WITHIN THE REALM OF A DYING SUN

Dead Can Dance is one of those bands of which it completely eludes me why they have been added to this site. They were icons of the post-punk / new wave movement in the 80's and if I'm not mistaken, that generation was all about being as anti-prog as possible. Of course the principle of innovating and experimenting ran equally high through both kinds of music.

Few will argue that Dead Can Dance has anything to do with progressive masterpieces or with excellent additions to your prog collection. So when following the rating logic strictly, one can never rate them above 3 stars. I find this to be of the cruelest possible irony: add a band to a prog site where they don't belong and then penalize them with low ratings because they are not prog...

No, I will not go along with that logic. DCD has been added to this site so I will assume they must be prog in one way or another. Hence, my ratings will be in accordance with the quality of their albums and nothing else.

Right, with these trivial matters out of the way let's simply plunge into the wonderful soundscape that this album is and relish every minute of it. As others have pointed out already, Dead Can Dance has been evolving with every release. While always retaining a big dramatic impact, the way it is achieved has been different on each album.

On Within the Realm of the Dying Sun the approach is the gloomiest and most gothic they ever did. While it has nothing to do with gothic rock as such, the album has everything it takes to get every goth lover dusting off his long leather cape and leaving his dark cave as soon as the last rays of the dying sun have left the insufferable sun-bathed time of day. (Damn, it's happening again, once more my writing has adapted to the kind of music). It is goth yes, but gothic in the way medieval church music is gothic: that chilling mix of dark, grotesque, desolate, mysterious and teutonic.

With the wide array of styles that DCD has evolved through, your personal DCD preference will largely depend on your receptiveness towards either Gothic music, renaissance, Arabic influences or Indian world music. Sometimes it's hard to choose, but given the dark forces that wield within me, Within the Realm of the Dying Sun (the title alone!), would be the most fitting DCD experience for me.