Review of Blacknurse - Light Across the Void
Light Across the Void is where Blacknurse's different sides seem to have finally found a workable balance. The alternative-metal foundation is still there, along with the goth and punk influences, but Teemu's heavier songwriting has pushed the music further into metal territory. Johanna's voice keeps it from becoming just another heavy rock record.
Her vocals are probably the first thing that gives the band its own face. There is something fragile about the delivery, but she can also push the heavier material when necessary. That contrast works particularly well with the darker songs. Blacknurse don't need to bury everything under distortion to make it sound heavy.
The Finnish melancholy is impossible to miss either, although the band themselves are perfectly happy with that description. Fair enough. It isn't some marketing sticker slapped onto the music afterwards. The sadness is already part of the songwriting, and the lyrics deal with loneliness, mental-health problems, difficult relationships and the unpleasant experience of finding yourself somewhere outside the normal social machinery.
That could easily turn into misery tourism.
Thankfully, it doesn't.
There is a difference between writing about depression because it sounds suitably dark and writing about things you have actually had to live through. Blacknurse are clearly much closer to the latter. Songs such as “Hospital Trip” aren't fictional exercises in gothic gloom, according to the band. Those subjects come directly from their lives, which gives the darker material more weight than the usual collection of vaguely tortured lyrics.
The relationship material is just as direct. Blacknurse aren't interested in the roses-and-sunset version of love. One-sided love, rejection and the kind of emotional mess that makes people do things they normally wouldn't consider are much more useful territory here. As the band put it themselves, there will be no songs about ponies in a meadow. Good.
Musically, the change from the early Blacknurse material is pretty substantial. Teemu's growing role in the songwriting has pushed the arrangements towards heavier territory, while the band have dropped their tuning from E all the way down to B for this album.
That low tuning gives the guitars considerably more weight, but the songs aren't just sitting there grinding away. There is still plenty of room for the goth side of Blacknurse, especially in the mood, and the punk influence occasionally gives the writing a sharper edge. It makes the combination less predictable than simply calling this gothic metal and leaving it at that.
The title Light Across the Void comes from the distance that can develop between people, and the idea that even a small ray of light can still be enough to create hope. Considering what Blacknurse write about, it's a pretty straightforward description of where their heads are at.
And the album isn't completely miserable either.
There is darkness all over it, obviously, but it isn't the kind of record that seems determined to drag you down for forty minutes and then leave you lying in a ditch. There is some warmth in the melodies, which keeps the record from becoming as bleak as its subject matter might suggest.
Now Teemu writes the new songs, both members contribute lyrics, and they already have material for another album. Considering how long the first record took to finish, that is a pretty fucking dramatic improvement in productivity.
The live situation is less straightforward. Blacknurse are currently short on players, and some of the older material will need new arrangements if they want to perform it alongside the much lower-tuned songs from Light Across the Void. Hopefully that gets sorted, because this is music that could use a stage rather than spending all its time inside a home studio.
For now, though, the album does the job.
Light Across the Void isn't reinventing alternative metal, gothic rock or anything else. It doesn't need to. Blacknurse have enough of their own character in the combination of Johanna's vocals, Teemu's heavier writing, Finnish melancholy and those bits of punk attitude to make the whole thing recognisable as Blacknurse.
After three albums, they sound less like a project still trying to work itself out and more like a band that knows where it wants to go.
And apparently they've already started writing the next one.
Let's see what happens when the void gets a little more crowded.
