Maladie – The Dance of Tragedies

Remember last year, when I did Maladie Week leading up to the release of the latest Symptoms EP?

I spent my family holiday in Denmark with a fuckload of canned Carlsberg, my headphones glued to my ears, listening to hour after hour of plague metal and somehow turning the whole thing into a field trip.

 

Well.

I’ve just been on holiday again.

 

Tuscany this time. One week under the blistering Italian sun, pushing forty degrees, with absolutely no privacy whatsoever. By the end of it, my brain was fried. Literally. Emotionally. Possibly structurally.

 

And when I finally found myself back on a plane to Hamburg, with the children securely strapped into their seats and physically incapable of going anywhere, I realised I was finally in exactly the right state of mind to listen to the new Maladie album.

 

I was already fucked in the head.

Might as well make productive use of it.

 

Because The Dance of Tragedies had been sitting untouched in my inbox for a disgracefully long time.

Since mid-April, to be precise.

I received it. I was delighted.

And then I didn’t dare press play.

 

Maladie albums are not things I put on casually while answering emails or unloading the dishwasher. They demand attention. Time. A certain willingness to let your brain be taken apart, rearranged and handed back with several unidentified pieces left over.

 

And I had none of that.

Until yesterday.

And judging by the grin still stuck on my face while I’m writing this, I caught exactly the right moment.

Let me walk you through it.

The Dance of Tragedies was released on 29 May and is Maladie’s eighth full-length album.

Eight tracks. Seventy-one minutes. An entirely unreasonable number of ideas.

 

And once again, I sat through the whole thing with my mind steadily being blown apart.

 

This album is insanely fun to listen to because you never know what is waiting around the next corner. Maladie continue to treat genre limitations and musical conventions with exactly the amount of respect they deserve—which is none whatsoever—and simply do what they do best: Fucking sick plague music.

 

Vortex of Monotony starts familiar enough. Slightly dissonant riffing. A little unease around the edges.

And then, not even twenty seconds in, Hauke—my favourite saxophone player on the planet—sweeps into the song, presumably with a wink and a sideways glance, and croons his way straight into my heart.

 

Hooked. And for once, Déhà wasn't even responsible.

He follows soon enough with that very specific brand of clean vocals he brings to Maladie while Wenz, plague creature extraordinaire, tears into another round of immaculate snarling. The whole vocal cabinet gets opened here: Déhà’s clean range, Wiebke’s softer backing vocals and Alex’s wet, gurgling growls, dragged straight from the swamp and deposited directly into the mix.

 

And then there is rapping.

Because why the fuck not.

 

For a while, the track keeps itself reasonably contained. Then come the blast-beat attacks, the colder, more furious riffing and vocals that strain further and further at the edges. But it ends with the saxophone again. Longing. Playful. Almost teasing.

And it leads us straight into Behind All Suns, which is—

Well.

What exactly is it?

 

Because for some reason, this song sounds like the soundtrack to a nineties teenage film.

Not even vaguely. Specifically.

I see Heath Ledger leaning against the bonnet of a car, arms crossed over a long-sleeved shirt, sunlight catching in his hair. Then he cracks that smile.

Oh boy.

Wrong turn.

This paragraph has become graphic all by itself. Sorry.

 

It is the guitars, I think. The open strumming. That light, shimmering melody. Something about it feels unmistakably nineties alternative rock. Warm. Familiar. Slightly cinematic.

 

Anyone else hearing this?

No?

Fine.

 

Naturally, the song refuses to remain there.

The snarls arrive. There is a deeply satisfying “ugh”. Yet somehow that nineties feeling stays lodged underneath it all, even when the middle section veers into piano, a full synth attack and—Oh, for fuck’s sake. A didgeridoo?

 

Warped whispers curl through the whole thing while the music becomes increasingly difficult to explain without sounding like I’ve suffered heatstroke.

 

Atmospheric guitars. Piano. A synth beat moving underneath. And somehow, against all reasonable expectation, it comes together—circling back towards the melody and framework it started with.

 

This song is weird.

Very weird.

I still rather like it.

And then Too Old to Die walks in with swagger.

Strutting guitars. Bass drum hits. Spoken words.

A magnificent "ugh" setting the tone before Hauke appears again and starts doing what Hauke does.

 

The drums stutter. The pacing shifts. The track keeps yanking itself sideways until we land in full hardcore territory: gang shouts colliding with vile rasping, clean vocals pressed against growls, everything moving at once.

 

It should give me whiplash.

Instead, it makes me obscenely happy.

Because this track is a perfect example of how Maladie manage to do everything at once without turning it into clutter.

 

The shimmering synths arrive. Wiebke’s voice slips into the mix. The song picks up speed.

Faster. Faster. Faster.

Until it is overtaking itself—one great vortex of voices, rhythm and noise.

 

And then Hauke stops the entire thing with a saxophone solo.

The guitar picks it up and carries it forward.

Now they are simply showing off.

And honestly? Fair enough.

 

This is what Maladie do better than almost anyone.

So many musicians. So many recognisable personalities. So many individual approaches—all moving inside the vision of one composer, but never sounding flattened into it.

 

It feels improvised. Organic. Alive.

Not like a collection of parts assembled remotely, but like a room full of people reacting to one another in real time and somehow producing something dangerously close to genius.

 

Best part, though? The last twenty seconds.

There is a flute.

A damn nose flute, to be precise.

 

Déhà tries to work out what the fuck he is hearing, and Hauke answers with the sassiest little cuckoo noise imaginable. One exhausted oh, goddammit later, the song ends.

 

I laughed out loud. On the fucking plane.

Heads turned. My daughter was embarrassed.

 

Hauke clearly thought that was funny.

So did I. So did I.

Thank god I am handed a breather in the form of The Unknowable.

It is almost entirely instrumental, framed only by a short spoken-word passage at the beginning and end.

It feels like a palate cleanser.

This is the cinematic one.

The one for sitting still and drifting.

 

The melody feels strangely familiar. Like a folk song you have somehow known all your life without ever hearing it before. The guitar wanders through it, light and unhurried, and when the saxophone comes in, it fits so naturally it feels inevitable. Everything stays bright. Open. Almost hopeful.

 

Which, naturally, means I spend the entire time waiting for the change.

It comes a little over four minutes in.

 

The pace drops. The saxophone turns solemn, almost placid, while something low and heavy moves underneath it. Cello, perhaps. Then the strings begin to rise, pushing the track towards something larger.

 

Piano picks up the melody without breaking the flow.

It is beautiful.

But still holding back.

Still building.

 

And then, finally—six minutes in—the whole thing opens.

Drums surge through the arrangement and everything comes together in one vast whirlwind of drama.

 

It is the kind of moment that pulls you bodily out of your seat. The music is suddenly too big to sit through.

Unfortunately, I was buckled into an aeroplane.

 

So I just sat there while the song painted entire landscapes across the inside of my skull.

It is theatrical and cinematic in the best possible way. Not drama for drama’s sake. It genuinely feels as though the music is widening the space around you—opening the mind and the chest along with it.

 

And I could not stop smiling.

One of those real smiles.

The involuntary kind that appears when no one is watching.

 

Towards the end, the melody from the beginning returns. The track folds back in on itself, placing you gently where you started while making sure you remember how far it carried you.

 

We end dramatically. Strings. Piano. Something that may well be trumpets. I don’t know. It all rises into one final swell before one last spoken passage closes the circle.

The Dance of Tragedies picks up the pace again and feels instantly more approachable, with a riff that lands somewhere near Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation.

 

It is also one of the shorter tracks. Six minutes. Practically restrained.

 

The saxophone bounces along on a funny little beat while the guitar works through a ridiculously catchy melody, and I sit there waiting for the vocals. It starts harmlessly enough. For about fifteen seconds, it's fun.

 

And then Déhà is just whispering over piano. His voice dropping into that lowest gravelly register where—

Right.

Good thing it does not last too long.

 

A bit of snarled rapping, gurgled screams and general vocal violence soon arrives to bring the hormones back under control. Jesus.

 

From there, the song swells into another gloriously dramatic section: near-death vocals, symphonic grandeur, a faint whiff of Dimmu Borgir.

 

And then he says sax.

 

I stopped the album.

Took off my headphones and stared at the seat in front of me until I felt capable of continuing.

 

This is simply unfair. You cannot do that to a girl trapped in row twenty-something with nowhere to flee.

 

Then comes the rest of the studio chatter. Sax and piano. Déhà asking whether he can fucking sing. Another fucking solo. A weary surrender.

Bring it on.

So they do.

 

And once again, everything comes together so beautifully that I pause the track a second time—this time because I am laughing and need a moment before letting the madness continue.

 

The whole thing tips into something adjacent to manic brass polka. That's not a thing. I am aware.

The brakes come off.

The guitar solos its melodramatic little heart out.

By the time the track is done, so am I.

Fucking exhausted.

Embrace Our Curse starts easily enough. Saxophone. Warm synths. A bit of riffing. Lulling you into a false sense of safety. For a minute.

 

Then it launches straight into electronic dance-pop nonsense.

I freaking love it.

 

Now, I can already hear someone asking whether this is even metal anymore.

Who fucking cares?

 

There is some kind of saxophone-trance-techno situation happening here and I genuinely have no idea what to call it. Mortiis colliding with Masterboy, evil rasping over blast beats, everybody apparently agreeing that restraint has had quite enough airtime.

 

Who even comes up with this?

That is the question.

Not what kind of music is this?

How in the hell did anyone think of it?

 

Halfway through, around the four-and-a-half-minute mark, the song slows down completely.

Stops, practically.

But it is still the same track.

I double-checked. Thrice.

 

There are still five and a half minutes left.

Oh good.

Did I mention I was already exhausted?

 

At that point, all I can think is: What now?

The second half begins mockingly slowly. There are faint Apocalyptica vibes. The whole thing struts. The guitars turn sultry. The vocals become acidic and rasping, and for a moment I think we have entered the darker part of the song—

Oh, never mind.

 

Hauke starts improvising another saxophone line over yet another house beat, and the whole thing veers into symphonic, electronic, atmospheric—

I have no fucking clue.

It is ridiculous.

It is fantastic.

Growls and screams happen simultaneously. The layers keep piling up.

This is completely bonkers.

In the best possible way.

It is the dance track for the truly unhinged.

I am dancing.

Internally.

On Inaccessible Paths comes in two parts. Together, they run for nearly twenty minutes.

So if I thought I was almost done—or that the album was almost done with me—I was very wrong.

 

Part I behaves itself surprisingly well.

There is room for guitar solos and melodic shredding. The vocals move between clean singing, rasps and growls, but nothing veers too far off course. Even the saxophone toes the line and sticks to the script.

 

Part II begins softly. Carefully.

Dreamy chords. Tender cymbals. Piano. Saxophone.

 

You can hear the soft mechanical clicks of the keys between the notes, and it makes the whole thing feel incredibly close. Intimate. After everything that came before, I am grateful for the quiet.

 

For a moment, I do not have to keep up.

I can just let the music carry me.

 

Then Déhà comes in.

And I can’t help closing my eyes.

We have had the clear voice. The whisper. The croon.

Here is his soft voice.

Close enough to feel less like singing and more like being spoken to.

 

Paired with Wiebke’s voice, it becomes warm and almost weightless. A comfort blanket after an hour of being repeatedly struck around the head with musical ideas.

 

This is the part that makes you believe everything might be all right in the end.

Longing guitars dissolve into gentle piano chords.

Everything is open. Tender. Safe.

Until it breaks.

 

Halfway through, the softness disappears as though it had never been there.

The guitars drop low and heavy, dragging themselves through the dirt while funeral-doom growls rise straight from the mire.

 

The contrast could not be more brutal.

But the darkness does not get the final word.

 

Eventually, the guitars begin to climb again. Sweeping solos rise over synth choirs, carrying us back into that vast cinematic space the album opened earlier.

 

And this time, we are allowed to stay there.

To drift out of the song.

Out of the album.

 

Brain melted. Slightly befuddled. Heart opened and somehow filled right to the brim with joy.

And, yes—hope.

 

Maybe that is entirely the wrong thing to take from an album called The Dance of Tragedies.

But that is where it leaves me.

Not fixed. Not untouched.

Just carried through the wreckage and set down somewhere a little lighter.

So go and listen.

Take your shoes off.

Let loose.

Have fun.

Take a breather if you need to.

Hell, I sure had to.

I dare you.

Dance with your tragedy.