444 is the debut album by Polish/American band Death By Love who are based in Pittsburgh and Lodz and have collaborated through file sharing and of course in person, to create a very diverse sound. Death By Love are Inga Habiba and Peter Guellard with Wojciech Lubertowicz, Tomasz Mechu Wojciechowski and George Glashier and Produced by Peter Guellard, Recorded at Psychotribe Pittsburgh and Toya, Lodz, Mastered by Garrett Haines at Treelady Studio Pittsburgh.
The album opens with the dark distended goth rock of Sellenno, Inga Habiba's vocals taking us to the Paradise Gardens and what happens there to break her conscience, over fraught guitars, dark beats and a fear we are living in a world with no love left anymore.
Cosmic Power is far more atmospheric with whisper in your ear seductive vocals, ambient textural elements drawing you deep into the need to harness Cosmic Power to heal the world, like they have brought Transglobal Underground and The Orb together to help everything progress towards finding the real truth.
In Unity is dancefloor EBM techno with Arabic twists, telling us about white slaves who just want to follow their hopes and dreams of a better life, no matter how they may be told that it is not for them, they will never reach the promised land, too many walls need to come down first.
I Don't has claustrophobic feelings, in a dense mix of buzzed synths and guitars that go Arabic within the sonic maelstrom, to help define what has been making Inga feel so resistant.
Strong Inside hopes you can find the inner strength to survive everything the modern world throws at you, while wanting to chart your own path through the labyrinth, building your own walls to keep out the unwanted who seek to keep you down, why shouldn't you be influenced by Ofra Haza and Curve on the same song, they seek balance peace and harmony, in that insistent dance beat this is wrapped up in.
God is dark atmospherics, with percussion moving around the speakers and mix, drawing you deep into the chasm or realisation that God will not save you, from all the horrors of the modern world, he or she can't heal you, that can only be done from within, while you circle the abyss.
Lost & Found has nothing to do with Jetboy, the close production helping to evoke the feelings that you can feel both emotions at once, despite what happened to shatter your trust, they can rebuild everything and carry on, allowing some strings to influence matters, the pain is part of what makes you grow spiritually, so you can leave a long message, explaining just how hurt you’ve been piece by piece.
Temros has long slow deep strings for Inga's vocals to hit somewhere between Natacha Atlas and Cristina Scabbia, the almost finger snapped backing with middle eastern percussive swirls is very evocative of the hidden treasure she seeks hidden in the sands.
Forest is a journey through the industrial sounds, into a mind that needs to try to find clarity where only opacity can be found in the impenetrable darkness, trying to find light within the darkness, tense atmospheres within the walls of synths, shocked to find any harmony.
Ziro is a middle eastern tabla and atmospheric song of longing and Arabic evocations, similar to the ones I sometimes hear while eating lunch in my favourite Lebanese restaurant, this has a great innate beauty to it.
The album closes with Selleno (Reprise) that has a slow ambient spoken word intro, the bed of strings mirroring what could be a female equivalent of the muezzin's call, the rains come, thunder and a slow English eulogy for the need to actually feel something slowly emerges, allowing them the proper remembrance of the paradise gardens while this slowly builds.
Find out more at https://deathbylovepoland.bandcamp.com/album/444 https://www.deathbyloveband.com/ https://www.facebook.com/deathbylove444/
