DEAD CAN DANCE

This is the debut album from Dead Can Dance and it´s a very different album compared to the rest of their discography. I was first introduced to Dead Can Dance in the early nineties when I heard Into the Labyrinth from 1993 which is their sixth album. Into the Labyrinth is a beautiful and varied album where you can hear all of the characteristica of Dead Can Dance. This means a godly production. Lots of ethnic female singing and instrumentation, Jim Morrison/ goth rock male vocals and simple yet elaborate compositions.

On this debut album the music has more in common with music like Joy Division, Fields of the Nephilim, Bauhaus and The Sisters of Mercy which means early eighties dark goth rock. It´s a style of music that I enjoy very much and I have lots of albums in my collection with bands like the above mentioned. Dead Can Dance is a bit different from those bands as the ethnic tendencies that they would fully develop on their later releases is also a part of their sound on this debut. This is what sets them apart from the many other bands that emerged in those dark eighties.

Dead Can Dance consists of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry who both contributes vocals on this album and Brendan also plays guitar. All other instruments are played by hired help. The most significant feature on this album is the use of a drum machine which some people find cold. I think the drum machine fits the music well even though I would also have prefered a real drummer. On the CD reissue of the album there are four bonus tracks from the 1984 EP Garden of the Arcane Delights which is a real treat as that EP is pretty hard to get. The EP songs add a great value to the original album as they are actually a bit more exciting than the material from the album. All songs are very good though and as the instrumental The Fatal Impact starts the album you´re in for a dark rock treaty. Personally I like the songs where Brendan Perry sings more than the songs where Lisa Gerrard has the lead role. Lisa has an outstanding voice but I´m not that excited about ethnic music in general and this doesn´t change my view on that.

The production is not very good. It´s very dark and the mix is strange but somehow it suits the music pretty well. Many of the aforementioned bands also had this kind of dark and muddy sound on their first couple of albums. It was just the way it was suppossed to sound back then. The sound hasn´t aged well though and stays firmly in the early eighties.

As a fan of Dead Can Dance this is an album you got to have of course, but for prog heads I would recommend starting with Into the Labyrinth and see if that one caught on before buying anything else by the band. This debut album is probably the last thing from Dead Can Dance that you would buy even as a fan. Well that sounds way to negative because I´m gonna give this album 3 stars because I enjoy it and there are some great songs here even though this is not the most progressive album on Prog Archives.