Music

Album Review: Blackfield ‘Welcome To My DNA’

Published

13 years ago

March 28, 2011

It’s no secret that I love metal. Hell, I cover it all the time here on BD, so the hint should have been picked up by now. But sometimes, I need to ease back and appreciate other styles and genres. In that love of exploring other styles and genres, I found Blackfield. Their first two albums are, in my mind, masterpieces of melancholic pop rock and I’m always excited to hear news about them. So when ‘Welcome To My DNA‘ was announced after four years, I was rather ecstatic. So, were my expectations met or did they fall flat? Check after the jump!

The first thing I noticed about ‘Welcome To My DNA’ after a few spins was that the album, while still having a melancholic feel, was quite angry. ‘Go To Hell’ is an example of this dichotomy where the music is eerily and sadly beautiful but the lyrics are rebellious and spiteful. ‘Dissolving With The Night’ follows the same pattern: haunting music with some surprisingly harsh lyrics. ‘Blood’ sounds like Steven Wilson still had the Orphaned Land experience under his belt. It’s easily the heaviest track on the album and is infused with Middle Eastern instruments and scales.

The production of the album is exactly what you’d expect to hear from a Blackfield album. It sounds crisp, clean and the various layers have that unmistakable Steven Wilson sound. What I loved about the production was that there were a few small character flaws here and there that gave the music a sense of “realness”.

A personal favorite track is ‘Oxygen’, which can definitely be attributed the ‘poppiest’ sounding song. It has a toe-tapping beat that evoked a sense of yearning. I had to play the song several times before I let the album continue.

The Final Word: It took me several spins to begin to fully appreciate ‘Welcome To My DNA’ but it was a journey well worth taking. Wilson and Geffen have crafted another beautiful album that will be appreciated by fans of the previous two albums.

JonathanBarkan

Managing editor/music guy/social media fella of Bloody-Disgusting

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Music

“He Walks By Night” – Listen to a Brand New John Carpenter Song NOW!

Published

2 weeks ago

April 9, 2024

John Squires

It’s a new day, and you’ve got new John Carpenter to listen to. John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter have released the new track He Walks By Night this morning, the second single off their upcoming album Lost Themes IV: Noir, out May 3 on Sacred Bones Records.

Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.

Sacred Bones previews, “It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.

“Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.

“The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”

You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now! And listen to the new track below…