Rain Diary – Black Weddings

Rain Diary - Black Weddings

Album facts

Release: September 22nd, 2017
Label: Stupido Records
Genre: , ,
Discogs: Link

A black wedding I'd definitely dance on

The finnish band 'Rain Diary' already released their album 'Black Weddings' in 2017 but it just recently fell into my hands and struck me as so men­tion­able that I decided to do a review non­ethe­less. One thing before­hand: if you go for this record, make sure to get your hands on the 'White Edition' – the bonus tracks are SO worth it!

'Rain Diary' star­ted off in 2007 and this exper­i­ence is def­in­itely notice­able through­out the album. This is not the aver­age elec­tro thing. This is quiet, sad, very emo­tion­al and still amaz­ingly up to date with the out­side super optim­ist­ic pop world. You don't think this incred­ible mix­ture is pos­sible? Well, brace yourself!

Starting high from a breezy low

Already the intro '30.973762' caught my atten­tion: an old music box gets con­tras­ted by a short dark poem, fol­lowed by a crooked, eer­ie sound mak­ing your skin crawl a little. Is it a coin­cid­ence, that the title rep­res­ents the atom­ic weight of phos­phor­us? Because what´s com­ing burns as bright and devour­ing as this highly var­ied element.

The first title 'Toxic Blues' full­fills its func­tion as a trail­blazer like noth­ing else. I was swept away by the breezy, some­what lost tones and Tommi Suomala's fra­gile, but determ­ined voice. The song is very densely layered and holds a sense of dark fore­bod­ing. Nonetheless its off­beat con­struc­tion and ener­get­ic chor­us give everything a really fresh Dark Pop sound needs.

A silver moon enlightens the cold plains

This is it. 'Berlin' is a dance­floor hymn to sing along to but not to sweat too much while dan­cing due to its quiet tunes between the chor­uses. It is abso­lutely on point and not a second too long. The lost souls of Berlin will love it.

'We Are Here We Are Now' rep­res­ents the per­fect romantic bal­lad for those rest­less times, 'Rain Diary' really man­aged to catch the beauty of fugacity in only 3 minutes and 40 des­per­ate seconds. This song really makes you want to embrace every little second with the ones you love because love can fade like everything else.

… do you know there's a per­fect sky just wait­ing to be seen but someone else will take you there …
Lyrics from 'Black Wedding' by Rain Diary

This sen­tence is the essence of being left and it's wrapped up so emo­tion­ally in 'Black Wedding', that you have to pic­ture a dark church with just one per­son in it, des­per­ate but still full of love. The organ implanted here is of course the core factor to this pic­ture and the well set pauses lift your expect­ancy even high­er. But the song's struc­ture doesn't leave you in a den, it lifts you up with its won­der­ful big chor­us and gives you hope to carry on by clos­ing in pos­it­ively high­er sounds.

Ominous clouds gather in the open sky

Rain Diary - Promo photo
Rain Diary – Promo photo

To me the weak­est song of the album, 'Swans' still comes up with inter­est­ing sci-fi-like tunes in the begin­ning and end and a ger­man sample in the middle part. This is always a bit dis­turb­ing to me as a nat­ive speak­er, but works quite well in this arrangement.

The 'White Edition' closes with this song as an acous­tic ver­sion. I'm usu­ally no friend of things like this, but I get the idea here. I like this ver­sion much bet­ter, because it's clean­er, bet­ter struc­tured and more focused.

With a com­par­ably bru­tal sound 'Flowers' made me listen up instantly. Its struc­ture reminds me more of New Metal although still com­pletly elec­tron­ic. It also reminds me often­times of Björk's 'Army Of Me' but with a much more open atti­tude. It has some threat­en­ingly dark ele­ments which give the album at this point a very inter­est­ing new twist which I actu­ally didn't expect.

The air is shifting

'Unified' sort of swings. It cer­tainly has a quite pop like appear­ance but 'Rain Diary' always man­age to keep the dark side regard­ing con­tent very close to the music­ally light side. The duett parts with Tytti Toppari under­line this incon­gru­ity beautifully.

… I killed my heart this morn­ing with a song you used to play …
Lyrics from 'Everything Is Painted Falling' by Rain Diary

'Everything Is Painted Falling' com­bines pretty much everything a broken heart is made of: strings, angle-like choirs and a heart­beat that dom­in­ates the fore­ground. A very inter­est­ing arrange­ment that leaves you sad and com­for­ted at the same time.

YAAAY! Disco! You might think read­ing the CD sleeve with the words 'Kill The Disco'. Once this piece starts, you notice how totally mis­lead you were: crouch­ing down like a tiger this song is wait­ing to spring on you – and it does it hard and loud com­pared to the soft tunes used on this album up to now. This is fun!

All light gone

And with a stroke of the piano all fun has drained out of the world. The cur­tain is drawn for 'Violent Sky'. This piano/guitar/string arrange­ment is the soundtrack to feel­ing as help­less as only anoth­er per­son can make you feel. It's dra­mat­ic without exag­ger­a­tion with dis­har­mon­ic but sub­or­din­ated peaks at the end. The reg­u­lar record stops here, which would have left me beau­ti­fully depressed. But I am very happy to have got­ten the 'White Edition' with two more great tracks to ease my mind.

In 'What Becomes Of Night' I am reminded of everything I love about bands like 'The Cult': chan­ging tempi and a lovely old school instru­ment­a­tion. This song sounds kind of out­land­ish, like from a far away place some­where in the Wild West and at the same time some­where right inside the Orient. It´s oppu­lent, a whole land­scape of a song. It not only tells of leav­ing, it feels like it.

The dawn

I'm not eas­ily impressed by quiet albums, but this one really got me hooked. From the first second I liked the inter­est­ing twists and turns and unex­pec­ted arrange­ments giv­ing me haunt­ing ear­worms. 'Rain Diary' breathes, lives and feels their music. The lyr­ics are straight for­ward but nev­er­the­less poet­ic and very com­pre­hens­ible. Guys, you made me cry.

Track By Track Rating

Rain Diary - Black Weddings
Rain Diary – Black Weddings
30.973762
Toxic Blues
Berlin
We Are Here We Are Now 
Black Wedding
Swans
Flowers
Unified
Everything Is Painted Falling 
Kill The Disco
Violent Sky
What Becomes Of Night
Swans (Acoustic Studio Arrangement)
Recommend
Berlin
Flowers
What becomes of night
Weak
(Nothing to report here)
3.6
Big Emotions!

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30.973762
Toxic Blues
Berlin
We Are Here We Are Now
Black Wedding
Swans
Flowers
Unified
Everything Is Painted Falling
Kill The Disco
Violent Sky
What Becomes Of Night
Swans (Acoustic Studio Arrangement)
Final Score