill. One of these songs that you never stop listening over and over again. The two parts of “The Condemmed” can be commented together. Long instrumental progress, especially the first one, and more rush in the second one (it’s like a response to the first one), despite the keyboard-based beginning, the battery takes the control immediately.
The record comes to an end with the marvelous “The Awakening.” Not exactly a “happy end” but the brightness of the song could invite to think in something like that, some kind of redemption of ancient pains. In “The Awakening” dissapear all the bitter nips that fill the álbum and only remains pure beauty. A golden brooch for a fantastic album.
After a lot of listening, I still keep the sensations that I feel in the first one: emotions that give me goosebumps and a constant desire to put the record on over and over. Stephen Carey’s production shows a thousand nuances per minute, a thousand little details that makes every song something unique. Identities is a beautiful collection of songs that should not be missed in a Dark discography. An absolutely essential CD. Truthfully.
