Dead Lights – Dead Lights / Death Pop / Hex (Album – Cold Transmission Music)
Genre/Influences: EBM, Minimal-Electro.
Format: Digital, CD, Vinyl.
Background/Info: UK project Dead Lights has been introduced as ‘androgynous and visceral creators of raw art that disrupts gender and genre’. This debut album features nine new songs plus six songs from both previously released EP’s “Death Pop” and “Hex”.
Content: The songs are carried by solid EBM-driven bass lines and minimal Electronic treatments. The songs have been accomplished by filtered sequences, passages with good-old strings and male – female vocal lines. The songs from the album are perfectly matching with the EP’s tracks, whereon you’ll find the best cuts from Dead Lights.
+ + + : Dead Lights composes a kind of sexy EBM with a personal, minimal touch on top. I like the bass lines, but still the way the band achieved their songs. There’s a nice twist between harder- and somewhat softer cuts, but the more elaborated and harder songs definitely are the best ones. I would recommend listening to “Plastic Girl” and “The Future” plus the EP-tracks “Death Pop”, “Hex” and “Format The World”. The most original element from the album is the atypical drum patterns driven through a few songs, which are less typically EBM, but just great.
– – – : Dead Lights is a band you’ve to discover; so let’s hope they’ll get opportunities to play live and spread their sound over the EBM scene.
Conclusion: Dead Lights is a cool discovery for lovers of EBM in search of something a little bit different from the rest.
Best songs: “Hex”, “Death Pop”, “Plastic Girl”, “The Future”, “Format The World”, “Futile”, “The Raven”.
Rate: 8.
Artist: www.deadlights.band / www.facebook.com/officialdeadlights
Label: www.coldtransmission.com / www.facebook.com/coldtransmissionmusic
About Dead Lights
Dead Lights is a duo split between London, England and Eindhoven, the Netherlands; Discogs lists Richard Van Kruysdijk as a member. The project debuted on Cold Transmission Music with the three-track digital EPs “Death Pop” and “Hex”, both released in 2020.
The self-titled album was released by Cold Transmission Music on 14 May 2021 on CD, as a limited LP and as a download. The nine new songs are “The Raven”, “Plastic Girl”, “The Future”, “Deleted Scenes”, “Futile”, “Insekt”, “Industry”, “Quiet Pleasure” and “The Witching Hour”; the CD adds the six EP tracks “Death Pop”, “Dead Lights”, “The Host”, “Hex”, “Ice Queen” and “Format The World”. Dead Lights wrote, recorded and produced the album and Uwe Teichert mastered it at Elektropolis.
The EP Doom Doom Trash followed on Cold Transmission Music in 2022, and the band remixed Dead Astronauts on “Silhouettes Redux” the same year. Dead Lights then moved to darkTunes Music Group for the EP “Let The Ugly Out” (2023), the second album Glitterspit (reviewed on Side-Line in January 2024) and the 2026 single “Resonate”. The self-titled album is the band’s debut full-length and its first Side-Line review.
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