(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).
It is often said that the early
post-punk music grew out of Britain’s industrial decline, a way for frustrated young people to deal with
the sudden decline in the mining and textile industries that had brought
prosperity to the North of England for nearly two centuries. Whilst the
still-busy forges of the West Midlands had literally given rise to heavy metal (via Black Sabbath and Judas Priest),
the goth scene emerged from the counties whose landscapes had been transformed
by the rise and fall of the England’s “dark satanic mills”. Andrew Eldritch
himself was frequently quoted as referring to “the M62 sound” of the guitar
bands from towns and cities along the East-West motorway that runs from Hull to
Liverpool via the likes of Leeds, Bradford, and Manchester, all characterised
by a slight melancholy that reflected their decaying surroundings. In the same
interviews, Eldritch would often extol the virtues of Fleming-speaking Belgium,
where his own band had early notable success (which continues to this day), and
the industrial landscapes of Limburg, the province that borders the Ruhr saw a
contemporaneous rise in post-punk bands in the early 1980’s.
The Neon Judgement’s Factory Walk is
an early industrial classic, and bands like Aroma di Amore, Front 242 and
Portrait Bizarre were at the forefront of what became the darkwave, EBM and
coldwave movements respectively. The latter band featured Gwijde Wampers on
vocals, although his contribution to that band is almost unrecognisable in his current band
Ground Nero, which formed in the second half of the current decade with the aim
of “creating 80’s gothic darkwave, making use of modern sound tech, re-staging
it with “wall-of-sound” arrangements.”
As a veteran of reading band press releases, I took this description with a pinch of salt until I heard the track Dark Descent from the debut EP Beyond released at the end of 2016, being instantly mesmerised by the afore-mentioned dark atmospheric “wall of sound”. Here was a group of musicians steeped in and respectful of the history of the genre yet able to create a fresh new take on the classic gothic sounds of bombastic swirling keyboards, descending basslines, snatched samples of political speeches (very F242!), guttural baritone vocals and a guitar sound so broad, deep and varied that only Killing Joke’s Geordie sprang to mind by way of comparison.
Other tracks on the debut release had a similarly full sound (so much so that the band gave the engineer equal billing in the list of band members), with lead track Run From Your Relatives being picked up by goth DJs around the world and helping to spread the band’s fame amongst the darkwave community, a phenomenon which was given a significant boost when Oskar Terrormortis came across the EP and arranged a physical release on Gothic Rock records.
A change of label to legendary German imprint Danse Macabre saw the band release a second EP, Scales in early 2018 which saw a development in the band’s sound. Bannockburn introduced a slower pace and a more angular guitar sound, but Plethora was the stand-out track, with a sequenced bass-line, reverb-drenched picked coldwave guitar riff, typically lugubrious vocal and a big chorus that was strangely reminiscent of Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call-era Simple Minds.
Buoyed by a hugely positive critical response, the band returned to the studio to record their first LP, Divergence, which was released in the Spring of 2019 and has certainly been one of the stand-out albums of the year for me. The sheer versatility of Peter Smeets’ guitar playing, from industrial chugging through Pink Floyd solos to KJ-esque modulated arpeggios, provides real variety in the songs across the darkwave genre, with the insistent drum-machine beat and regimented bassline from Peter Philtjens underpinning the sound. So many bands operating in this area fall down on the vocal front, but although his delivery can occasionally be a little pitchy, Gwijde Wampers is a charismatic frontman whose back-of-the-throat baritone has often been compared to Ian Curtis, both a reference point and a highly revered figure in this genre, and his clear and confident delivery of lyrics which serve as a clarion call for the current state of capitalist human society at the crossroads help to elevate this album further above the competition.
Heaven Sent and Divergence are probably the stand-out tracks in terms of immediacy and alternative dancefloor potential, whereas the angular Savannah and the in-you-face bombast of Alacrity have a harder edge and showcase Smeets’ talent to the full. With Wampers’ spookier delivery lending They Knew a more aggressively dystopian air and Jabez and Kitezh also drawn from a broader musical palette, Divergence is a tremendous LP from a band at the top of its game which showcases how much the post-punk genre has to offer as it passes its fortieth birthday.
Ground Nero’s work can be heard and ordered via their Bandcamp site.
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