This review of Black Rain's debut album, the self titled Black Rain has been a long time coming. I managed to miss the original press release, and its been an entire month since I saw the chase-up email. I had been struggling to find the band on Apple Music, mainly due to their band name also being the band name of seemingly an infinite number of other groups. Eventually I levelled up my intelligence and realised the press release actually had a link to the correct band on that app! So, Black Rain are a dark post-punk band from the North East of England, their debut album is made up of nine tracks; five studio tracks and four live performances.
It won't be surprising to state I liked the album. Frankly, I seem to like much of what is sent my way for review, but this in particular reminded me of a few bands that I quite like. It starts off with 'Inside', a fast paced opener that was a punk rock song that sounded like a blend between Alkaline Trio and Depeche Mode. The comparisons continue with 'Save Me' where it sounded like a mash-up between Interpol and Hot Snakes. This one had a great bass riff going on. Third track 'Satanists' (finally a link to horror!) was once again a great beat, in particular I loved the pounding drums. Talking of drums, I always love a song that starts with just a drum beat, and 'Shot Gun' was one of those, the drums sounding like a constant shotgun blast.
After the lovely 'Fear' with its great main riff it is time to move onto the live tracks. As a teenager I hated live songs on albums, they always felt like a bit of a cop-out. Not so much here though as these final four tracks barely sounded any less professionally done than the studio tracks. 'Shadows Cry' had the vocalist giving a bit of a Nick Cave vibe. If I hadn't known it was live I might have assumed it wasn't. 'Broken Words' and final track 'Dust Tubes' both had great beats to them, but it was penultimate track 'I Suffer Alone' that was surprisingly my favourite track from the whole album. This had a great repetitive droning sound to it, I could imagine it would have been fantastic to see this played live, I liked the almost spoken word segment during this also.
Sure, I am the first to admit I don't really have a clue what I am talking about when it comes to reviewing music, but I thought Black Rain was a great first album, with some really great tunes contained within. Black Rain is available on all major streaming platforms, with limited edition vinyl LP and cassettes also available. Black Rain also have a limited number of live dates, playing Sunderland at the Fire Station on 26th September, Carpe Noctum in Leeds on 4th October, and playing at the Shadow Factory for the Whitby Goth Festival on 1st November.
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