Album Review : dälek - Brilliance of a Falling Moon (2026)

Metal and rap have always had an awkward relationship, which is probably why they understand each other so well. Both can go mainstream, but neither was built for it. At their core, they’re outsider languages. Ways of turning marginality into identity or at least into something louder than silence. Both exist within a specific subculture, but their most interesting specimens (at least to me), almost invariably exists outside of it. Experimental hip-hop duo dälek are marginals within their own subculture.

Part of their marginality is explicable by hip-hop’s commercialization and explosion in popularity. dälek has never compromised on their sound or lyrical themes in order to get on the gravy train. They also never compromised about anything ever and given their forward-thinking nature, they’re always somewhat of a different band. Creatively, this is great. Commercially, less so — but dälek doesn’t give a fuck. Their new album Brilliance of a Falling Moon could only exist here and now and it’s by design.

Brilliance of a Falling Moon features eight songs and about forty minutes of new of angry, but hopefuly and militant hip-hop that feels immediate without ever being on the nose. That’s very important in militant music not to be hyper specific and to use language in a way that could inspire anyone to action and Will Brooks keeps the language just open enough to travel. Set to some of dälek’s more straightforward and unobstrustve beats, Brilliance of a Falling Moon is an invitation to march forward through dark times.

There’s an undeniable old school quality to some of Brilliance of a Falling Moon’s and I don’t mean this in an old-school-dälek way, but rather as a callback to nineties hip-hop. Some of the beats reminded me of noisier evolutions of old Killarmy material, other like haunted Immortal Technique. On a call to arms like Better Than, it inherently situates Will Brooks in a heritage of positive leaders in troubled times from Malcolm X to Rakim. The pasts of dälek, hip-hop and opressed voices coexist on Brilliance of a Falling Moon.

Knowledge | Understanding | Wisdom is a different animal altogether. Kicking off with a feral cry and high-pitched synths, it reasserts dälek’s commitment to being weird, transgressive and righteous. It oozes with old school bravado. The introspective, deceptively titled I AM A MAN is a vibrant, lucid gut check set to quiet, jazzy beat. It's a confession of faith and a renewal of vows in the values that shaped Will Brooks' path since the early dälek days: I’m a man who speaks for a living but lessons learnt when I listen, he raps.

One of the standout cuts on the record is the closer By The Time We Arrive in El Salvador, which clearly references the ICE raids through a suffocating, dystopian vision for you to internalize, set to overblown drums and tense piano notes. The beat is simple, but obsessive and obnoxious like your car speakers left on maximum volume after a night out. Brooks depicts a vivid portrait a savage folklore where voices are suppressed and art is weaponized against the people.

I don’t think Brilliance of a Falling Moon has glaring weaknesses to properly speak of, but it’s oddly bookended with the two best songs on the record and has a weird momentum because of it. It’s not unlike dälek to keep it as byzantine as possible, but with that cleaner, leaner approach to beatmaking makes it lean sometimes a little hard on lyrical themes and vocals. A song like Expressions of Love has visceral, heart-wrenching lyrics, but that could’ve used a less subdued way of manifesting themselves.

Normalized Tragedy is the closest thing there is to a "classic dälek" song there is on Brilliance of a Falling Moon. It features this richer, glitchier, more counterintuitive beat that situates Will Brooks in a very clear cyberpunk-like paradigm and intuitively enhance what would normally be more abstract, less agressive lyrics. Substance and For the People both have their place on the record, but feels overshadowed compared to some of the harder cuts on the record. As I said, maybe the odd pacing doesn't give them justice.

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Brilliance of a Falling Moon is the sound of a band who know who they are and who know where they’re heading. It makes a lot of sense in the discography of dälek and yet has an identity of its own. Maybe it’s not as vibrant as From Filthy Tongues of Gods and Griots or Endangered Philosophies, but it’s controlled. Masterful in its own way. It compares with the works of contemporaries like Backxwash, billy woods and even .clipping. Their sound is defined and they’re just honing it.

7.7/10

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