The long-awaited new album from beloved German synthpop band Beborn Beton is out today. Darkness Falls Again, the trio’s ninth studio album, is eight tracks of beautiful and potent synthpop.
On Darkness Falls Again, Beborn Beton combine romantic notions with commentary about the state of the world. A song like “Electricity” may be about spending a long night with a loved one, only to be immediately followed by the harder-edged “Burning Gasoline,” one of the album’s highlights, which laments that “our home is dying.”
The album’s themes emerged on first single, “Dancer in the Dark,” a seemingly celebratory song about dancing that may be more dire than first anticipated—”this is the end yet you carry on,” the lyrics proclaim. It’s among my favorite songs of the year.
Following “Dancer in the Dark,” Beborn Beton released two other singles that showcase the album’s diversity of sounds. “I Watch My Life on TV” features a slinkier sound and a memorable chorus: “We used to be magic.” Meanwhile, their most recent release, “Last Chance,” kicks off with a blast of guitar sounds.
Beborn Beton marks 34 years running
Darkness Falls Again is the follow-up to Beborn Beton’s 2015 album, A Worthy Compensation, one of the year’s standout releases and the best-reviewed album of their career. A Worthy Compensation contains a number of extraordinary songs, including the popular track “24/7 Mystery” as well as the singles “Daisy Cutter” and “She Cried.”
Beborn Beton was founded in 1989 by Stefan Netschio and musicians Stefan Tillmann and Michael Wagner. They first caught my attention in the late-90s with their best-known song, “Another World,” which was played often at the clubs I went to around that time.
“Another World” was part of a wave of late-90s synthpop hits that included Iris’s “Annie Would I Lie to You” and Wolfsheim’s “Once in a Lifetime.” The trio of songs marked a rebirth of sorts for dark synthpop. Wolfsheim of course imploded in 2005, and Iris split in 2021, which makes Beborn Beton one of the last bands standing from that era.
