Stahlnebel & Black Selket – The Darkest Hour (Album – Advoxya Records)
Genre/Influences: Dark-Electro, Industrial-Rave.
Format: Digital, CD.
Background/Info: Never change a winning team! The duo Stahlnebel – Black Selket strikes back with their seventh album to date.
Content: The Germans didn’t really change their sound formula; this is a powerful and fully club-driven approach mixing hard pumping kicks, dark atmospheres and carrying Trance-orientated leads. The vocals are more like growls, but you’ll also notice spoken samplings –featuring famous words of Winston Churchill.
+ + + : I can’t say that the sound of this band has really changed and/or evolved over the years. But the main strength of Stahlnebel & Black Selket is that they’ve a very recognizable sound and I really like artists with their own sound DNA. The album reveals some great songs, “Never Surrender” (featuring samplings of Churchill) being for sure one of the biggest potential dancefloor killers. But I also have to mention “God And The Devil” and the pretty surprising cover of VNV Nation’s “Control”.
– – – : The main strength of a band always often becomes its weakness… The sound formula remains exactly the same-old one so in the end “The Darkest Hour” has something predictable.
Conclusion: Stahlnebel & Black Selket don’t really care about innovation and eventually new sonic paths to discover; they move on composing great dance floor stuff for dark souls!
Best songs: “Never Surrender”, “God And The Devil”, “Control”, “Schmerz”, “Help”.
Rate: (8).
Artist: www.facebook.com/stahlnebel.blackselket
Label: www.advoxya-records.com / www.facebook.com/pages/Advoxya-Records/265765706059
About Stahlnebel & Black Selket
Stahlnebel & Black Selket is a dark-electro collaboration between Ralph Neuhaus (Stahlnebel, Germany) and Sander Kapper (Black Selket, the Netherlands), who met through Myspace in early 2008 for a remix contest; Kapper produces the music, Neuhaus writes and sings the lyrics and Branko Kohl handles live instruments on stage. After the CD-R album “Unexpected” (2009, Stahlblack Productions) and the “Lifeless EP” the duo moved to Advoxya Records for “Memories” (2010), “Blood And Passion” (2011), “Bloody Rain EP” (2011), “More Noise” and the 7″ “Noise” (2012), “Contemporary Transformation” (2013), “We Break The Silence” (2014) and the EP Betrug (2015), reviewed on Side-Line in March 2016.
The double CD Questions followed in 2016 through Stahlblack Productions and DSBP, then the tenth-anniversary compilation “Timeless, Indestructible Resistant To Therapy…” (2017) and “Time Between Passion & Despair” (2019). The duo also remixed acts including Menschdefekt and nTTx.
“The Darkest Hour” was released by Advoxya Records on 26 April 2021 on CD, in a silver super-carton jacket, and as a download. The eleven tracks are “Lost Our Way”, “Schmerz”, “The Darkest Hour”, “God And The Devil”, “Kids Revolution”, “Never Surrender”, “Help”, “Control”, “Not Guilty”, “Blessed” and “Alone”. Sander Kapper composed and produced the music and designed the sleeve, Ralph Neuhaus wrote the lyrics, the album was mastered at StahlBlack Productions, Fernando made the artwork and Falk Rentsch took the photograph; “Control” was written by Ronan Harris. Kapper spoke about the album in the ‘Click Interview’ with Stahlnebel & Black Selket: ‘This Pandemic Gave Us An Extra Boost’ in September 2021.
The limited double LP “We Never Surrender” (2022) and the EP “Depersonalize – Dementia” (2023) followed on Advoxya, while Kapper released the Black Selket solo albums “Mortal Life” (2020) and “Unleash The Beast” (2024). “The Darkest Hour” is the duo’s seventh album.
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