Jump forward many years, and History of Guns is still making their meta-modernist industrial music on their seventh album ‘Half Light. ’ Though being electronic rather than being metal, ‘Half Light’ is a concept album that explores the concept of darkness with a hopeful core, it is a creative opportunity for a new genre experience.
The Album begins with “No Longer Earthbound” which is a hypnotic seething single taken from the industrial genre with typical old school synths. The second song, “Never Give It Up,” was also faithful progression, but back to the old-school electro industrial ways. With “All You Dream (You Can Never Have)” the tempo slows down a little bit, though the band continues to play electro-industrial, and the track is complemented by distinct verses.
The fourth track titled “What’s Buried (Will Rise)” is highly charged and is also about the darker side of life. “When You Don’t Matter”, the sixth one, sneaks towards the listener like a sinister presence, while the groovy stormer that is “Arcadia”, the seventh song, demonstrates a great variety.
The eighth track named “Drug Castle” has clear recitations and monologues which add to the feeling of despair and distress accompanied by the majority of tracks in the album. It is very unusual that the album produces almost electro-industrial songs from beginning to end, and there is only one exception – “Survive the Night” in which there are only a voice and an acoustic guitar.
The final track is “An Invitation,” a somber piano ballad loaded with dialogues and monologues about suffering, melancholy, death, and dying with some words of positive reinforcement at the end of the song so one can rest in peace.
In “Half Light”, original vocalists Del Alien and Max Rael, as well as keyboardist and programmer, and guitarist Caden Clarkson present the themes of the human experience through different music styles. The collection of songs is positioned between dance floor and darkwave, clinical gothic catchy and futuristic electronic music of now and then.
‘Half Light’, it contains all that is digitally oriented and more rhythmically structured, smoother ambient electroscapes and clubland breaks. Essentially it is a dark opus to the consequences of actions and events, which in the end, gives a listeners some hope and again proves that History of Guns is a band with ideas and creativity on their highest level.
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