NAKED LUNCH - Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death)

It's been a full thirty-five years since the debut of Austria's Naked Lunch, the band led by Oliver Welter that first caught the attention of a few industry insiders with "Spark", a single included on the less-than-memorable 1997 album "Superstardom".

Two far sharper albums ("Love Junkies" from 1999 and "Songs For Exhausted" from 2004) were warmly received by fans and critics alike, thanks to a sound built on a rich and intriguing range of influences (Notwist, Radiohead, Keane).

Drawn to cinema and active as both an actor and a composer of film scores (the band's most recent work, dating back to 2015, is the soundtrack for the film "Jack"), Oliver Welter had to overcome serious health problems before getting the band back on track.

The long-awaited return, "Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death)", isn't your classic comeback album: it's not a matter of style or reference points (Radiohead is always present, but you could mention Pulp and Peter Gabriel without doing the record a disservice). This time around, what Welter stages is a set of bittersweet, pathos-laden songs yearning for a deeper emotional and artistic redemption.

It surely can't have been easy to nurture such an intense musical attitude in the shadows. Naked Lunch are the classic example of a band let down by circumstance: Klagenfurt isn't London, and in a different setting the Austrians' distilled indie-rock would no doubt have earned far more attention. "Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death)" is neither a masterpiece nor a revolution within the tradition of a certain brand of auteur pop-rock, but the quality of the songwriting and the sophistication of the arrangements give plenty of reasons for interest.

Perhaps it's down to Welter's passion for cinema and film scores, but one thing is certain: the new Naked Lunch record glides by like a good book, like a gripping story, or if you prefer, like a rock opera with jagged, visceral edges.

It's true that you have to wait for the barely two minutes of the tenth track, "If This Is The Last Song You Can Hear", to witness an intense sonic explosion, and that only the album's closing embrace ("Going Underground") has that certain something that demands an instant repeat. And yet, once the veil is lifted and initial skepticism overcome, the album reveals its charm: Oliver sings with dejection and emphasis on a piano-and-strings ballad with glam contours, poised somewhere between Pulp and T-Rex ("To All And Everything I Love"), lingers on melancholy in the romantic slowcore/dark excursion of "We Could Be Beautiful", flirts with Nick Cave's feverish poetics on "Bring On The Lights", and slips into the guise of an unlikely pop artist on the energetic "Blackbirds". But it's in the shorter, more noir-tinged fragments that the musician's true soul comes through, as tracks like "Only Hollow", "Come Into My Arms" and "Fuck My Senses" attest.

"Lights (And A Slight Taste Of Death)" is a sincere, honest record: behind these fourteen songs lies a complex and intriguing artistic personality. It's an album that probably won't change your life, like 99% of today's releases, but it will carve out a space in your listening rotation: if you still have some doubts, give yourself four minutes to hear the jazz-noise-rock of "I Saw" before passing final judgment on the Austrian band.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

03/05/2026