Review: "The Dark Half" EP by Dead Heaven

Dead Heaven is a 2 piece band which harkens to the glory days of Electronica, Punk and Goth – put into a blender and turned into the best musical smoothie around. Their new EP "The Dark Half" contains 4 blistering songs, 3 excellent originals and an excellent cover of Gary Numan's "We Are So Fragile".

The EP kicks off with the anthemic "Days I Despize". Strangely enough I listened to this on a Monday and it struck a resonant chord with me! Opening with a chunky and discordant sound created by guitarist Nino, it soon comes to a pained but tuneful vocal arrangement. Listening to it I feel that it has the makings of a classic song arrangement, 2 verses then a stomping chorus complete with pounding drums and sing along chorus. VERY catchy! The accomplished way these 2 musicians can go from loud to soft, fast to slow and back again is breathtaking. One word for the song – brilliant!

The second song "Broken" has a clever little drum sequence and then crashes into a simple yet dramatic guitar chord series. Tales of love gone wrong. That speaks to ALL of us. Baz’s (vocals) lyrics "you don’t know what you do to me?" and "what do you want from me" asks the fundamental questions we all ask when our love is going or goes bad. Nino accelerates the pace of guitar and a sudden staccato pause then goes onto verse 2. You can hear the pain in the song – it gives an almost perceptible tangibility to the sound from the speakers. Awesome.

"Burning White Light" comes next. Stadium type opening, you can almost see "the Edge" of U2 playing this at Wembley except it’s not U2 its Dead Heaven and they are coming to get YOU! Musical in the extreme; perfectly timed and thought provoking lyrics such as "I take a pill to kill the pain – I won’t feel this way again". Tortured and sexy at the same! This is a stunning song, with exceptional guitar sounds to back it up!

Onto the cover of "We Are So Fragile" - opens up well - strong, confident bass and sequenced drums. Clean vocals blend effortlessly into smooth guitar, which always has an underlying hint of dark malevolence to it. Actually it must be said that the guitar sound is quite unique. Overall, an excellent version of the original.

This band clearly has defined influences from the 80s and 90s, but the fact of the matter is that they are different from so many bands out there.

I urge you all, buy this EP, and see them live. You won’t be the same afterwards. The Darkwave cometh and taketh NO prisoners.

Bryan Saunders - April 2004