The Cascades
Diamonds and Rust

German band The Cascades gives us a document of their career spanning from 1988 until today, and they do it on two discs. It is two discs in a rather attractive digipak with a decent booklet. The album shows the best from their albums, the first was released in 2001 and along with those album tracks the first disk contains two new songs. The second disk contains demos and unreleased material from the era prior to the first album and now they have reunited with old vocalist Markus Wild and I suppose we can expect a new album in the near future.

It is gothic rock music that they are offering and for being songs from different albums I think the first disk is very coherent. And it is a good gothic production with likeable sound and all, perhaps a bit typical of the genre though. The same goes for the vocals and when listening I didn’t even reflect over the fact that they were several different vocalists over the songs. When we look at the second disk it is more different, it sounds rougher and more like something from the demo stage in comparison with the first disk. The variation isn’t big over the tracks on any of the disks and we get a lot of tracks and very long playing time of course.

And it is a pretty decent album, the tracks are quite good and the fit together well, the new songs like Wenn Der Regen Kommt are very strong as well – perhaps they show good promise for a future release. But while it is a good album, it is a little bit towards the ordinary end of the scale. I don’t think it is the most memorable album I have heard, the second disk I can clearly do without but the first it pretty good even though it doesn’t make much of a mark in my view. I think it is mostly for the fans of the band and fans of this genre, if you have a more peripheral interest in this genre it may not really be your cup of tea.

Diamonds and Rust is a good document over this band and their work, and I would say that it is a good starting point if you want to know The Cascades. That’s the good thing. The less good thing is that it is an album that doesn’t quite make a mark and in the end I think the question whether or not to get this album is best answered by the question about how much you like gothic rock/metal. If you like it a lot I think this album could be a good choice and if not, it wouldn’t be.

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