No. 12 - Walk The Wire, Miazma (2017)

(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).

Regular readers of this countdown may have noted a preponderance of post-punk artists around the middle of the decade, but more recently there has been a welcome resurgence in good old-fashioned gothic rock. After years or even decades where, taking the lead from the so-called Godfather of Goth, Andrew Eldritch,  no-one would admit to being part of the scene, a series of bands have been prepared to unashamedly admit to their love of the classic late 80’s sound and update it for a modern audience.

The shock recent unveiling of two new songs (Show Me and Better Reptile) by The Sisters of Mercy themselves at their recent live shows, the band’s first new material in thirteen years, has rekindled hopes that the quintessential goth act will finally release a follow-up to 1990’s Vision Thing, as promised by lead singer Andrew Eldritch during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

In reality, many fans had long since accepted that there was no hope of the band ever releasing a new album, and several bands over the years have enterprisingly filled the gap, producing an ersatz Sisters sound that mimics the Wagnerian choruses of the Overbombing years. To a greater or lesser extent, Rosetta Stone, The Merry Thoughts, The Merciful Nuns and others have been accused of paying rather too close a homage to Leeds’ finest, although most have gone on to develop their own sound, merely using TSOM as one of my original starting points.

During the 2010’s, with the TSOM recording drought entering its third decade, there has been a revival in the Sisters clone market, with The Cascades reforming and their baritone crooner M.W. Wild releasing a highly enjoyable solo album in 2016 entitled The Third Decade, which featured several songs which bore more than a passing resemblance to The Sisters, even lyrically on lead track So Dark All Over Europe.

The undisputed king of the Sisters-influenced market however is Swede Kristian Olofsson, who records under the project name Miazma. The one-man-band multi-tracking in the studio has been a feature of the third wave of artists, and over a series of releases spanning over a decade, Olofsson gradually refined his vision, increasing the overt gothic references on albums like Dressed In Black (which included original compositions entitled Walk Away and More) before releasing his meisterwerk, Walk The Wire, in January 2017.

The album’s sound is firmly anchored on the Overbombing years of TSOM’s big club hits like Lucretia My Reflection and More, particularly on the title track and on the single More Than Miles, with the metronomic buzzing basslines and chugging guitars giving way to melodic choruses with repetitive baritone refrains, very reminiscent of the Vision Thing years, but also of bands such as 69 Eyes and Type O Negative on tracks like Monster and Far Away.

Released on Gothic Rock records, always a promising sign, the CD received rave reviews but like many releases in the genre inexplicably only sold in the hundreds, with ultra-conservative old-school goths refusing to countenance anything recorded after 1992, even when it follows the exact sonic template of their favourite artists.

Hopefully Miazma will continue the move away from parody and pastiche as they continue to develop their sound, with songs like A Kiss Away and Kallt showing that their forte resides in mid-paced melodic melancholia. In the meantime, however, Walk The Wire stands as one of the most accomplished goth albums of the decade, and well worthy of a place on this countdown.

Miazma’s back-catalogue (or at least the recent parts of it) are available from the band’s Bandcamp page.