The Black Queen – ‘Fever Daydream’

There was probably a time, many years ago, that your average fan of rock music would scoff at the idea of someone in a metal or punk band making electronic music on the side. It’s an argument that you see sometimes from the narrow-minded, who believe that just because it wasn’t written on a guitar or similar instrument, that it’s not real music. Well, to be perfectly blunt, that’s rubbish. It takes just as much time, talent, and creativity to make electronic music as it does anything else, especially for those who wish to make it inventive and original. With that, it has meant the calibre of the side-projects we have seen over the years has only increased. From Davey Havok’s Blaqk Audio, to Chino Moreno’s Crosses, it’s a pool that musicians in the rock community are dipping their toes into more and more.

This time, it’s Greg Puciato from chaotic metal titans The Dillinger Escape Plan. You only have to look back at the fire he brought to Dillinger when he joined for their 2004 album ‘Miss Machine’, to realise there was more to this man-mountain vocalist than meets the eye. He added a sense of melody to the band that wasn’t there before. They still remained unhinged and unpredictable, but with the addition of Puciato’s impressive vocal range, it allowed them extra scope to broaden their sound. During a bit of downtime from his day job, some exchanging of demos between himself and Steve Alexander, and a chance meeting with Joshua Eustis of IDM pioneers Telefon Tel Aviv, The Black Queen was born.

From the outset, you can tell that ‘Fever Daydream’ is not an album that was created from sunshine, rainbows, and happiness. This is the product of panic, depression, filth and dilapidation. It has a similar contrasting genetic make up to that of ‘Violator’ by Depeche Mode. In the way that it is a dark, melancholic, and often unsettling narrative, set to a fluid unison of manipulated beats, loops, and synths. ‘Ice To Never’ and ‘The End Where We Start’, carry as much brooding sexuality as they do harrowing intensity, moving and changing like seismic waves. The slick, and refined production job is redolent of an R’n’B album. Every pulsating 808 kick clear and concise through ‘Maybe We Should’, and the synth-wave soundscapes that weave in and out of goth-pop melodies during ‘Taman Shud’ are at times, glorious.

As to be expected, the focus of the album really does lie with Puciato, and the dramatic change in his vocal delivery. While his diversity has been displayed during the more avant-garde moments in The Dillinger Escape Plan’s back catalogue, The Black Queen really allows him to soar. Where in the past there have been multiple comparisons to Mike Patton, he has been able to create a bleak world that is truly his own on ‘Fever Daydream’.  He dazzles, in a spine-tingling manner, over the almost “four-on-the-floor” hooks of ‘Secret Scream’, and manages to add a warm, soulful texture to the glacial ambience of the albums closing track ‘Apocalypse Morning’.

‘Fever Daydream’ is not something that has been created for the sake of “fun”. It isn’t even really about artistic expression. While it does paint cognitive images as the album absorbs you, it is far more of a personal outlet for its members. It treads a different electronic path to Telefon Tel Aviv, and lyrically would not have sat right amongst Dillinger’s unbridled cacophony. During its conception, the members of The Black Queen dealt with torment that would have taken the heart of lesser people. Rather than give in to its consumption, they channelled it directly into ‘Fever Daydream’, with the end result being an album of blackened beauty.

GLEN BUSHELL