Electric Dragon - Communion

Electric Dragon has been a regular on this site for each of his releases such as Covenant and Paranormalizer. Each release has seen this synthwave producer grow with his talents and grown even further he has with his latest album Communion. While I have always saw his music and overall image bound in a fantasy land where the hero always wins, Communion takes a much darker turn where evil seems to be on the winning side with the glorious knights in shining armor running away as fast as they can saying, "Fuck this kingdom." At least that's how the cover art makes me feel with that demon woman raising what is likely the next antichrist. 

Anyway, Communion is full of what you'd expect from an Electric Dragon record by now: wonderfully well paced synthwave music. 'Burial Ground' begins off this unholy sermon with keys from an organ and an honestly God forbidden intro score that could be well placed in a horror film. A good minute of that and then we're thrust into the midst of darker synthwave energy that keeps up the horror mysticism with backing keys. Crows caw in the next song 'Carrion' and another wonderful build-up slowly pushes us into a well paced spasm of synths. This is dark music you can dance to. The same can be said for most of the songs on this dark-synth masterpiece- there's this rather morbid cinematic build-up for the songs until I get caught up in another catchy synthwave beat. You might catch your local Satanist dancing to this in the dark. 

The two tracks that easily break the mold, however, are 'Crystal Cavern' and 'Communion'. 'Crystal Cavern' sweeps up the atmosphere with wind from a long stretched out and ancient valley as well as a trickle of electronic nodes. As the later half of the album creeps on it almost sounds like a lullaby to put a serial killer to sleep; the track basically sounds like a song that would play during the ending credits of a horror film. This song directly follows into 'Communion' which is by far the darkest song on the album. 

The moody atmosphere paired with guest vocalist Kriistal Ann on the album makes for one of the most harrowing experiences on the album. While Kriistal Ann does have a decent set of chords while she's singing, 'Communion' shows off her natural knack for voice acting. Sounding off like she's portraying the demon woman on the front cover of the album, her voice is as menacing as the ominous beats on the song. 

Electric Dragon is an act whose only limitations can be placed by your own imagination. Whether or not this is a soundtrack for the end of the world, an unscripted horror film, or the firstly mentioned medieval knights running for their lives from evil is uncertain to me, but the possibilities are endless. Keep that all in mind as well as the wonderful dark synthwave sounds that keeps the album full of fun and I came away highly impressed. This is undoubtedly Electric Dragon's best work to date and I can't wait to hear what he does next. 


Jan 21 2018