Time traveling to the ’80s
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from All Hail The Silence, the Transatlantic synthpop duo comprised of American trance pioneer BT and one-time British boy band singer Christian Burns. While the duo released their Christmas single “Christmas Upon Winter Hill” just last month, Daggers (officially stylized ‡) is their first output of any new material since 2016’s AHTS-1 EP.
With a total runtime that is just under one hour and 27 minutes, it’s no surprise that this album could use a lot of trimming. Great concepts and ideas exist throughout this album but are bogged down by how long most of these songs tend to be.
For all intents and purposes, though, both Burns and BT play to their strengths really well on this album. There are twinges and pieces of inspiration that come from synthpop bands of previous generations—Heaven 17 (and their parent group, The Human League, to a lesser extent), Tears for Fears and Depeche Mode—without coming off as too derivative, a feat in and of itself in a genre that has a lot of knockoffs in its current state.
Songs like “The Alarm” just scream “pop-friendly” and “chart worthy” with their upbeat synthesizer production, playful rhythms and romantic lyrical themes that harken back to Burns’ previous contemporaries in the BBMak days. Even if lingering feelings of hatred exist towards these bands and their oversaturation of the pop scene back in the ’90s, there’s nothing in terms in songwriting or vocal delivery that can be hated on; it’s a throwback to seemingly much simpler (and depending on who you ask, better) times.
But as good of a concept as this song is, with its execution being well done in both the musical and lyrical areas, it overstays its welcome. The average runtime of each song is 6:12, which is long even for synthpop standards; New Order’s genre magnum opus, Power, Corruption & Lies, only had one song go over this average run time. And while the retro-futuristic vibes that come from this album are overall positive and definitely much-needed in a wider electronic genre that takes itself too seriously, some of the effects featured on this LP are so stereotypically ’80s that it hurts too bad to not reference and call out. Yes, this refers to those quick fade-outs that happen after every song, with “Diamonds in the Snow” being absolutely guilty of this overused trope. Or the recurring feature where the outro is dragged out to take up 30 seconds to a minute’s worth of a song where it could have easily been a fraction of that—looking at you, “Looking Glass.”
Factoring all of this into consideration at the end of the day, it’s obvious that none of what was mentioned above will be huge detriments to this album’s artistic qualities as a whole. Daggers is a fun, jovial and youthful tribute to one of the stereotypically cheesy genres that does not get enough credit where it’s due.
If you want an album that you can sit down and listen to and feel like there is something that is game-changing and something that will revolutionize the way music is produced and made, then look elsewhere. But if you just want to relive an oft-maligned movement without a care in the world, then put on that Members Only jacket, get that perm hairdo you never knew you wanted and dance the night away.
Leave a Comment