Artist: Diary of Dreams
Title: Chapter 1: Dead End Dreams
Genre: Electronic / Darkwave
Release Date: 31st October 2025
Label: Accession Records
Album Review
“Dead End Dreams” - one line from the song ‘Panik?’ (2002) that has remained conceptually unfinished for Adrian Hates to this day. ‘Dead End Dreams’ - the beginning of a series of mini albums, the final number of which is still unknown and which will only end “when the story has been fully told”.
The first chapter of this series takes us into a world on the brink of collective collapse and is at the same time a retreat into one’s own thoughts and dreams. No escape, no solution, but rather the fading out of what seems barely tangible: reality. Musically, ‘Dead End Dreams’ offers everything that defines DIARY OF DREAMS: emotionally charged, intense music that defies all standard categorisations. A melange of electronic beats, expansive symphonic keyboards, and the unmistakable vocals of Adrian Hates.
We hear flowing, impressive guitars, pulsating bass lines, striking drum beats. Piano passages, acoustic guitars, and various samples create here a ritual, uncanny atmosphere, there an uplifting mood filled with melancholy. DIARY OF DREAMS enrich their signature sound with new sonic textures and a noticeable tendency towards the cinematic.
‘Kein Allein’ - bluntly hammering drums by Jörn Schwarzburger like marching footsteps, a rumble of dark synth layers, and then Hates’ voice cutting through the darkness: “Dark the clouds / above the rooftops”. Choral samples force their way between, contradiction and reinforcement at once. “We are the masses / who do not think, but feel” - a collective that finds its identity in the swarm, a “beast” preparing to act?
“No alone / beast are we / ready for anything” - collective uprising or hiding within the anonymity of the masses? Musically, guitar and bass (Felix “Flex” Gerlach) condense together with electronic fractures into an increasingly threatening sound fabric, until the piano sets brief points of light. Yet even this feels more like the flicker of a last hope. The song ends as it began: with the sense that perhaps it is already too late.
Harder, driving, more forceful - and yet deeply tormented: that is how ‘the Chemistry of Pain’ confronts us. Dark Electro sounds and Hates flinging “Wrong. So wrong.” at us - deep and rough. It hits like a verdict without trial. It is not about pain as an emotional feeling, but about pain as a chemical state. Walls are not external boundaries, but internal self-definition: “These walls are all I have / These walls are all I am and how”.
Drums and bass stomp ahead, bombastic string samples boil up the inner conflict, Felix “Flex” Gerlach’s guitar plays the melody in the chorus. Felix Wunderer’s voice above Hates’ vocals sets ethereal points of contrast, like whispering shards of conscience condemned to silence. A fever dream with no possibility of awakening - wounds that sustain themselves.
‘Tomorrow’s past’ feels softer, more flowing, almost conciliatory - or at least it gives that impression. Guitar lines glide like gentle remembrance, the two-part vocals act like a dialogue between two versions of the same person. “Let me go tonight / and come to rest”: the desire to let go, and yet the fear of it: “Don’t wake me up”.
Dreams as refuge and as prison. “And so we dance / to numb the bitter sorrow” - movement merely serves forgetting. The song title itself is a paradox: Tomorrow’s past - the future as a memory already lost. Hates plays with the question: if everything is dream, where does reality begin? Musically, the song reminds me of ‘the Secret’ from the previous album ‘Melancholin’, with its warm sound and subtle electronics.
The song title says it all - ‘hurt people hurt people’ - full stop. Hates’ voice first stands bare in the room, every syllable heavy, effects set accents. Then guitars and drums drive the “final dream” onwards in a spiral of self-protection and destruction - “Why should I sleep? / There’s nothing left to dream”.
The dream has burned away, only survival remains. The repetition “again and again and again” feels like being thrown back into the same pain repeatedly. Brass samples in the bridge make the track seem almost liturgical, like blaring trumpets of an end-time prophecy - judgement day played out inside one human being.
‘Dead to me’ - a faint clink, synths like drops on mirror-smooth water. Questions without answers: “What have I become? / What have I done?”. The lyrics describe fear of life just as intensely as fear of death: “What can you do / when you’re too scared to live?” Identity becomes a void. ‘Dead to me’ - dead to the outside world, or dead to oneself?
Powerful guitars momentarily break the fragility, as if the subconscious wants to rebel, but in the end only the piano remains. No drums. No synths. Only Hates’ voice, almost soft, human - like the question whether something might still be alive. A bitterly beautiful piece about self-abandonment and perhaps the desire to still be saved.
The final song pulls the curtain back - or lets it fall for good. The piano opens like a confession. Hates sings intensely and imploringly, while strings begin to rise. “Never try to fix the broken / to feel better about yourself” - an accusation directed outward or at the self? The title ‘iamnowhere’ - a paradoxical existence in absence (I am nowhere) and presence (I am now here). Sometimes a single character (or its absence) defines the difference.
“The truth is in our limits / they make us who we are” - weakness defines identity. The instrumentation grows slowly, strings and acoustic guitar add organic warmth. Saxophone-like samples create an almost physical closeness. A piece that creeps under the skin. In the end, only one plea remains: “Please make it go away!” No closure. An open wound.
‘Chapter 1: Dead End Dreams’ leads us further into Adrian Hates’ dreams and nightmares. The dreams have become brittle, contaminated by a reality that steadily draws nearer. Musically, the typical hybrid of electronic force, melodic depth, and the unmistakably layered vocals of Hates remains - but the world surrounding it appears more dystopian, darker, more existential than ever.
Six songs like six fragments of a dream - one you neither want to finish nor leave behind. And this is precisely the strength of this first chapter: it awakens a painful curiosity for what is still to come. ‘Dead End Dreams’ is the beginning of a plunge into the abyss. And we want to feel every metre of it.
By the way, ‘Chapter 1: Dead End Dreams’ is available on CD (8 panel Digipak), but also as a beautiful coloured 12” vinyl (Limited Pearl / Northern Light)! Of course, you will also find it on all digital platforms.
Tracklist
01. Kein Allein
02. the Chemistry of Pain
03. tomorrow’s past
04. hurt people hurt people
05. Dead to me
06. Iamnowhere
Line-up
Adrian Hates - Vocals / Lyrics / Music
Dejan Nikolic - Drums
Hilger Tintel - Guitar
Felix Wunderer - Keyboard
Live Dates
08.11.25 - (CH) Zürich, Der schwarze Ball
14.11.25 - (DE) Hanover, MusikZentrum
15.11.25 - (DE) Wuppertal, LCB
16.11.25 - (DE) Frankfurt, Batschkapp
18.11.25 - (DE) Stuttgart, Im Wizemann Club
19.11.25 - (DE) Munich, Backstage Werk
20.11.25 - (DE) Berlin, Columbia Theater
21.11.25 - (DE) Dresden, Reithalle Strasse E
22.11.25 - (DE) Leipzig, Täubchenthal
12.12.25 - (DE) Magdeburg, Factory
13.12.25 - (DE) Hamburg, Markthalle
Website
https://www.diaryofdreams.de / https://www.facebook.com/officialdiaryofdreams
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 9
Sound: 10
Total: 9.5 / 10
