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Band: Reactive Black
Album title: Pray [EP]
Release date: 23 December 2014
Label: Self-Released
Tracklist:
01. Everything I Am
02. Kill The Sun
03. Wasting
04. Voodoo
We had to wait almost five years for a new release from German duo Reactive Black, and now by many almost forgotten act all of a sudden surprises with a self-released and surprisingly good EP, Pray. The successor to 2010's full lenght, A New Dawn..., shows the two, vocalist Sassy Skeleton and multiinstrumentalist Rotten, maybe in their stronger form to date and all of the four tracks featured in here must be a joy to every fan of darker rock or metal sounds. Even though Reactive Black doesn't really bring something unique and new with their musical output, they are rather taking the best and most obvious elements from gothic metal, gothic rock, doom metal, still adding here and there some nice electronics and sometimes spice it up with kind of punkish vibe, everything just to make the featured tracks very fresh and dynamic.
Reactive Black kicks off with in your face thrown punked up gothic metal/rock bomb "Everything I Am", where hard-hitting guitar riffs and gloomy spacious synths make a very dense, yet powerful sound. But everything is toped with Sassy's uncompromising deep, rather alternative and bewitching voice that leads you so smoothly through each one of the tracks. With kind of an interesting approach towards all those elements the two are using, they achived pretty well flowing drive, especially in the slowly wailing "Kill The Sun", the one that must suck you into the abyss of everything dark, doomy and above all - goth. There must be some kind of magic going on between Sassy and Rotten, yeah, you'll notice that in the hypnotic goth rocker "Wasting" and be attentive at how elegantly the narrative character of half-spoken/half-sangt words coincides with the sole instrumental composition. Everything ends with the instrumental "Voodoo" where a strong Paradise Lost influence is noticed right away, but still those psyched out bizzare synths and almost subconscious pulses make it quite original. The rhythmic line is effective but at the same time quite simplistic, still it does reach that point of necessary catchiness and here and there with some deviations kind of a danceblable melody. Unfortunately the fun ends too soon and only 15 minutes of running time are everything you get, but believe me that if you are into goth music with heavy riffs and if you like some twists, yet if good above average passionate female vocals are your thing, then I'm sure that Reactive Black's Pray is something that should be your thing.
One another thing that should be considered is that Pray is completely self-produced and self-released, and belive me or not it's better done than many other things with worldly-renowned producers behind the keys. It has power, depth, yet the sound is clean enough. If this is just a sample of what we should expect from the two musicians in the future (I hope that a full-lenght album follows soon enough) then this EP shows much more than just an appetizing well crafted collection of four new tracks.
Review written by: T.V.
Rating: 8/10
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