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.