“A New Reign” is the third album from darkwave duo White Birches and it is an album that demonstrates the maturity of a band with a style statement to make.
The synthesisers are much to the fore on this album with the machine perfect percussion keeping all that you hear securely on track. Yet, and this is most likely the result of this band’s almost gothic approach to the making of songs for today, there is a definite mystical ambience present. It is the kind of ambience that the better metal bands aspire to and White Birches, despite being devoid of overdriven guitars and power chords, attain this without ever using any notable religious references. Jenny Gabrielsson Mare’s voice is key here as, with a delicacy that is more like that of a folk singer, she turns these words of torment and struggle around and imbues them with a poetic eloquence that effectively balances the cold precision of the music.
“A New Reign” remains music of the shadows but, fear not, for White Birches make even their songs of the darkness seem like a musical path to a new dawn.