UMBRA ET IMAGO: Die Unsterblichen (Oblivion 2015)

mq10933980_876513755732043_4699058796648148547_nWhen someone faces a new album of Umbra, normally knows what he is going to find. In fact, with all the changes that exist in the european goth scene, it could be said that Mr Mozart’s band is the real PUNK. External from styles, changes and fake musical and aesthetic evolutions, creating an underground empire around them composed by the record label, tv channel and a vast showcase with all anyone would like from their favorite bands. From their last work, “Opus Magnum” from 2010, in which Mozart sugested that it was going to be his last “physical” CD, there have been all kind of things, new DVD’s, new singles, records and all types of memorabilia for the fans to not forget about them.

Fortunately, there has been some time for, at least, one more album. After the departure of his right hand and a cornerstone in the band Lutz Demmler, (now with ASP ) and with, curiously, part of the normal formation of ASP now in Umbra et Imago, even with the participation of the great Tom O’Connell (now in the House of Usher), on the guitars, Umbra offers a summary of 14 songs in the regular edition, and reaching out the number of 19 in the special edition, including remixes of some of the album’s songs.

Lately they have been leaving apart the obsessive sexual topic, even though in some great songs like “Viva Vulva” (one of my favorites and that I imagine it might be the second part of “Viva Lesbian” from “Gendaken eines Vampires”), or “Sex Vampire”, they still are those who were in their beginning.

Otherwise, the songs are based in topics that move between the usual social criticism that appears in Mozart’s works, like “Get Off” (the best of the album, in my opinion), the heretical poetry, heritage from Nietzsche and company and the dark mithology in general, all of that crowned by the classic Intro/Outro, with some recited texts by Mozart, spitting rage as only he knows.

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Musically, the songs move between gothic metal and gothic rock with electronic pieces that are the band’s hallmark and that, personally, are the ones I always enjoy the most, highlighting the ones named before “Get Off” or “Radiosong”, another single, that sound like classic goth rock as if the calendar stopped in 1992.

Nowadays, some of the video songs filmed for some of the albums songs are available on youtube and have been released in the last months to whet your appetite. As well as the singles separately and the records with new designs and extra material from their previous albums. A good opportunity to recover their first records.

Ultimately, Umbra et Imago have pleased us without cheap marketing and false appearances, and is that in though times, the ones who win are those who keep their ideals and forms, believing in themselves and their way to seeing things, this is what makes that, 25 years after starting the band, we still enjoy their songs, a concept that, from the point of view of the rest of the dark scene, has made them inimitable. Long live!