Introducing: June Turns Black

Prepare to have your musical senses thrilled yet potentially slightly confused by the enthralling, experimental and diverse electronic noir alt-rock sound of Romania’s June Turns Black, who describe their music as “pain, electronic and personal.”

The quartet of Rach Alaji (vocals and creative director), Dan Nicolescu (guitar and production), Cezar Stamate (bass and video editor) and David Alin (drums) have known each other for a long time. And, while it took a while to decide to make the band a reality, they’ve made up for lost time with a series of singles leading up to last year’s debut album Wavebreaker.

On the sound they’ve crafted, Dan told us: “Never assume you know what you’re going to be listening to. Honestly, you might get a blisteringly heavy song with Rach screaming her lungs out over breakdowns or a sultry and atmospheric track that makes you question your life choices. Or somewhere in between. You might cry, you might dance, or you might open up a moshpit.”

Our latest taste of this is the band’s new single gotafeelin, which was released last week and is the first release since their debut album. It opens up with Rach’s laid-back vocals over light backing synths, before building slightly with pulsing synths and effect-ridden retorts. Heavy guitars join in through a catchy chorus, before the effects-ridden vocals set up a more intense verse led by Rach’s intense screams. It drops back into mellow vocals before heavy synth and guitars support a chorus to bring the track to a close.

On the track, told us: “The reception so far has been positive, with a small mix of confusion. When we launched our first songs in 2023, people got used to our blend of electronicore and screamo-djent. But for this new era as a whole, we wanted to expand our boundaries and start bringing in some newer sounds from the worlds of alt-rock, darkpop and even more electronic music. gotafeelin is a mission statement of sorts, with significantly darker themes and its mix of textures, while still retaining the deeply personal and honest lyrics. If this is your first time listening to us, I think you’re going to be excited for this new era.”

That ability to flick a fuse between moments of melody and intensity is further portrayed on their album. Indeed, it does so from the outset with the excellent opening track and the band’s debut single Hurt Me, which starts with spoken vocals and light synth sounds, before blasting into vicious cries of “Hurt me, I’m sick of this game, Of bearing the shame, Motherfuckin’ hurt me” over crushing guitars. That feeds into a completely contrasting singalong chorus, which ends by flying into Rach’s intense screamed vocals that feed into the big “hurt me” vocals. Light instrumentals offer a little time to recover, before building up to a vicious conclusion.

The album offers plenty more of that, including the lively Atonia, more melodic Scream for the Voiceless, the powerful BRNDNC and We Kill What We Love, and the slow-building final track Have You, which comes to a crushing conclusion. And the band has a series of intriguing song remixes available.

The June Turns Black sound has been influenced by a wide range of artists and genres. Rach tells us she grew up on Pendulum, The Prodigy, Billy Idol and Tina Turner, before getting into Linkin Park and Architects. While Dan references Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile as influencing everything he does.

And on what inspires them to write music, Rach explained: “In our songs, we like to start an open discussion with our listeners about our darkest and most personal traumas. Everything we’re writing comes from a real place.”

And Dan added: “Sonically-speaking, we’re sponges and we like to bring in influences from all sort of
artists covering the gamut from heavy music to industrial, alternative and pop. In terms of themes, it has been something that we actually went through or have seen people close to us go through. It has to be something that affected us quite directly. There are some key principles in those two albums I always follow: make it conceptual, make it real, serve the idea, express yourself in a raw way.”

We’ve only previously covered one Romanian band, and that was way back in February 2020, so we sked the band for their insight into Romanian music. “The Romanian scene is honestly very diverse,” Dan told us. “We’ve got everything from old-school heavy metal to metalcore, extreme metal, even some goth acts. Aside from the legacy and big acts as well as a pretty big alternative scene, the rest is all very niche, I feel.

“Luckily, there are battle of bands and contests that showcase new talent, and bigger acts tend to bring out younger bands to open for them. And we have quite a few people in the industry who just love music and discovering new talent.”

There’s plenty more to come from June Turns Black, who are busy writing a lot of new material. Dan promises several new releases, one of which “is probably gonna surprise a lot of people,” alongside shows across Romania and, hopefully, beyond it.

And Rach added: “One thing I don’t think people realise is just how involved we are in all aspects of our art. We’re very DIY and we work on not just the songs, but the image, the music videos, the social media content, alongside our amazing June Crew. Some might say we’re control freaks, and they might be right, but we want to make sure that if you’re seeing something from June Turns Black, it’s straight from our hearts and our brains to you.”

You can follow June Turns Black on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and check out their music on Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music and YouTube.

We discovered June Turns Black on Groover – submit your music to GigRadar!

And listen to all the bands we’ve found on the platform on our Spotify playlist GigRadar Groover