DARKSIDE

Melancholia Of A Dying World

BENG ! / Czech Republic 1995

Jan Sida


I will start with the booklet. Why doesn't he come to the point, you may say ? Why not rigjht away about 
the music ? Everything needs ist time and in this case this small introduction is more than needful, I 
think. The discribed booklet is worked out amazingly well. You go through its pages, on which you can 
find on every one a small little piece of art (together with the lyrics). Every page surprises you with 
a thematical photography – dominant gothic cathedral, the blood of the setting sun, a landscape falling 
asleep by fierce frost....That's why I don't understand the bands choice of the work of Martin Zhouf for 
the cover, which is absolutely uncapeable to continue or sum up the atmosphere of the mentioned 
pictures. But this is the only thing I don't like.
Let's go further. As you work yourself through the booklet you are already engulfed by a weird feeling, 
you press the button and wait....from nothing words about war, a voice – talking about killing of 
people, burning villages, concentration camps. You can feel the cold crawling up and down your spine 
during that announcement. The sound of a machine fgun of an execution platoon makes you shiver even 
more, as the first drum fills of the first song „Deadly“ step in. A song like this has to be at the 
beginning ! Hard, driving, energetic !  The singer and guitar player Peter Durst bows out pieces of 
lyrics with unbelieveable persuasion !  His shouting are not growls, they are highly original, their 
own colour.
If you do a review about music, you have to try to make it approachable for the reader. So you are 
looking for those damned categories. But sometimes they won't fit, just as in this case. Doom ? Thrash ? 
Death ? Hard gothic ? Everything together and something more. So what ? To a closer approach I will use 
the review of the band INSANIA written by my collegue Mr. Spulak: „ Nine songs, this album seems like a 
passage exploring the autumnal gardens, with whose presents the wind is playing“. If the music of 
INSANIA is close to the autumnal atmosphere, then it has something in commom with DARKSIDE. Mostly that 
melancholic, sad outlook somewhere to the distance. But INSANIA plays the music of the Indian summer, 
full of coloured leafs, when the sun still warms you. Whereas DARKSIDE speaks with the frosty tongue of 
an evening of the last days of November. A soft cover of snow and the freezing cold air peaks in your 
face. Now: guitars strike through the cold silence, drums and bass build together an ice wave and the 
crystal keyboards call out for the grief of forlorness....best songs ? Smooth, fragile but also 
encraving Prelude / Melancholia with a beautiful melody. Emesis Of  The Soul – aggressive chorus, with 
flames of satin tones shining through ( I never thought, that it is possible to put so much feeling into 
hard music). Last but not least To The Deceased with a classical guitar riff. But like that I could 
continue until the last song ( The Truth).
What to say in the end ? Maybe only, that with DARKSIDE Austria has another hot contestant bysides 
PUNGENT STENCH for the eternal fires of hell. Check it out !