When planning out the twenty releases
to feature in this countdown of the top twenty most important darkwave/goth/post-punk
albums of the 2010’s, I reserved this final slot for an album from this final
year, but such has been the quality of new music in 2019 that I ended up
starting to write about four very different acts before finally settling on the
wonderfully atmospheric gothic darkwave of Mexico band Stranger and Lovers.
My initial choice was the Dutch band
Red Velvet Deception, a duo whom I somewhat unkindly christened “The Goth
Proclaimers”, who followed up the immense promise of their 2016 track So Low
with a wonderfully tight LP Like Rain in June of this year. Taking elements
from the more commercial end of the 80’s underground (The Cure, New Order) and
adding a driving rhythm section of drum machine and insistent bass lines
intertwining telepathically with reverberating guitar riffs in the style of
Second Still, Like Rain featured a really strong set of songs led by catchy
single Serpent. Band members Arjen Zomers and Roy Orbon also innovatively
streamed their rehearsals live on YouTube, allowing fans all over the world the
pseudo- experience of enjoying their songs played live. Like Rain is certain to
feature on many “best of the year” lists over the next month or so, which
should help to raise the profile of this high quality release.
A second candidate for my final pick
of the year was August’s Chinese Voodoo Dolls, the latest album by scene
veterans Der Himmel uber Berlin, a Trieste band which boasts one of the scene’s
most innovative guitarists, Davide Simeone. Usually lumped in the “deathrock”
category due to Simeone’s unusually angular chord progressions and the claustrophobic
atmosphere their songs generate, DHuB have developed over the decade into one
of the scene’s most consistently exciting bands, with their last two albums
(2017’s Amnesia as well as Chinese Voodoo Dolls) gaining wider prominence
having been released on the influential Unknown Pleasures label.
Far from running out of ideas, Chinese Voodoo Dolls showcases Simeone at his thrilling best on a series of songs which take the listener on a breathless ride through the darkest shadows of the gothic genre whilst never too far away from the spirit of punk. The hard-gigging band supported the release with a series of compelling videos, such as this one for Dead Bodies Everywhere, which capture some of the anarchic spirit of their live shows.
September saw the release of a third album which briefly looked like securing the final slot on this rundown of the decade, with Antipole’s sophomore effort Radial Glare. Antipole is the project of Trondheim-based artist Karl Morten Dahl who has created a sumptuous feast of an album, with eleven varied songs built around his trademark heavily reverb-ed staccato guitar riffs redolent of vintage The Cure over a dreamlike coldwave backbeat with low key vocals provided by Paris Alexander, Marc Lewis and Eirene. Anyone wanting to unwind and let an album envelope them (in the same way as a vintage Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance LP did) could do a lot worse than succumb to the charms of Radial Glare. In thirty years’ time people will rediscover Antipole in the same way that the likes of The Sound and The Chameleons have belatedly gained the recognition which they deserved all along.
But ultimately I’m still an old goth
at heart - well, all over to be honest - and the eponymous debut album from Mexico’s Stranger and Lovers,
released on cassette only earlier this month, got my shoulders shimmying and finally won the day. The band is
the latest project from Dave Noise, previously guitarist in The Exils and The
Sisters Ray, who played a strand of dark shoegaze spacerock, but the new band have a
wonderfully full post-punk sound that neatly sums up the best of the past
decade.
The band’s songs have been drip-fed via YouTube during the year, with debut video Masochistic Love starting with a haunting riff reminiscent of Lebanon Hanover’s Gallow Dance before the song structure modulates in a style familiar to fans of She Past Away, with a lugubrious vocal adding an air of dark menace. The next release, Black Beach had more of a film noir feel, with a distinct Ritual Howls dark twang feel, although the vocal on this track bares a distinct resemblance to Sonsombre’s Brandon Pybus, although the overall impact was just as powerful as on the debut track.
It was the third track which was released in September, Juliette, which confirmed that Stranger and Lovers would be my new favourite band. Again the introduction successfully works in the same area as She Past Away, but with a stronger, deeper and more evocative vocal, and there are some great chord modulations particularly going from the bridge into the chorus, and as with Masochistic Love there were also very welcome vibes of both The Sisters of Mercy and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry.
Further broadening their musical horizons, the next single Dark Line released in early October went right back to the vampiric slow-burning delight’s of Bela Lugosi’s Dead, a tribute to Mexico’s first silver-screen vampire, German Robles. With Nephilimistic arpeggios over a simple coldwave synth bass motif and another echoing meandering vocal, Dark Line was another resounding success and whetted the appetite for what was to follow later that month.
Death Song, with its heavy musical debt to The Sisters of Mercy’s Alice was an instant success, clocking up nearly two hundred thousand views through the Darko: Post-punker FB page alone, more than some of the bands featured in this countdown have garnered in their entire careers. Although the debut album is so far only available for sale by cassette to personal callers only (!), the band have licensed the main five tracks to Spotify with other platforms to follow.
Mexico has long had a vibrant gothic
scene, and anyone who has seen footage of gigs by bands like The Sisters of
Mercy there will have been impressed by the sheer enthusiasm of the sizeable audience
for the band’s performance. It is therefore only fitting that the capital city
should now boast the band most likely to become one of the biggest in the genre
as the healthy scene looks ahead to the start of its fifth decade.
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