(100) Days of Soundtrack: #28 – The Black Queen – Fever Daydream

The Black Queen was a recommendation I took excitedly, as I knew nothing about the band, and also with trepidation, as the band seemed to be the epitome of things I’m not into. It was almost guaranteed to be some sort of metal. Doom metal. Black metal. Stoner metal. The sort of thing I wouldn’t particularly embrace. I’ve tried, and sometimes the atmosphere gets me, but more often the blast beats, the growls, the all-or-nothing rhythms, where the track either plods as through mud or barrels through like machine-gun fire… it leaves me cold. And yet, it’s something I should spend more time exploring, so it was an exciting recommendation.

From the start of “Ice to Never,” which should be the name of the next Immortal album or something, Fever Daydream turns this assumption on its head. It’s barely rooted in that metal world, which was a pleasant surprise and relief. My first thought was that this is like Chvrches with male vocals. My second was that there was probably already a name for that in the 80s. It is without a doubt rooted in the 80s New Wave scene, unquestionably spawned from Goth sensibilities. The problem, though, is that the album seems to stop at those qualities. The overt sexuality of the pulsing bass and breathy vocals of “Distanced,” or the lyrics of “Silent Scream,” put forth the animalistic hungers of the genre. The end of “Maybe We Should” and the beginning of “Strange Quarks” glitch out like so much modern electronic. Synths resonate and reverberate. It’s a good listen, but not a memorable one. It may not sound like what I expected, but it sounds like what one might expect.

The introduction, “Ice to Never,” is without a doubt the highlight here, but the outro, “Apocalypse Morning,” in its cold smoky sounds and tones at once exultant and gritty like a buzzsaw, is almost like a tone poem, its lyrics all but masked under the layers of steam valve hisses and piston pumps. It’s lovely in its own right, but it’s not the complete song “Ice…” is. “Ice…” is song enough to promise good things from the rest of the album. It just isn’t enough to make good on that promise. If this is the sort of style you’re into, though, you won’t be disappointed: it’s solid music of sort, for sure. It just failed to make a huge impression.



Alex Lupica (@Alex_Soundtrack) has been in love with music since he was a toddler, despite its infidelities. (Really, music? Nu-metal? How could you!). Alex is Editor-in-Chief at The Daily Soundtrack.

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