Dominion III — Life has ended here
Andreas OelkeLanz (guitar/bass) is also a permanent band member now and this makes the new album much more guitar oriented than the debut.
The music can still be described as agressive industrial/dark-wave but it also features quite some black-metal influences this time.
The atmosphere is cold, sinister and apocalyptic again with some progressive elements and a touch of typical Dargaard dark-wave, especially when Elisabeth is doing the vocals.
Sadly that doesn't happen too often, in fact she just sings in 2 songs and adds some chants to an otherwise instrumental song.
We can hear a lot of Tharen's extreme distorted black-metal like vocals again which add a lot to the agressivity of the songs.
The album starts off with A dead heart in a dead world a very agressive electronic/industrial/black-metal song with really cool vocals by Tharen and Elisabeth.
One of my favorite songs on this album.
The next song Life has ended here could've been on a Dargaard album as it's a much calmer dark-wave song with some hypnotic chanting by Elisabeth and distorted speaking vocals but in contrast to Dargaard this song has some heavier electronic drumming in the background.
The third title The priests of Emptiness is a highlight again. Very nice guitar and keyboard melodies added to an otherwise agressive industrial/metal song again with distorted growling/screaming by Tharen.
It has an almost doom-like feeling to it as it's quite slow in parts. In the last part of the song we can hear some great vocal lines by Elisabeth again. Her last appearance on this album.
Song 4 is called Conductors of live and it's a typical electro/industrial dancefloor song. It features clean, deep and somewhat monotonous vocals by Tharen which fit perfectly to this completely electronic song.
The next track Unreal is more of a black-metal song with electronic elements. Extreme vocals by Tharen again and lots of guitars. Not bad at all.
Code red is an instrumental. It starts off with a siren-like sound which continues through the complete song for 6 minutes.
The keyboards added on top remind me a bit of these typical 70s progressive Deep Purple like keyboards. Actually this song is a bit boring after a while so I just skip to the next one.
Track 7 Coming Winter is already the last song and with 9:10 minutes playing time it's also the longest one on this album.
It's a very heavy doom-like guitar-oriented song again and Tharen falls back to growling instead of screaming.
This song ends the album with a quite cold and hopeless atmosphere, cool guitar lines and some nice piano parts.
In the end we hear a sample of the movie "god's army" which fits very good to the song and sends some shivers done my spine.
All in all I would say that this is a very good album although it could be a bit longer (playing time is 43:41) and also some more vocals by Elisabeth would've made it even better.
So I will give it 4 kudos for now and I can recommend this album to everyone who likes industrial/electronic/black-metal/dark-wave or wants to listen to a more agressive side of Dargaard.