Michelle Darkness - Brand New Drug (Album)
Michelle Darkness’ brand new album, Brand New Drug, has been termed a straightforward Gothic Rock album, yet I would deem it to have more of a pop, rather than rock, feel. The cover of the album features Michelle in heavy black-and-white makeup, wearing a beanie and shades, over a field of über-green clovers. This gothic/pop blend of images is exactly what the music is like.
Michelle Darkness is the singer of the Gothic Rock band End of Green(all the green on the Brand New Drug cover may be a throwback to this). While his band-mates were putting the finishing touches on their next album, Michelle decided to break things up by creating a solo album. Like many soloists, this is purely Michelle’s vision, and he does most of the vocals and all of the instrumental work on the album. Again like many solo albums, this results in a fairly simple album, without any really experimental vocals, styles or instrumental sections.
Michelle Darkness’ album strongly reminds me of H.I.M, yet Brand New Drug sounds more ‘poppy’; while there are exceptions, the music is generally less distorted, less experimental in terms of time-signatures and experimentation, and closer to the tempo of the average radio songs. However, there are definitely the strong, slow bass-driven beats of true Gothic Rock in there, and Michelle’s deep, gravely, emotion-driven voice should certainly gather some fans.
One interesting thing that Michelle has done in his new album is to put a new twist on several old songs; he covers Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, the Ramones’ Pet Semetary and Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence. Michelle’s cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart is quite successful, and while it drops many gothic elements, it sounds like it could fit right into a modern day interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. Pet Semetary is a much more straightforward rock song with a dark guitar edge, and although nothing new, sounds fairly good in its own right. The Sound of Silence however drops short; Michelle tries to make it dark and brooding by adding slow distorted guitar, yet he fails to match, let alone surpass, the original in pure dark atmosphere. A good effort though.
Brand New Drug is quite a decent album for a solo attempt. Fans of dark rock, Gothic Rock, and bands such as H.I.M. will probably enjoy it, and fans of End of Green will probably love it. However if you’re interested in looking at this genre for the first time, hearing End of Green’s new album will probably do more for you.
