Artist: Henke
Title: Maskenball der Nackten
Genre: Gothic
Release Date: 1st March 2013
Label: Dryland Reccrds (Alive)
Album Review
With his project HENKE, Oswald Henke was moving into another direction regarding his artistic and musical career. The singer, author and composer is looking back to numerous bands and projects, transforming his ideas into musical arrangements in different ways. All of his projects – might it be ARTWORK, ERBLAST, FETISCH:MENSCH, ZEITGEIST the best known of them all, GOETHES ERBEN – are wearing the unique handwriting of Henke. And exactly with the project HENKE the story goes on. ‘Maskenball der Nackten’ is the second album of the project after the first one, ‘Seelenfütterung’. White the first album, released 2011, made a quite modern impression and sounded quite rocking, the new one feels like a journey to the past and to dark places. It awakens strong feelings in a very deep way, reminding of some old GOETHES ERBEN pieces.
A grave piano opens ‘Dokument 2’ followed by lyrics being destructive and uplifting at the same time. “Liebe mich und töte dafür mein Herz” (Love me and kill my heart for it) is one of the first lines of the album, equally dark as the piano in ‘Dokument 2’, causing me goose bumps like already the black swan in ‘Tage des Wassers’ did. But soon, the darkness develops to a light song due to “modern” guitar sounds and catchy rhythms. Might it be the slight waltz in ‘Maskenball der Nackten’, a distorted rage in ‘Fernweh ist’ or the soughing wind in ‘Medea‘ lighting a spark in the dark and believe it or not, waking even some positive emotions… The ups and downs of emotions are making HENKE’S music something hard to swallow. You love it or hate it.
Oswald Henke is well-known for unusual and exceptional ideas. So, the album was not financed by advance money from a label, but the own fan base made the album possible by the buy of various supporting fan packages. The supporters did not buy the CD as it is usual nowadays via a crowd-funding platform, bit directly in dialog with the band. With the help of the band’s own blog and various social networks, the fans were informed in time about all developments of the demo recordings, about the studio work as well as the mixing of the final album. The supporters did not have an influence onto the creative process, but they got an insight into the creative work. You see that the recording process was unusual… as unusual as the album is itself.
The album takes you on a journey into time. GOETHES ERBEN meets HENKE. And both grew together to express their closeness with multi-variant compositions crawling deep under your skin. HENKE developed further. The music aged like a good wine, the older it gets the more facets it adds, it is deeper in its taste and wider in its aroma. With ‘Maskenball der Nackten’, Oswald Henke proved once more his extravagant artistic abilities. And since art lies in the eye of the beholder, opinions will differ on this question. For fans, this is a clear buy! For curious ones, it is a deep album making you hope for more…
Tracklist
01. Dokument 2
02. Valiumregenbogen
03. Rote Irrlichter
04. Grauer Strand
05. Zeitmemory
06. Vergessen
07. Epilog...
08. Fernweh Ist
09. Ein Jahr als Tag
10. Maskenball der Nackten
11. Nur allein
12. Medea
Line-up
Oswald Henke – Vocals
Tobias Schäfer – Keys, Piano
Stefan Söllner – Guitars
Tom Bola – Bass, FX
Benjamin Küfner – Drums
Website
http://www.henkeband.de / http://www.oswald-henke.de/ / https://www.facebook.com/henkeband / http://www.myspace.com/oswaldhenke
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 9
Sound: 8
Total: 8.5 / 10
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