Sun After Dark – Tatkraft Review

Sun After Dark is an enigmatic new project that comes to us from one Benjamin König. He was a co-founding member and the principal composer of frigid black metal legends Lunar Aurora, which will surely excite my Dear and Hollow friend, but has very few listed musical credits since Lunar Aurora’s dissolution in 2012. In the interim, König has been a prolific artist, providing album artwork for bands like Botanist, Horna, Equilibrium, and so on. In fact, König’s artwork for Polar Veil by Hexvessel was even awarded 10th place on GardensTale’s Illustrious Artwork Extravaganza. Today, Herr König is cursed blessed with his first trve AMG review, for his first musical work in roughly a decade: Tatkraft.

At the risk of oversimplifying the myriad of musical ideas within Tatkraft, I would affectionately classify Tatkraft as blackened gothic metal. The opening volley efficiently demonstrates what Sun After Dark is about. “Dawn and Dirges” opens with a bevy of keyboard effects augmenting the guitars as they grow in intensity, launching into an immensely satisfying riff as the vocals appear. Thomas Helm (Empyrium, and the other permanent member of Sun After Dark) has a rich, operatic croon that contrasts nicely with Matthias Jell’s (Azathoth from Dark Fortress) nastier shrieks. “Waidmanns Hoffnung” shows visions of Tatkraft’s slower side, interspersing long passages of gloomy guitars and electronic drums with brief forays into blackened aggression. Like a medium-rare steak and red wine, the softer and heavier sides of Tatkraft pair deliciously. Tatkraft will often remind one of other bands—the vibes are a little bit The Vision Bleak, there’s some ambient traces of Lunar Aurora to be found, naturally, and Helm’s singular vocals cannot help but evoke Empyrium—but König balances the album’s sonic elements with finesse and creativity such that Tatkraft sounds wholly original throughout.

While the facets of Tatkraft complement each other well, the album’s greatest strength lies in König’s inspired songwriting; the mashed potatoes with our steak and wine, if you will. Gnashing guitars (“Dawn and Dirges”), emotionally rich melodies (“Leaving Metropolis”), or folksy energy (“Schlittenfahrt”) hooks the listener straight away, until repeat listens reveal the layers of depth König has hidden behind the musicianship. In this regard, Tatkraft’s keyboards rival Atlas in weight carried. Flanging and warbling keyboards form a swirling tempest around the guitars in “Dawn and Dirges,” “Burning Blue,” “Antarctic Morning,” or they eke out a siren’s droning hum in “Waidmanns Hoffnung,” or any of the other infinite tiny tricks heard across the whole of Tatkraft. It’s all subtle and unobtrusive, and it’s a great way to utilize the negative space that makes for some wonderful moments like the blaring emergency honks atop chugging guitars towards the end of “Antarctic Morning.” The mix, by Victor Bullok of Triptykon, enables this depth to shine through while the moment-to-moment experience remains immediate and engaging.

What ultimately holds Tatkraft back from the higher score it deserves is a matter of focus. König is undoubtedly a talented songwriter with solid songcraft ideas, but these ideas infrequently culminate into a single, structurally satisfying whole. What highlights this are the sheer strength of “Burning Blue” and “Antarctic Morning,” where each sequence seamlessly flows into the next until reaching the climax. These songs do wield some of the strongest material in Tatkraft, so perhaps they’re unfairly advantaged. Still, there is a clear-cut and engaging progression to each song’s flow, which in turn highlights the opposite in “Ohne Grab” and “Schlittenfahrt.” Each song is similarly laden with strong ideas—I love the raking guitars that open “Ohne Grab” and the polka-inspired riffs of “Schlittenfahrt” (featuring Mosaic’s Martin Falkenstein) are a blast in a vacuum—but the flow is absent. The individual sequences in “Ohne Grab” are starkly different from one another, and the transitions between them lack any grace, while “Schlittenfahrt,” despite a strong core riff, feels incomplete, as if it were missing its second or third act. But ultimately, these rough edges do feel earned, not so much subtracting from the big picture but adding texture. No song on Tatkraft lacks in inspiration or sincerity, and boredom will be a foreign concept during your listening experience.

In the end, Tatkraft has made me an eager fan of Sun After Dark. There are a few things here and there to be ironed out, but I feel genuinely excited for Sun After Dark’s future. I shall be recommending Tatkraft to like-minded individuals, but when the day arrives, we get an album full of “Burning Blue”‘s and “Antarctic Morning”‘s, no god nor king could stop my blackened gothic crusade from spreading Sun After Dark to all.

Rating: Good!!
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hammerheart Records
Websites: facebook | bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025