Title: Disco Dracula
Artist: goJA moon ROCKAH
Genre: Electro, New Wave
Release Date: 9th October 2009
Label: Echozone
Album Review
Disco Dracula is the second album of the German band goJA moon ROCKAH, whose music is a mixture of electro pop, indie, dance pop and disco. This release was preceded by a successful tour headlining UNHEILIG, one of the bands carrying the ‘Neue Deutsche Härte’ label, a German musical scene originating from the late 90s from which Rammstein and Oomph! probably are better known outside Germany. The tour resulted in the release of the UNHEILIG album ‘Schattenspiel’ (2008) which also features three goJA moon ROCKAH tracks and some FAQ tracks.
Since the band is quite young and only sings in German, it is not easy to find a lot of background information besides their MySpace page, also in German. When you listen to their music, it quickly becomes clear that it is a bit off. It’s seems impossible to hate it although the music doesn’t seem to be more than simple synthesizer beats and a repetitive low key voice chorus. But somehow, you keep on listening. More, after a while you even start to like certain songs and you listen to the album again, and again. It grows on you and you start to realize there’s more to it than what you heard at first glance.
They sing in German and that doesn’t make things easy, especially since you feel that humour plays an important role in their world, as is illustrated immediately by the first track, which is nothing more than a spoken intro (as track 12 is an outro) and plays with the whole ‘Batman & Robin’ theme. They claim to seek a balance between glittering disco dance floors and dark street corners and dwell in the country called “Absurdistan” and to be honest, sometimes they succeed. The first real song on the album (‘Minimale Totale’) gives you an impression of what they mean, but you cannot really appreciate it to its full extent until you’ve listened to the album a couple of times. ‘Banana Split’ on the other hand is very straight forward: this is a perfect mixture between plateau boots, nipple piercings and disco lights with a pinch of psychedelics. Its beats get to you. This is fun as it was intended to be.
Other favourites of mine are ‘Mein Vampir’ (My Vampire) which incorporates a gothic musical theme and atmosphere and ‘Vampire Party’ (here are those disco beats again) together with ‘Monstertruck’ (reminds me of the synthesiser I had when I was a child). Despite their motto never to get dull, I thought tracks like ‘Radio Hit’, ‘Heavy Metal Computer’ and ‘Jetzt kommt die Nacht’ were simply not up to the challenge, although the remix of the former shows the track’s true potential. So in the end I would say that it is an interesting record, not bad at all, with a few very good tracks, but nothing to take very seriously... exactly what the band intended. I’m looking forward to see them perform live one day...
Tracklist
01. Es regnet Metall in Hamburg
02. Minimale Totale
03. Radio Hit
04. Banana Split
05. Disco Dracula
06. Heavy Metal Computer
07. Mein Vampir
08. Hey Sugar
09. Vampire Party
10. Monstertruck
11. Jetzt kommt die Nacht
12. M.T.U.O.R.F.S.G.I.D.A.R.
13. Radio Hit (Wet 'n' Wild SantaHatesYou Remix)
14. Heavy Metal Computer (Patenbrigade: Wolff Remix)
Line-up
Herr Ja (Daniel Jahn) - Vocals
Herr Buh - Guitar
Herr Moll - Keyboards
Website
http://www.myspace.com/gojamusic
Cover-Picture
Rating
Music: 7.5
Sound: 7.5
Extras: -
Total: 7.5 / 10
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