BEAUTY OF GEMINA A STRANGER TO TEARS ALBUM TBOG, DANSE MACABRE RELEASE: SEPTEMBER 26, 2008 REVIEW: OCTOBER 8, 2008

I'd been wondering who was going to challenge Zeraphine and Solar Fake for dominance in the sphere of mainland darkwave/rock. Now I know.

The Beauty of Gemina have gifted us with their second album and though it's a bit long (well over 70 minutes), it does not bore nor does it drag. When I first heard their lead single for this album "This Time" part of me said, my how silly they are, such bombast. I find myself thinking now, this is viciously incisive.

Whoever put these four guys together has their eye on the prize. Not since The Sisters blew out the standards with "First and Last and Always" has an outfit managed to rise to that occasion. The Beauty of Gemina have, boys and girls. Some of you will view them as just more darkling nonsense and you'd be smugly rewarded by the crowd for such a dismissive jab. You'd also be so wrong, so astounding and astronomically off the mark. This band change it up more times throughout this album than Celine Dion had costumes for her Vegas show. For beyond the first two tracks, we're crushed by potency.

"Psycho-Flood" drops the steady beat for an almost tribal/primal animalistic feel. The thing is carnivorous, it seeks your sanity. Through the running of this song, the guitars grow in power. Much like Swans experiments with grinding slabs of gutteral dirge, our four Swiss fellows let it all out. But they do it with such panache it is difficult to accept that this is only their second record. Oh bollocks you're still saying. Taking a look in the liner notes we find three particularly notable gentlemen thanked: Ernst Horn, Adrian Hates and Bruno Kramm (whose Danse Macabre label distributes this fine CD in Germany. I can say that this band is a must for any fan of what these aforementioned artists produce.

Take care with this album not to play it if you're going through any sort of crisis in your own personal life, it'll slither out and suffocate you with its powerful, muscular coils.

PETER MARKS