Gothic music is like a horror movie; both can very easily turn out laughable if not done just right. The Dead Of Night’s Inert is certainly not campy. But it also isn’t the moody, eccentric record that the band would have hoped it to be. The album neither has enough musical oomph or the vocal gallantry to give it the kind of gravity the band aspires for.
One of the release’s major handicaps is its over-usage of the synthesizers. The string arrangements programmed on a synthesizer never has the depth of the real deal, or so a track like “Arcane Preparation” would prove, completely relying on such an arrangement and ending up flagrantly unauthentic. In the same vein, the programmed pianos on “Shallow Imagery” sounds weak and tepid, and the change in its tempo or the bland atmospherics don’t do much either, if anything at all.
Inert, however, never gets drab or tedious. Even a lengthy song like the eight minute “Ghost Of Perennial Mourning” doesn’t seem to drag despite its dire need for some character. The quagmire that The Dead Of Night finds themselves in, is that they are not set to create just plain old atmospheric music. The surreal artsy music, the stuff of Brian Eno, is not what this Lisbon, PT duo is trying to accomplish. This band has the salacity for the grand and lavish. But like the music, even Morgana’s operatic vocals lack the depth to stir any emotion.
The Dead Of Night might not be quite the master of medieval eeriness, but they are more than a decent electronic act. Inert has its share of surreal artsy music that would resonate with Brian Eno’s followers. Although these aren’t the majestic types of the majority of the album, they are undeniably the album’s best cuts. The muffled music on “His Wicked Voice Returns” and “Journey Mine” are minimal and soul stirring. “The Black” has the air of dark avant-garde techno in its premature days.
Like a horror movie that doesn’t even have swanky effects to compensate for the lack of a good script, Inert is short of the musical intensity to counter its anemic songwriting. But for an unremarkable album, its little nuggets of greatness are no laughing matter.