No. 5 - Made Glorious, The March Violets (2013)

(Over a series of twenty short posts – one per week for the remaining weeks of this decade – I am aiming to highlight in vaguely chronological order some of the most important and influential releases in the goth/post-punk/darkwave genre of the 2010’s).

Having examined artists from the first wave of post-punk who had undergone a renaissance in the early years of this decade in the last post, this week we turn our attention to some of the band who reformed having been away for over thirty years in one case. Until the digital age, bands from the past who reformed and wanted to release new material were faced not only with a sceptical music industry but also the reluctance of fans to try something other than the band’s own classics. However, the rise of crowdfunding initiatives in the 2000s and in particular the birth of Pledge Music in 2009 allowed bands “direct-to-fan” access without the need to raise vast amounts of capital from other external sources (eg record companies), with the added advantage of allowing bands to retain complete artistic control.

One post-punk band who took particular advantage of this opportunity were Leeds band The March Violets, early stablemates of The Sisters of Mercy who seemed to have a strong influence on Eldritch’s own ideas of how his band should be. The Violets have a “beauty and the beast” image of grizzled singer and vamp queen? Eldritch grows a beard and recruits Patricia Morrison. Si D moves on and forms an all-lads-together Detroit rock (Stooges, MC5) influenced dark biker rock ensemble (Batfish Boys)? Von gets in Tim B, Andreas B and Tony J and takes the black leather clad Sisters back out on the road. You get the idea. Whilst the refined versions always seemed to work for Eldritch, the Violets and Batfish boys enjoyed only cult success, and so there was a relatively muted response to the Violets’ initial reformation in 2007 when they played Leeds Metropolitan University, selling the Trinity EP of new songs to attendees.

By 2011, the band were ready to release an album-worth of new songs and chose Pledge Music as a way to crowd-fund the project, with the subsequent Made Glorious album released in 2013. This was a stunning return to form for the Violets who sported 3/4 of the original line-up, with Rosie Garland and Si returning to joint vocal duties and mercurial guitarist Tom Ashton fleshing the sound in his unique style, with new bassist Jo and a drum machine providing the usual varied background, from straight rock to punk funk.

Very much “ahead of their time” back in the twentieth century (to misquote the lyric), the lush video by Ash TV productions for understated lead track Dandelion King gave an excellent indication of  both the variety and quality of the sound of the eventual album, with Denbigh’s half-spoken lyric contrasting wonderfully with Garland’s strong contralto, with Ashton as usual providing as many ideas in a single song as many bands manage in an entire album.

Other songs captured the true spirit of the original 80’s incarnation from the band, from the melodious upbeat title track, through the dark and sinister Dress 4 U to the punkier and political London’s Burning, where in a series of memorable images (“King Canute in a business suit”, “there’s a wave of anger flowing through this land”) Denbigh rails against the greed and self-interest of the capital’s financial institutions in the wake of the Credit Crunch, a message which is still as strong today as when it was written at the beginning of the decade.

The Violets would go on to host another highly innovative Pledge project Mortality, revisiting many of their 80’s classics, but sadly this only exists as a digital download to subscribers following a serious health issue for one of the band just as the album reached fruition.

Many other seminal 1980’s bands reformed this decade and have issued high quality comeback albums. Of particular note is (only) the second album by one of the true post-punk originals, UK Decay, who managed to capture the thrills and dark energy of their debut on New Hope for the Dead, also crowdfunded via Pledge Music and released in 2013, and expertly produced by the late Chris Tsangerides. Despite the pace and power of lead track Shake ‘em Up, a call to arms for a new generation by original members Abbo and Spon, the track has been streamed on YouTube a mere four thousand times over the past six years, although Revolutionary Love Song, which has more of the tribal drumming and angular guitar slashes of the band’s earliest releases has enjoyed twice as many views, but this is still chicken-feed compared to the flimsiest contemporary electro-goth bleepathon. The Luton band continue to play European gothic festival circuit but the muted reception for what has been a riveting return to the scene must be hugely frustrating for them.

Another band whose comeback album was a critical success was Sweden’s Leather Nun, whose music intersected with many different 1980’s scenes (including punk, goth and post-punk) whilst remaining very much independent-minded musically as their career progressed. 2015’s Whatever brought together a series of songs which singer Jonas Almquist had originally recorded for his Godtherapy project the previous decade. Featuring songs in an eclectic mixture of styles, all topped off with Almquist’s honeyed croon, like Leather Nun releases in the past, the songs exude a certain louche after-midnight wrong-side-of-the-tracks swagger, and the sleazy decadent swagger of glam punk songs like Mainstream have surely been an influence on compatriots Then Comes Silence.

A fourth band deserving of a mention on this post about the best returning bands of the 1980’s is Shipley’s 1919, who released a trio of singles and an album in the early/mid-80’s whose bludgeoning attack was sonically compared to Killing Joke. Chief guitarist Mark Tighe and drummer Mick Reed reformed the band in the middle of the past decade and took the bold step of recruiting an outgoing young frontman Rio Goldhammer whose style is very different in every respect to that of original vocalist Ian Tilleard.

Whereas the original releases were a dark and challenging listen at times, the reformed band’s two albums to date, Bloodline and Futurecide add melody, subtlety (where appropriate) and a real confident swagger to the anger, power and drive of the earlier recordings, resulting in two impressive albums that have rightly raised the band’s position in the post-punk pecking order. Sadly, however, tragedy struck the band shortly before Bloodline’s release with the sudden passing of Mark Tighe, but Reed and the others have reinvigorated the project by bringing in excellent new guitarist Sam Evans whilst always respecting the late Tighe’s legacy.

Finally, The Danse Society re-emerged from the shadows with two separate versions of the band touring. Guitarist Paul Nash may have won the legal battle to the band’s name, but drummer Paul Gilmartin’s version (now known as simply “The Society” has been the interesting project creatively and musically, with the latest EP Night Ship the highlight to date, and with the recent recruitment of Grape and Wolfie from The Expelaires, this is definitely a project worth following.

No. 4 - Ninth, Peter Murphy (2011)

(Over a series of twenty short posts – one per week for the remaining weeks of this decade – I am aiming to highlight in vaguely chronological order some of the most important and influential releases in the goth/post-punk/darkwave genre of the 2010’s). This post was written before the singer's very recent health scare - get well soon, Peter!

The so-called “Godfather of Goth” Peter Murphy had released eight solo albums when Bauhaus briefly reformed in 2005, moving from his college radio-oriented debut (1986) to the Turkish-influenced Dust in 2002, before reverting to a lighter, pop sound on Unshattered two years later. The raw live-in-the-studio Bauhaus reformation album Go Away White might not have been a commercial or even uniformly critical success, but it did seem to provide Murphy with the creative jolt he required, and after an interesting digital EP of covers (including Transmission and Hurt), he returned with a new solo outing, the appropriately-named Ninth in the summer of 2011.

Bauhaus fans who had become tired of the rather saccharine theatrically-voiced alternative pop that had become his stock-in-trade over the previous quarter of a century would have been relieved to hear Murphy tell Wired News in 2010 that the new album would be “a continuation of the Go Away White trajectory -  it has testosterone pouring out of it.”

Opening track Velocity Bird certainly lived up to that proud but unlikely boast, continuing the visceral lo-fi thrill of Go Away White’s Adrenaline and oozing an Iggy meets Ziggy swagger that nods knowingly at two of the major influences of the original post-punk movement, with Murphy’s unmistakable croon topping off a bold statement of intent. For all their lack of classical training, all of the iconic singers of the post-punk era – Curtis, Coleman, Eldritch, Sioux, Smith, Cave et al - had their own distinctive vocal style, something which their more derivative second generation counterparts lacked to a large extent, but which the third generation have in instantly recognisable spades (think Laufey Soffia of Kaelan Mikla or Fenne Kuppens of Whispering Sons).

Other tracks on Ninth harked back to the earlier era Bauhaus albums that had helped to set the template for the genre: by way of example, the verse of lead single I Spit Roses has a great, angular guitar riff over which a multi-tracked bi-octave Murphy enuniciates the kind of nonsense lyrical wordplay that harks back to his 80’s finest :

Shake-shack, ring the bell, 
Petty, pretty, they shall swell,

Swell kid-like, kid-like squeak, 
Was it a trick or was it a treat?

before blanding out into a more melodious sweeping chorus in the style of his more anonymous mid-90’s solo albums.

There are more Bauhaus tropes on other tracks: for example it’s impossible not to feel some pangs of dark delight in the opening section of the more unhinged Peace to Each, and there’s a Bela Lugosi’s Dead meets This Corrosion feel to the uber-goth chorus to Memory Go, both songs featuring excellent guitar work from the ubiquitous Mark Gemini-Thwaite, whose assured and creative style has enhanced many of the decade's better albums. Other tracks have a softer focus but still showcase Murphy as an accomplished artist at his lyrical and performing best.

The resultant praise for Ninth saw the singer quickly back in the studio for an even rawer 2014 follow-up album, Lion, a more challenging listen that revealed that Murphy continues to take risks, although overall it was a more patchy affair redeemed by the epic The Ghost of Shokan Lake. Disappointingly, Murphy has since retreated into being smoething of a nostalgia act, playing well-remunerated US residencies going through his extensive back-catalogue at the rate of an album a night, with luicrously-priced VIP tickets keeping his pension fund topped up whilst reducing the need for new output.

Another (loosely) post-punk artist who has enjoyed an even bigger and certainly more surprising critical comeback in the 2010’s was Gary Numan, the Estuary android-voiced synth wizard who had ultimately become more famous for his unfortunate flying escapades than for his music, which at least had been rehabilitated in terms of reputation by being name-checked by everyone from industrial rock legends to house producers. Few would have been prepared however for the power of his 2013 album Splinter, a confessional set of songs whose subtitle Songs from a Broken Mind hinted at the mental anguish that lay behind the deeply personal lyrics. When I walked out of a ludicrously pretentious Numan gig in the mid-1980's I would have bet my life against the fact that I'd hear myself desperately asking the bemused HMV shop assistant if they had the new Gary Numan album at HMV some thirty years later.

Featuring for the most part some very familiar chord progressions and lyrical themes of alienation, it was the bass-heavy full-on assault of tracks like I Am Dust and Love Hurt Bleed which caught the attention of alternative club DJ’s and critics alike, revealing a pulsing Nine Inch Nails influenced beat and even a rock guitar sound courtesy of Robin Finck (NIN, G’n’R) which was given freer Jamiroquaiesque wig-out form on the most experimental and stand-out track of the set, We’re The Unforgiven.

Whilst still not exactly goth, even with the seemingly obligatory Edwarniana steam-punk visual accoutrements, this album certainly re-established Numan’s reputation amongst the coldwave/darkwave cognoscenti, and similar recent album Savage has continued his upward spiral.

With some of the greats of the original era belatedly rediscovering their mojo and upping their game in the mid-2010s, others would soon be inspired to build on the firm foundations of the previous post-punk generations and develop the genre further...

No. 3 - From Which No Light Escapes/Void of Life - Miserylab (2011)

(Over a series of twenty short posts – one per week for the remaining weeks of this decade – I am aiming to highlight in vaguely chronological order some of the most important and influential releases in the goth/post-punk/darkwave genre of the 2010’s).

When Porl King dramatically announced at Whitby Goth Weekend in October 1998 that his band Rosetta Stone was splitting up, it seemed to also signal a definitive end to the second generation of British goth groups. With drum machine Madame Razor always high in the mix, Rosetta Stone had built on the firm foundations of The Sisters of Mercy, with melodious reverb-heavy guitar lines and ghostly dark vocals on alternative dancefloor classics like Adrenaline, and even the band’s artwork reflected the stark iconography of the early Merciful Releases. Many of the their followers, the “Quarriers” had previously followed other bands on the circuit (such as Fields of the Nephilim and The Mission), but the band became disillusioned with the increasingly derivative, dwindling and insular goth scene, moving to a more industrial sound on latter releases.

After the split in 1998, bassist Karl North formed The Dream Disciples, but Porl King withdraw from the scene, becoming semi-reclusive as he began to work on a new project, the appropriately-named Miserylab, which would surface towards the end of the following decade. Over a series of digital-only releases and five albums over a three-year period (2008 - 2011), King vented his spleen on the human race in general and society as a whole in a series of songs whose bitter lyrical content was at odds with the dark beauty of the relatively-minimalistic musical background. 2011 was a particularly strong year, seeing the release of the last two Miserylab albums, From Which No Light Escapes and Void Of Life, which are generally regarded as the highpoint of his career to date.

Downplay from the February 2011 release From Which No Light Escapes is a perfect case in point, beginning with an extensive up-tempo darkwave introduction, with a Joy Division-esque beat backing underpinning a strong reverb-drenched guitar melody, over which King’s lecturing vocal complained about a general lack of individual responsibility in contemporary civil society. That the two albums were released within eighteen months of the return of Conservative governments to the UK after thirteen years of Labour rule can hardly be a coincidence, and seems to have hardened King’s already curmudgeonly viewpoint further from the earlier releases.

Children of the Poor from the follow-up October album Void Of Life is even more vituperative, and its strong political message about the inability of political leaders to understand poverty because of their own very comfortable backgrounds are as relevant in 2019 as there were shortly after the election of David Cameron in 2010:

“Sheltered from life since the day you were born;

Indifferent to the sick, to the old, to the poor.

There’s a famine beneath you,

Orchestrated by you.

You’re a pestilence;

And we’re defenceless.

Severing the vein,

The cremation of care.

You’ll never understand,

You’ve never been there.

We’re not all so well-connected,

Born rich therefore respected.

Without these privileges,

We’re rejected.”

Not only are the lyrics darker than on the already nihilistic What Is The Point of Anything? on 2009’s Freedom Is Work, but the music itself is harsher, and more akin to a classic post-punk sound than the quirky dark pop of What Is .. which was more in the style of, say, They Might Be Giants than of Joy Division.

Given the mismatch between misanthropic lyrical content and catchy, almost indie pop tunes, and with a penchant for digital-only releases in an era before broadband internet became fully mainstream, it was little surprise that Miserylab failed to make waves beyond a loyal coterie of former Rosetta fans initially, but the cult band’s output became more and more respected and sought-after as the interest in post-punk grew, with the result that some of the band’s early releases are now collector’s items.

When, towards the end of the decade, quintessential second generation US goth record label Cleopatra Records approached Porl King with an offer to fund a new Rosetta Stone album, the singer instead decided to record updated versions of the best Miserylab tracks, and these excellent songs have finally found a new lease of life and a deservedly broader audience as the well-reviewed 2019 Rosetta Stone album Seems Like Forever.

Since ending the Miserylab project in 2012, King has worked prolifically under the name In Death It Ends, producing a whole series of dark, cinematic albums which (like his previous projects) reward repeated playings, and who knows, the best of these may well at some point see the light of day as the next Rosetta album!

Click these links to sample then buy music from Rosetta Stone, Miserylab and In Death It Ends.

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If you enjoy Miserylab, why not try “the saviours of French punk” Rendez-Vous.

No. 2 - Monster In Me EP (2011) - Angels of Liberty

(Over a series of twenty short posts – one per week for the remaining weeks of this decade – I am aiming to highlight in vaguely chronological order some of the most important and influential releases in the goth/post-punk/darkwave genre of the 2010’s).

Apart from Leeds (home of The Sisters of Mercy and The March Violets amongst others), the British town most associated with goth culture is also in the county of Yorkshire, the seaside port and resort of Whitby. With its Dracula associations, dramatic hilltop ruined abbey and a jewellery industry based on the goth’s natural mineral of choice (jet), the town was an ideal location for Jo Hampshire to organise what became an annual (and later bi-annual) goth festival in 1994. Whitby Goth Weekend quickly became one of the genre’s major annual events (although smaller than Leipzig’s Wave Gotik Treffen which began three years earlier), as not only a rendez-vous for aficionados of gothic music but also showcase for goth fashion, crafts and other aspects of the culture.

It was in Whitby that the idea spawned for our second choice of key goth artists of the 2010’s and arguably the UK’s most successful band in the genre during the decade, Angels of Liberty. Some of the bands featured in this countdown might have some fans questioning whether or not they belong to the genre, but Angels of Liberty are Goth with a capital “G”, although many would claim (with some justification) that they are strictly a well-produced late era Second Generation band rather than part of this decade’s dark revival. The duo (lead singer Voe and synth player Scarlet, along with the obligatorily-monikered drum machine Echo von Hammer) released their debut EP Monster In Me in 2011, setting the template for a sound which would quickly establish them as one of the genre’s leading new bands.

Strongly influenced by 90’s bands like London After Midnight, Cruxshadows, Nosferatu and Suspiria, theirs was a dark and theatrical retro-goth sound firmly aimed at the dancefloor, with an electronic sound based around a strong backbeat and epic, repeating choruses with nagging hooks that would reel in even the most reluctant of listeners. Soaked in the visual tropes of vampire films, the video montage for Monster In Me, with stereotypical lyrics in overtly gothic typefaces, became the nec plus ultra of gothic imagery and has been much copied subsequently. Candles, graveyards, satin, velvet and lace, ruined mansions, dry ice, religious iconography - no-one seeing the video could be in any doubt as to the target audience. The 2012 debut album Pinnacle of the Draco on their own Secret Sin records featured new tracks alongside the best moments from the Monster In Me EP and its follow up The Black Madonna EP, and established their trademark but highly derivative sound which was reminiscent of some of The Sisters of Mercy’s club classics from the Floodland/Vision Thing era such as Dominion and More, with Voe’s strong, deep vocal carrying strong melodies over an uplifting, syncopated chorus. 

The blueprint was further refined on 2015’s Telepathine album, with catchy tracks like Leda and Love Still Remains helping to spread the band’s name further, and another exquisitely-produced single Innana in early 2017 seemed to herald Angels of Liberty’s move into the upper echelons of contemporary goth music.

Sadly, the shock news of the untimely passing of the band's singer Voe Saint-Claire in April of that year has brought a sudden end to one of the UK’s premier gothic bands of this millennium, although the excellent posthumous album Serpent of the Grail has finally now been released, an album regarded as their best by some reviewers and a fitting epitaph for a group who will forever remain in the hearts of those who have kept the old school gothic faith over the past three decades.

Most Angels of Liberty albums are still available via their own Secret Sin record label, and are highly recommended to those seeking the guilty pleasure of high quality, uncomplicated formulaic dance-oriented old school goth.

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If you like Angels of Liberty, in addition to the 90's bands mentioned above, why not check out Blind to Reason, the 2017 comeback album from excellent 90's Australian band Subterfuge. 

No. 1 - Kasvetli Kutlama EP - She Past Away (2010)

(Over a series of twenty short posts – one per week for the remaining weeks of this decade – I am aiming to highlight in vaguely chronological order some of the most important and influential releases in the goth/post-punk/darkwave genre of the 2010’s).

In the same way as pinpointing the song which launched the first wave of what became referred to as goth can be polemical (although most lists tend to start with “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”), deciding exactly where the third and latest post-punk wave began is not an exact science. As the millennium’s first decade came to an end and the 2010’s began, the likes of Moonspell, Type O Negative and Killing Joke were keeping the gothic flame alive from the earlier generations, but a new sound from the very edge of Europe signalled a fresh and distinct new start for the genre.

At the very start of the 2010'sTurkish band She Past Away released their debut EP Kasvetli Kutlama for download, a few months after showcasing a video for the title track on YouTube (which has now clocked up an impressive six million views). Despite flying in the face of conventional wisdom by singing in their native language rather than English (despite the grammatically incorrect band name), the band became a slow-burning success thanks to their unique sound, with a primitive upbeat drum machine background reminiscent of Joy Division, mournful synths a la Depeche Mode, heavily reverbed guitar riffs intertwining Cure-style with steady eight-to-the-bar bass riffs and an echoing baritone vocal midway between Andrew Eldritch and Alan Vega. With an unusually high BPM for a goth song (She Past Away’s songs almost all weigh in at over 140 BPM), and adding an Eastern influence on melody and chord progression, the song Kasvetli Kutlama heralded a clear break from the past whilst nevertheless retaining key elements of the goth of the 1980’s. The iconic monochrome video for the song has played a key part in this success: against a black background with only an old reel-to-reel tape deck behind them, the two youthful band members, one stripped to the waist, pick out the song’s distinctive melody on guitar and bass, avoiding direct eye contact with the camera.  The song sounds as fresh in 2019 as it did a decade ago and is the perfect starting point for our look at the most crucial releases of the 2010’s.

Like so many of the third wave of artists, She Past Away singer and guitarist Volker Caner’s first band (Tears of Beggar, formed in his native Bursa in the mid 1990’s) played doom metal, and this apprenticeship also gave him a sense of melancholy melody and structure which gave the three tracks on the debut EP a unique feel, although the other two tracks (Ruh and BozbulanIk were more synth-based and closer to EBM than goth in reality). The three tracks were re-worked in the studio by Caner and bassist Idris Akbulut, and with a further seven songs released as the sumptuously produced (by Doruk Ozturkcan) debut album Belirdi Gece on Fabrika records in 2012.

Slowly but surely the band’s fame began to spread, their songs becoming staples of goth club nights and online DJ podcasts worldwide and by the time the second album, Narin YalnIzlIk was released in 2015 to widespread praise, the band had become recognised as one of the leading bands of the genre, a position concretised by the lead single (and the accompanying video) from the album, Asimilasyon, arguably the quintessential darkwave song of the decade. The video reveals a confident Caner now "owning" the camera and delivering his most Vega-esque performance, a stuttering,echoing vocal complete with yelps and whoops. With Akbulut now leaving the band to be replaced by Ozturkcan, the band began to tour extensively across Europe over the following three years, playing at leading darkwave festivals as well as smaller club venues, as sales, streams and view counts continued to increase exponentially.

After allowing anticipation to build for a further four years, She Past Away ended the decade with a further strong album, Disko Anksiyete released in the spring of 2019, which as the title suggests, is their most dancefloor-oriented album to date whilst retaining the band’s distinctive sound. The hard-working duo are touring the album tirelessly across the globe, most recently undertaking a major US sell-out tour to promote the release further. With synths occupying a higher place in the mix and a slightly softer focus to the vocals, the band and this album in particular has huge crossover potential to the mainstream.

Anyone seeking an introduction to the darkwave sound of the 2010’s should seek out this band’s oeuvre on Bandcamp, as She Past Away have been at the forefront of the genre throughout the decade, delivering three high quality albums that deserve an even bigger audience than that which has already developed primarily by word-of-mouth.

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If you like She Past Away, why not try :

- A Transition
- Dark Lake Whispers
- He Never Come Back
- Drab Majesty