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Rusty Pacemaker - Blackness And White Light review



Reviewer:
N/A
Band: Rusty Pacemaker
Album: Blackness And White Light
Website: http://www.rustypacemaker.com/index.html
Release date: 2010


01. Cell
02. You Never Had
03. My Way
04. Amok
05. Waiting For Tomorrow
06. The Human Race
07. My Last Goodbye
08. Blackness And White Light
09. Revolution
10. Mother

Rusty Pacemaker is a dude from Austria who spent 7 long years toiling away, improving his craft, amassing equipment and building the perfect studio. A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, he spent all this time painstakingly composing his magnum opus, obsessively making sure that every single element carries the sort of emotional weight that he envisioned.

The resulting album, Blackness And White Light, is very ambitious and complex indeed. For a DIY release, it is extremely diverse. Besides Bathory (an influence that Rusty mentions on his website), there are elements and echoes of many points of inspiration, predominantly from the doom/gothic metal scene ( Black Sabbath, Anathema), mixed with some alternative rock and shoegaze moods and even the occasional detour into black metal aesthetics. The complexity of this release also extends to the lyrics and the album art. Every song on this album is a lengthy, gradually developing excursion into misery and bleakness. The catchy "My Last Goodbye," emotionally acoustic "Waiting For Tomorrow" and the epic album closer "Mother" are some of the definitive highlights of Blackness And White Light, although the entire album contains plenty of complex, mature material that reveals its secrets in an appealingly slow way.

Unfortunately, Blackness And White Light also contains some significant flaws, some of which are caused directly by the personal DIY nature of this release. By far the weakest point of this whole album is the vocals. Both Rusty and the guest female singer possess very flat voices. Rusty is particularly devoid of singing ability - his moany, nasal and tuneless delivery is definitely not saved by his funny accent or his attempts at singing in diverse styles. The production could also definitely do with being a little bit hotter; however, as it is, the flat and uneventful mix does at least suit the miserable mood of this release.

Blackness And White Light is one of those albums that has the potential of becoming a cult classic. Unfortunately, if it were a woman, she'd have the body of a supermodel with the nose of Cyrano de Bergerac. Rusty's vocals, like the girl's gargantuan beak, will make most listeners run for the hills. Nevertheless, a small, elite group of nasophiliacs will remain and to them, Blackness And White Light will be a masterpiece. Unfortunately, I have to confess that Rusty Pacemaker's music is definitely not my cup of tea; however, it is still worth checking out.





Written on 18.01.2011 by With Metal Storm since 2002, jupitreas has been subjecting the masses to his reviews for quite a while now. He lives in Warsaw, Poland, where he does his best to avoid prosecution for being so cool.



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