Leave a comment on this post and make sure your email is included in the box asking for it to win a vinyl copy of Black Space Riders‘ new album, D:REI. The giveaway will go until Friday, at which point I’ll pick a winner at random and notify that person via email. The record is 180g black double-vinyl and also includes the CD version of D:REI, which tops a full 78 minutes.

I like, whenever I’m able, to do giveaways. Free stuff is an automatic win, and in the case of Black Space Riders, all the better that someone gets acquainted with their far-ranging space metal. Their material has proven to be widely varied over the course of their two prior albums, and this one, which was released by the band in January, certainly follows suit, running a spectrum from driving riffs to ambient drones and always managing to keep a flow from song to song and a consistent level of intelligence throughout the varied atmospheres of their work.

The title D:REI, aside from hinting at the German word for “three,” stands for “Defiance,” “Ruins,” “Escape” and “Beyond” (presumably that’s a translation thing), the subheading under which each side of the 2LP arrives. Black Space Riders‘ ethic has to-date leaned toward the conceptual and narrative, and their third outing only pushes further, as you can hear on the Bandcamp player below.

Take a listen and leave a comment to enter into the giveaway. Good luck to all, and thanks for your continued support of this site. Black Space Riders‘ D:REI is available now as an independent release from the band with distribution from Cargo Records in their native Germany. More info at the links under the player.

Black Space Riders, D:REI (2014)

Black Space Riders on Thee Facebooks

Black Space Riders on Bandcamp

True, they may have started out talking about stoned bikers in space on their 2010 self-titled debut (review here), but by the time they got around to 2012’s Light is the New Black (review here), things became much more complicated. The band’s third album, D:REI, is a double-vinyl and each side is subtitled representing a letter in the acronym title, so I guess it’s probably safe to assume that trend toward complication continues unabated. Fair enough.

“Drei” is also “three” in German, so the name of D:REI works on that level as well. The album is due out Jan. 24, and the band has premiered the track “The God-Survivor” in a new lyric video that accompanied the following announcement on its trip along the PR wire:

New album by BLACK SPACE RIDERS soon

“D:REI”, the new album by Germany´s BLACK SPACE RIDERS is going to be released on 24 january 2014. The album contains almost 80 minutes of new music. The band just shared the coverartwork and the tracklist with their fans.

We have decided to keep our independency and all our rights, meaning the album will be released under our own label BLACK SPACE RECORDS. It will be distributed by Cargo Records Germany and different national distributors and mailorders in other countries as well as by ourselves.

We will play three exclusive record-release-shows in Germany:
24.01.2014 Münster / Gleis 22
30.01.2014 Hamburg / Hafenklang
31.01.2014 Köln / MTC Cologne

More tourdates in spring will follow soon.

Tracklist:

D : Defiance
1. Stare At The Water
2. Bang Boom War (Outside My Head)
3. Rising From The Ashes Of Our World

R – Ruins
1. Give Gravitation To The People
2. Way To Me
3. Temper Is Rising
4. The God-Survivor

E – Escape
1. I See
2. Leave
3. Space Angel (Memitim)

I – Beyond
1. Major Tom Waits
2. Letter To A Young One
3. The Everlasting Circle Of Infinity

https://www.facebook.com/BlackSpaceRiders

Black Space Riders, “The God-Survivor” lyric video

True, I don’t know if jogging their collective memory was Black Space Riders‘ motivation behind making this video comprised of footage — mostly wall-eyed, some not — of their 2012 “Louder than Light” tour supporting their sophomore album, Light is the New Black (review here), but if it was, “Lights Out” is the perfect song for it. Not only because the tour clips feature a decent amount of boozing, but also because it’s insanely catchy. If you’re trying to get something stuck in your head, “Lights Out” is a good place to start.

Looks like the tour was a blast as well. Certainly enough so to give them material for the video. Heads up, some of the shots where the camera is attached to the guitar kind of made me dizzy, but still good fun. They’re even in color for a little bit at the end, which seems to be something of a rarity for Black Space Riders. Here’s the clip:

The gamut run by German rockers Black Space Riders is vast indeed. On their second album, the self-released Light is the New Black, the double-guitar foursome spend a solid hour rooting their way into, around and through any number of heavy subgenres, from gothic rock to space noise, stoner metal, punk and even a bit of thrash. Almost on a song-by-song basis, Light is the New Black endeavors to expand its sonic palette, and as it rarely steps back to repeat a move once it’s been made, the real miracle of the 13 tracks is that they don’t fall apart at the seams. Not only that, but the record is as dense conceptually as it is diverse musically. Black Space Riders have broken up the tracklisting into four rhyming sides – Light, Bright, White and Night – and given cuts cumbersome, highly parenthetical titles that bleed into each other like “Digging Down (The Hole Part One… From Deep Below)” and the much later “The New Black (The Hole Part Two… From Above).” That’s not to mention “Someone Has Turned the Knob to Switch on the Light, but Instead Something Strange Happened to the Warp Engine,” which at 1:51 isn’t nearly as long as its title. Sci-fi themes persist here, which isn’t strange considering Black Space Riders’ 2010 self-titled debut (review here) worked along similar lines, albeit in a more lighthearted overall approach. There isn’t a narrative plot that I can discern, but with so much ground covered musically, it’s hard not to feel like the band is embarking on a journey anyway, and as Light is the New Black is given the subtitle “Songs about Luminaries, Black Holes, Hope and Loss in Outer Space,” it’s clear they’re working with some pre-thought schema in mind.

That’s fortunate, because JE (vocals/guitar), SLI (guitar), SAQ (bass/backing vocals) and CRIP (drums) task themselves to covering an unreal amount of the space they’re describing. JE’s vocals alone are varied enough to catch one off guard, clean and imbued with a Euro-doom drama on opener “Creature of No Light (Exodus Part One),” they’re soon growlingly reminiscent of the last Amebix on “Sun vs. Moon (Total Eclipse)” and the more upbeat, straightforward “Digging Down (The Hole Part One… From Deep Below),” which offers the first of Light is the New Black’s several landmark choruses. With so much material and so many stylistic shifts, those choruses do a lot to ground the album as a whole, but the flow between songs isn’t entirely reliant on them either. The transition between “Digging Down (The Hole Part One… From Deep Below)” and “I am Fire” is natural, as the latter builds on the punk leanings and straight-ahead structure of the former with a like-minded if a bit less effective hook to wrap the Light side and make way for the longest and perhaps most atmospheric cut, “We Used to Live in Light (Exodus Part Two).” CRIP’s rimshot drumming seems to announce the change in approach before even JE’s softer, semi-spoken vocals start in over a deftly progressive groove. Nearly the whole band provides backing for JE at one point or another in the song, CHIP credited in the CD liner with “haaaaaaarmonics” and SAQ and frequent contributor SEB with a kind of spoken chant during the chorus. An instrumental build pays off with the satisfying delivery of the title line, and it becomes clear that although the production doesn’t necessarily match the level of dynamics at work, Black Space Riders have grown remarkably as songwriters since the charming but not nearly as challenging biker psych of the self-titled.

A direct transition between tracks brings the “Lost (Return into the Void),” which is softer and not quite psychedelic. The first several minutes are made by SAQ’s bass tone, but the guitar line is more forward in the mix and hypnotically repetitive, so it’s easy to miss with JE’s vocals, spoken and again repeating the line “Everything is lost” amid a quickly mounting swirl that the song has been deceptively moving toward. Amp noise and effects fade over the last minute and “Night Over Qo’Nos (Masrammey)” lifts the pace similar to how “Digging Down (The Hole Part One… From Deep Below)” did, but in an entirely darker and more heavy rocking manner. The song, which takes its name from the Klingon homeword in the Star Trek mythos, is the next of the landmark choruses, and well positioned as the centerpiece. A slight Eastern influence comes up toward the final third, but opens to a grand, openly-riffed break, topped with dramatic shouting that leads back one more time into the chorus before White side takes hold from Bright side and offers the catchiest of Light is the New Black’s hooks in “Startrooper.” The vocal arrangement is the difference here, with shouts “startrooper!” behind JE like some kind of alternate-dimension crossover punk, and “Walls of Plasma” continues the momentum with a classically metal riff and another strong chorus. The progression of the album would make this seem like the focal point, but the experience might be completely different when it comes to flipping vinyl sides rather than listening all in a row on a CD. In any case, “Walls of Plasma” is also the first cut on Light is the New Black to remind of Entombed’s latter era, and that comes up again on the subsequent “Louder than Light.”

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It’s nice to know someone out there took it to heart when Ian Gillan invited them to go space trucking. German riffonauts Black Space Riders mention to space in each of the 13 titles on their self-titled Sound Guerilla debut full-length, from opener “Spacebomb” right through to the end with “Space Trilogy Part III: Space Collision,” it’s basically the theme they’re working with, and from the sound of things, they’re having a good time with it. Cuts like “Lonely Space Trucking Man” and my personal favorite, “Stoned Bikers in Space,” show that it’s not about prog posturing for Black Space Riders or about who can noodle their way into the outer reaches of the cosmos, but about being a little silly, enjoying yourself and riffing out. If you’ve got to have a formula, this one’s certainly proven effective.

Black Space Riders starts off with a collection of straightforward and catchy biker space rock numbers, beginning with the aforementioned “Spacebomb” and moving after the interlude “Black Part I: Blackspacing” to the memorable call and response of “Black Part II: Space is Black” before epitomizing the genre in which it dwells with “Stoned Bikers in Space.” Granted, it’s hard to take something called “Stoned Bikers in Space” completely seriously, but in addition to having fun with riffs and grooves, Black Space Riders work in a number of stoner elements from acts as wide ranging as Orange Goblin (on that track) to Brant Bjork (“Black Book of Cosmic Salvation Part II: I, Black Space Messiah”), the guitars of JE and SLI, the former who also handles vocals, more than adaptable to either furious riffing, laid back grooves or even – who would have guessed? – the moody deep space affectations of “Hide from the Spacelight.”

On that song, the lyrics issue a request to be covered in hair and blood in succession, and that provides a quizzical moment on Black Space Riders – a kind of “huh?” double-take – but the record’s second ambient interlude, “Black Book of Cosmic Salvation Part I: A Short Mess(i)age from the Black Space Rider,” leads into the second part of that series and Black Space Riders take an appropriate moment to let both the song and the album breathe. Tonally, “Black Book of Cosmic Salvation Part II: I, Black Space Messiah” is probably the most satisfying work on Black Space Riders – I still wouldn’t call it an album highlight over “Stoned Bikers in Space,” if only for the novelty of that song – but it’s right in line with a whole league of heavy neo-psych, from Colour Haze to 35007. Contrasting it with the brash howling punk of “Voodoo Spaceship,” on which bassist SAQ provides backing vocals to JE, and drummer CRIP has no trouble finding and exploiting the downbeat, is a smart move, as it snaps the listener out of the induced psychedelic trance of the song before, setting up the return to the catchy heavy rock-ness that comes on with “Ride on, Black Space Rider” and “Lonely Space Trucking Man.”

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