Out of the Dark (1998) is the ninth album by Falco. Falco died on 6 February 1998 after an accident.
In 1996 techno styled song Mutter, der Mann mit dem Koks ist da ("mother, the man with the coke (coal) is here") by T>>MA ("T>>MA" as Falco's pseudonym) hit the market and brought the artist back into the charts of all German-speaking countries. Although Falco's band leader found Out of the Dark good enough to be released as the second single, Falco himself wanted it to be released on the album only.
Follow up single became Naked, which was quite successful in Austria but didn't meet Falco's expectations in Germany, leading him to postpone the album release. It is known that Falco was unsure about the perfect order of the CD tracks, so that he often changed it, and he also planned to record a track called "Tomorrow Never Knows" as a cover from Beatles singer Ringo Starr (this is shown on the facsimile attached to the CD). In the time shortly before his death, Falco also removed some songs but were eventually released on further albums ,'Best Of' and single CDs. On February 6, 1998, Falco made one of his last phone calls. He told his guitarist to come over to the Dominican Republic because he wanted to record some songs with his band, but this never took place as Falco died in the afternoon of that day.
Three weeks after Falco's death in a car accident, the album was officially released in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The worldwide release was on 2 March 1998. Its previous title had been "Egoisten" ("egoists").
The album turned out to be a big success in German-speaking countries, resulting in another number one in Austria,#3 in Germany and #4 in Switzerland; it also reached #35 in Hungary, a non German-speaking country.
The posthumous singles charted quite good in most countries in comparison to the ones from his previous 3 albums. Especially the single Out of the Dark was a success, climbing to number 2 of the Austrian charts and also had some good airplay. Furthermore, it came under the Top 5 of the Latvian airplay charts and even reached the Argentinian Airplay Charts of Buenos Aires with #98. Most of the posthumous success is credited to the song Out of the Dark.
Out of the Dark contains the line "...muss ich denn sterben, um zu leben?" ("...do I have to die in order to live?"), after which Falco can be heard breathing heavily. This made many people think Falco felt that he was going to die soon, which despites the fact that the song had already existed two years prior to his death. The actual motives why Falco wrote this song remain misty.
Egoist became his last notable hit in Germany and Switzerland. For unknown reasons, a video was also made for the song "No Time for the Revolution", but it was never released anywhere as a single.
Ten years after Falco's death the album re-entered the Austrian charts again.
Out of the Dark ... Into the Light is Kreator's second EP released in 1988. The live tracks were recorded at Dynamo Club, Eindhoven, Netherlands in 1988. Late '90s reissues of the Terrible Certainty album feature this EP as bonus material.
