Luna 13 – Dr. Luna (Producer) and Lilith Bathory (Visuals) – blasted onto the scene with their debut ‘Phantom Bass Queen’. Luna 13’s tracks have since received national support from the Dark Drum and Bass world and their last two releases debuted at number 1 in America, Greece and Germany on the Amazon and ITunes Drum and Bass charts.
Their latest release “The Hollywood Ripper” is a collection of pounding Dark Deathtronica mixed with heavy electro-groove. Starting out with the emaciating “Backward up the Wall (Intro)” and flinching into the searing “Waking for Blood” is something that Luna 13 can do so easily. Pounding through next is “Beverley Hills Bogey” then “Elisa Lam (Elevator Girl)” which brings to life a souring instrumental. One of my favorite tracks is “The Possessions of Emily Rose”, while “Monroe of the Dead” is another one of the albums pulsating highlights. “Drift in a Dream” continues an acrimonious and ritualistic reveal in song. “Black Widow Bitches”, the album’s first official single, is inspired by the B-movie, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, one of Luna 13’s favorite films.
This album is brought to you with blood, sweat and tears. Exacerbated by an augmented world of extremely dark electro, “The Hollywood Ripper” is brooding and wicked. It’s cohesive and taut. Luna 13 uses an Arturia Microbrute hooked up to Mixcraft 7 to create his brutal soundscapes. “I do not use stringed instruments at any time,” says Luna 13, “I am a core electronica musician.” But there is more to Luna 13 than just being someone with technical prowess.
“The Hollywood Ripper” is like taking a ride on the wild side of the chemical rainbow, only there isn’t the wonderland you’ve always wanted to experience on the other side. Instead of an encapsulated merry-go-round within the synthetic rainbow, it a dark and foreboding place where the world is not your friend. And it makes you question, seethe, and want to ultimately dismember the world one limb at a time. This has a barrage of dark emotions that we all suffer from. It doesn’t pretend not to be consumed by them, either, allowing the audience to sit and listen as they spill out of a mouth in which they were allowed to fester.
Loud, brutal and harsh, Luna 13 is the product of a dark stream of sound traveling through a brooding canvas of thought. Sometimes the voice, shrouded in a garb of heavily-voxed words, tries to make a profound statement, and sometimes they forgo the supposed nobility in that and go for the primal pounding of beats thrashing against the acceptability of thinking grand thoughts. Whatever Luna 13 is doing here, it’s almost always overcast and foreboding, assaulting the mind while shoving the taboo in your face. And that’s actually a refreshing facet of the band and the change it underwent with this release.
“The Hollywood Ripper” does not elicit anger or sorrow, it just reams out a gaping hole in your mind, to let the tenebrous things blow through. Altogether, it is a very solid effort, but prepare yourself to be caught unaware by its completely atypical style. No matter what, the most adhering thought that seems to circulate about this album is that it is one of the best the Dark Deathtronica genre has ever known.
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