TANKS AND TEARS – TIMEWAVE

By RingMaster Review on April 23, 2024 • ( 0 )

Seven years after unveiling their debut, Italian dark wave outfit TANKS AND TEARS have just released their sophomore album Timewave. It is a time between that has seen a pandemic and subsequently a world seemingly hell-bent on destruction but equally a passage of years and a journey of creation that has seen the Prato-based band renew their sound and explore the darkest places.

Those years between albums has also seen TANKS AND TEARS embrace the addition of Lorenzo Cantini to its line-up, the keyboardist joining Matteo Cecchi (bass, synth, and vocals), Claudio Pinellini (guitar and synth), and Francesco Ciulli (drums) who across pandemic restrictions continued to work remotely on their new offering. You can only feel that the global situation impacted and added to the evolution in the band’s music and the dark and intense heart of their new album yet a record that within its dark seduction and brooding atmospheres is a haunting moment of creative virulence.

TANKS AND TEARS weave a sound that openly embraces the inspiration of classic post punk and dark wave with synth pop inclinations just as potent. As we said within Timewave, it explores and exposes a darker and emotionally heavier realm of tension and atmospheric intimation than within its predecessor and around just as deep introspective lyrical contemplations. At times it calls on ears like something akin to a fusion of CABARET VOLTAIRE, DEPECHE MODE and PINK TURN BLUE bound in the atmospheric prowess of IN THE NURSERY but throughout proves darkly and wholly individual.

Timewave envelops ears and the senses with its instrumental Intro, a piece laying the seeds for the tenebrific exploration ahead which the album’s title track develops into a dark wave nurtured synth pop virulent proposal. Touching on the “cyclical nature of events that characterize life”, a theme similarly imprinting the whole of the album, the song is sonically and emotionally an infectious collusion of dark and light and an absorbing lure into the caliginous realms of the release.

The following Nightmare similarly blends shadows and warmth in its lucent body where electronic pulsation courts darker depths as vocals and melodic crystals glisten. Even so, there is a sense of loneliness in its breath and certainly its words that again are magnetically and solemnly shared by Cecchi while next up Darkside rises in a veil of drama to craft another insistently catchy yet atmospherically sober proposal. From its bassline to resonating rhythmic jabs there is an insistent nagging, that a potency of most tracks, that aligns with the emotively cured senses swarming keys of Cantini, they alone a rich court on the imagination.

There is also at times an essence of bands like synth pop era MINISTRY and VISAGE that teases across songs like next up Crystal Ball which equally has an OMD-esque breeze across its angst bred musing. As also within the following Haze of Lies, there is also an inherent catchiness that not so much battles with a song’s darkness but tempers its descent into deeper depths to instil a sense of positivity within the listener. Nevertheless, the second of the two songs ventures the umbra of life in thought and breath to haunt and fascinate.

Across the celestial exploration of Galaxies, a track that seduces as it rises from dark depths but again a captivation bound in a stygian constraint, and through the rayless lusting of Vampire Bite, the pull of Timewave proved inescapable. The second of the pair is another track bold in its contagion but tense in its thought and anxious in its breath to make for one gripping and wonderfully menacing incitement.

S.O.F.T. brings the album to a mesmeric close and a physically rousing one with its 80’s influence and emotionally anthemic and atmospherically thick trespass. It is an intoxicating affair with again that undercurrent of addictive rhythmic nagging but another to challenge and arouse the imagination and emotions.

Listening to Timewave is a moment in time that takes you away to reflect and explore within but also a moment to physically get keenly involved. TANKS AND TEARS have returned with their most gripping and impressive outing yet, a release no dark music hearts should let pass by.

Timewave is out now via Swiss Dark Nights Records; available digitally and on CD @ https://tanksandtears.bandcamp.com/album/timewave and here.