ALBUM REVIEW: CREATURE IN THE BLACK NIGHT BY DAYSEEKER

Reviewed by Cecilia Pattison-Levi

The new album ‘Creature In The Black Night’ is a concept album around the image of the Grim Reaper as poor choices and death stalks the black night. The Orange County, Southern Californian, band DAYSEEKER, has taken their metalcore-meets-post-hardcore genres and blended in emotive lyricism with alternative heavy metal and synth-pop fusion to create a lush and atmospheric soundscape.

DAYSEEKER have manufactured a sonic soundscape that is still framed with heavy guitar riffing but has raw and melodic vocals to bring in a heavily melancholic worldview. The lyricism is sharp and edgy, with the themes and motifs of mistrust and betrayal being central. It makes the album, with its 11 song cycle, a deep, dark listen. It makes the listener question who you can really trust. 

The album opens with the atmospheric ‘Pale Moonlight’, a song about surrendering and ‘‘being on my knees’’ and a “slave to the end” to one’s vices as you dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. The song is about the intentions and actions that lead the path to hell. Their music has the lovely melodic vocals, great understated guitars and huge drums with screaming vocals at the end. The following ‘Creature In The Black Night’, the album’s title song, starts with the strong synth that electronic sound underpins the whole track with melodic vocal. The song talks about “being a stranger in your own skin” that leaves the protagonist “lonely until the bitter end”.

The first highlight of the album is the song ‘Crawl Back To My Coffin’. It is a heavy rock ballad that wraps into the pain of love betrayed and how it decays the soul. The imagery of the graveyard infects and lingers through each song from here on. The lyricism about “How to bring the dead back to life?” is the question set in the heart of the album. It is a great song about the risks of loving and losing. It pairs with the following song ‘Shapeshift’ with its blend of musical textures of synth new wave sounds with metallic aggression that comes in bursts. The rock ballad ‘Soulburn’ uses its mid-tempo harmonic beauty to spit pure venom: “And when you say goodbye to all you’ve lost, I’ll be there so I can watch your soul burn alive.” The three songs is underscored with haunting beauty.

The core of this album features the melodic voice Rory Rodriguez, and the synth-heavy electronica and guitar backing from Gino Sgambelluri and Ramone Valerio. However, it is the powerful and skilful drumming from Zac Mayfield that brings the sound together.

This plays out on the next three songs especially ‘Bloodlust’: the heaviest song on the album. The synths are pushed down in the mix, and the tone shifts to heavy vocals, big thumping drums and that voice. ‘Cemetery Blues’ with its lo-fi synth line and softer drumming, until the louder elements kick in. The vocals are seductive and act as an emotional anchor as the lament of: “The afterlife is colder than they told me it would be” exposes the loss death brings. The following song ‘Nocturnal Remedy’ showcases Rory Rodriguez’s powerful screams and clean vocals to deliver another album highlight.

The last three songs ‘The Living Dead’, ‘Meet The Reaper’ and ‘Forgotten Ghost’ weave together the graveyard and death imagery. ‘The Living Dead’ is about using drugs like novocaine to dull pain and become zombie like as “the living dead are a real thing”. ‘Meet The Reaper’ is about the “stain of death” himself as the huge drums bring in the emotional charge of the sunset of life as the demons “take the last breath”. ‘Forgotten Ghost’ concludes with a heart-wrenching stripped back song of grief and regret. The clean vocals and the drums with light synths lead to the revelation that the ‘‘future is a cold place”. The message is to live for the moment, as life passes quickly, and future promises mean nothing.

DAYSEEKER in ‘Creature In The Black Night’ have delivered an album sophisticated in its lyrism and musically mature. Even in its hope that experimenting with raising “the dead with miracles” might be a thing, the album is about how the unstoppable road in life unfolds into the horror of time passing and leads inexorably to the grave. This album is hauntingly beautiful but it still rocks hard with synths, guitar riffs and brutal breakdowns. I cannot wait to hear these songs at Good Things in December.