Album Review - Damaged and Damned (Guillotine Dream)

Guillotine Dream is a UK-based three-piece who specialise in old school 80’s-influenced gothic rock, with guttural vocals, ‘proper’ drums and booming basslines that hark back to the days when the likes of The Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim caused a temporary blip in the long-term decline in hat sales. Whilst bands like Type O Negative, Moonspell and Sweet Ermengarde kept the flickering flame alive in the intervening years, a new wave of bands like Sonsombre, The Kentucky Vampires and The Black Capes have jolted the genre back into full-scale reanimation, with Guillotine Dream amongst those leading the charge in the movement’s birthplace, the UK.

The band’s new album Damaged and Damned is now available on “stream-before-you-pre-order” trial on Bandcamp, with a self-released CD version to follow after the current pandemic crisis saw the cancellation of the planned summer release on Secret Sin Records, and is the follow-up to last year’s well-received EP, Something Shining, Something Bright. The teaser track Vermillion from the new set got rave reviews in the online global goth community on its release on YouTube earlier this month, and the album certainly doesn’t disappoint, offering up a variety of powerful tracks which never stray from gothic rock into gothic metal, one of the traditional pitfalls of the genre, and which have a deliberately slightly raw and muddy production to retain the excitement of live performance.

Damaged and Damned begins with a punchy statement of intent, Like Every Other Ghost, which features the “ringing” guitar tone of the last EP Something Shining, Something Bright in an up-tempo opening which begins with a galloping bass and rolling drum patterns underpinning a song vaguely reminiscent of Laura-era Fields of the Nephilim in tone, with Arc’s vocal firmly in the whispered bellowing style initially made famous by Carl McCoy. Immediately though, the band’s increased sophistication is revealed in the subtlety of a multi-layered middle section before the song reaches a suitable finale.

The Nephilim influence is even more apparent in the album’s title track which follows and which evokes the Stevenage band’s Phobia, which was itself in turn based on Motorhead’s Ace of Spades. The scuzzier descending bassline here is definitely more in tune with Lemmy’s band’s earlier recordings though, and gives a clear indication of the forceful nature of the group’s all-too-rare live performances.

The more melodic guitar tone is back on the epic Hidden Rooms, which is subdivided into two parts either side of another track, Ashes. Hidden Rooms I is classic mid-tempo gothic rock with a spacey texture, Arc’s vocal again mixed slightly low to add to the air of mystery, whilst (as on several tracks on the album) some of the guitar part sounds almost like a live-in-the-studio jam over a solid rhythm section. Hidden Rooms II is initially a slower crepuscular delight, building the tension slowly until the pace gradually increases, not unlike in the Nephs’ Last Exit For The Lost.

Ashes is more angular, having the kind of more tribal drumming and Banshees-esque two-chord progression associated with deathrock, and its powerful, more rudimentary charm will hopefully help to open up new markets for the band particularly on the other side of the Atlantic where this genre is particularly appreciated and where Christian Death still cast a long, dark shadow...

The second Hidden Rooms introduces a more introspective section of the album, with Detoxed featuring a slightly cleaner vocal, showcasing Mapk’s uplifting lyric expressing the resolve and hope of a life freed from the clutches of alcohol, over a slightly plaintive musical background. Landslide is probably the most musically innovative track on the album, featuring inverted riffs and syncopated rhythms in the main verse sections, followed by a more regular beat in the chorus initially, before the two combine in the climax of one of the most refreshing tracks on the album.

The final trilogy of tracks up the stakes further, with a church organ adding to the spooky atmosphere of the opening of Leave Me Here, another slow-burning song with a FOTN feel, this time bringing to mind the classic At The Gates of Silent Memory – in fact the lyric “At the Gates” features prominently in the most dramatic section of the song. Again, the subtlety involved in the song’s construction is apparent as it moves through different textures and sections, and the band again show restraint in the opening section of the genuinely disturbing The Haunted Generation where the echoing string-bending guitars blend perfectly with a graveyard vocal in a journey through “the shadow of fear”, creating the perfect setting for the album’s piece de resistance and closing track Vermillion.

Every great goth album has a really bombastic closing track – Some Kind Of Stranger on First and Last and Always, Can’t Lose You on Bloody Kisses, Mercury on Blood or Dawnrazor on, erm, Dawnrazor – and Guillotine Dream subconsciously use the latter as a template of their own meisterwerk, with Vermillion featuring a vaguely familiar drum pattern, a shroud tense-as-tripwire suspended guitar and an anguished vampiric vocal to bring what has been a very satisfying album to a truly epic conclusion.

Singer and guitarist Arc recently told me in an interview, “It contains lots of the things we love about goth, but with a rawer, punkier edge this time,” and repeated playings of the album certainly confirm both aspects of the statement. Damaged and Damned is available here and is highly recommended to fans of no-nonsense old-fashioned guitar-driven gothic rock. The CD costs a mere £10 with a paltry £2 p&p within the UK.

Album Review : X by She Past Away (remix album)

Turkish band She Past Away has been credited with being the catalyst for the revival of the post-punk/goth/darkwave scene in the 2010’s, with a distinctive sound that appeals as much to older fans reconnecting to the scene through the wonders of social media as to word-of-mouth trendy young basement alternative club movers and shakers.  Having spaced their opening trilogy of albums in an Olympian manner, with Belirdi Gece (recorded in 2011), followed by Narin Yalnızlık (released in 2015) and then Disko Anksiyete (2019), the duo are back on the scene more quickly than expected to celebrate their tenth anniversary, albeit with a remix album (X), which although covering tracks dating back to initial EP Kasvetli Kutlama (2010), nevertheless continues the more deliberately dancefloor-oriented direction of their most recent album.

Having aired my ambivalent views on the whole concept of the remix album at some length in this blog’s recent review of the Antipole release Perspectives II, I must say at the outset that this double album is one of the best examples of the genre which I have heard, with most tracks not only instantly recognisable but also enhanced and updated by the remixers.

This is almost certainly entirely due to the breadth and sheer quality of the remixers involved, a veritable “who’s who?” of the darkwave scene of the last forty (although particularly the last five) years, ranging from wave veterans Clan of Xymox and Front 242 to the likes of Kill Shelter and Ash Code.

The tone is set from the opening track, The Soft Moon’s remix of Ritüel which features his usual disconcerting pitch-bending bass-heavy dubstep-inspired brilliance, with Volker Caner’s now-isloated vocal adding to the song’s sense of emotional claustrophobia. Vancouver-based remixer FM Attack’s take on SPA’s iconic Asimilasyon respects the classic melody and reverberating charm of the original, whilst opting for a more plinky-plonky (apologies to any laymen for my use of technical language) keyboard approach, emphasising its dancefloor appeal.

The first real surprise of the album is Deer Dear’s version of Ruh, which is rightly listed as a cover rather than a remix, with the duo adding a new French language vocal to a more distorted backing, with the repeated chorus “Je reviendrai” prominent in a very successful marriage of the new and the old.

Boy Harsher’s Durdu Dünya and Tobias Bernstrup’s Kasvetli Kutlama are more straightforward dancefloor-oriented remixes (and therefore to me personally, less interesting), the former darker and more regimented than the original, the latter a light disco synthwave interpretation. The following track is one of two equally straight extended remixes of tracks from Disko Anksiyete by DJ Fn1, the first the title track, and the second La Maldad, which add disco beats and beeps to what are essentially largely the original tracks.

Only seven tracks in and we already have our first repeat, with Ruh now remixed by Bragolin, the Dutch act successfully introducing their own trademark slightly distorted staccato guitar style to the mix, resulting in a less-polished, more low-fi but still "full" production which retains the original’s twists and turns with aplomb. Next up is the first of two remixes by SPA themselves, with La Maldad’s Alan Vega-esque guitar lines replaced by sequenced keyboards for the dancefloor, whilst later in the set we are treated to a more minimalist take on the second album’s title track which allows Caner’s beautifully reverberated guitar line to shine through.

Approaching the middle of the twenty-two track album the big names arrive thick and fast, with a pleasingly stark take on Izole from Lebanon Hanover followed by French post-punk act RENDEZ VOUS’s disappointingly ambient remix of  Disko Anksiyete and a Front 242 remix of Kasvetli Kutlama which reduces the powerful charm of the original tune in a 90’s remix of bleeps and whirrs.

Having dipped significantly after a promising start,  the album is salvaged by some further excellent celebrity remixes, with Clan of Xymox’s Ronny Moorings sensibly retaining the guitar line in Sanri whilst enhancing the original with some “Da Da Da” style old school bleeps and a more solid bassline, with bandmate Mario Usai submitting a superb remix of Hayaller which is X’s penultimate cut, turning the pleasant but rather spartan original into a full-on 80’s-style old school goth slow-burner with a modern twist.

Album highlight Kill Shelter’s remix of Soluk is even better adding a flanged riff reminiscent of The Sisters of Mercy and slowing down the original backbeat at times to produce a wall-of-sound version that is suitably deeper and darker but crucially also more danceable. Sonbahar from SPA’s most recent album already had an Antipole feel, and the Norwegian artist and his usual collaborator Paris Alexander accentuate the bouncing nature of the original guitar riff and gives the track a more relaxed feel.

Italian wave act Ash Code also distinguish themselves, giving Katarsis the full Moroder sequencer treatment, with a strong synth bassline whilst successfully retaining both the melody and atmosphere of the original, and Kasvetli Kutlama (making its third appearance) also gets a discofied bassline in New York DJ Martial Canterel’s interestingly angular remix, whilst Sun’s Spectrum also add an extra electronic impetus to flesh out a sparse Monoton, which now starts with a delightfully scuzzy bass riff.

Greek post-punk band Selofan add one of the album’s most delightful surprises with a dark remix of Renksiz, one of the last album’s lighter moments, beefing it up with an enhanced atmospheric bassline, stronger beat and extra keyboard layers, and the album ends strongly with QUAL’s remix of Boşluk, the Lebanon Hanover star bringing the Nephilimistic guitar riff of Disko Anksiyete’s instrumental opener to the start of a very extended version before introducing a more typically harsh metronomic backbeat as the song heads off in a more electro direction.

As well as restoring She Past Away’s reputation after the lukewarm reaction to their last album in the darkwave community, the differing styles of the various remixes on X will hopefully help to carry the band (and the genre)’s music beyond the straitjacket of the slowly-growing post-punk ghetto to the more mainstream audience which would surely appreciate their well-written and easy-on-the-ear style.

On an equally positive note, the album has already sold out its vinyl limited edition and only a handful of CDs remain via their Bandcamp page.

Ten Questions to ... Joel Heyes (Byronic Sex & Exile)

Where is the epicentre of goth culture? Where did the flickering flame first ignite, to be carried across the globe by the early disciples? Some would suggest that the (then) industrial city of Leeds in the UK, from which The Sisters of Mercy rose and reverberated in the early 1980’s is the true spiritual home of goth, whilst others would trace the culture all the way back to Vlad the Impaler in ancient Transylvania, allegedly the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Whichever school of thought you subscribe to, the impressive new album Cu Foc ( “with fire” in Romanian) by Leeds’ foremost current goth act Byronic Sex & Exile therefore comes with an impeccable goth pedigree, and is a suitably grandiose project, including a three-part song cycle based on translated Romanian poetry of the gothic tradition.

Byronic Sex & Exile (BS&E) is the latest project by Leeds’ very own “Mr Goth”, Joel Heyes, the brainchild of the Goth City events which have successfully added roots, gravitas and renown to the city’s rightful claim to be the musical birthplace of the enduring genre, exposing the sad reality of what in my view have been the occasional half-hearted attempts by the city’s official institutions to capitalise on its global cult reputation.

Cu Foc has the makings of a fascinating cultural project worthy of study, one might think, but musically the album is a very strong contender in its own right. Stunning album closer Eternity sees Heyes channelling vintage Peter Murphy over a classic acoustic descending riff, whilst Your Name On The Wind (which also featured on the Opera from the Wastes EP) is zeitgeist-grabbing up-beat coldwave dark twang, with another plaintive Heyes vocal. The album’s focal point however is the three-part song cycle, Luceafărul with Heyes in best Nick Cave lounge lizard form over a melancholic but undeniably gothic piano motif at the beginning of Part I before it develops into a more cinematic Pink Floydesque guitar and synth soundscape. Part II is up at 160BPM, before Part III with its more subdued tempo completes the cycle. Of the other standout tracks, album opener Cu Foc I possesses a Bunnymenesque brooding intensity, whilst Timisoara Eyes boasts a classic goth guitar intro and Nosferatu In Furs continues the album’s eclectic style with the charm of an off-beat Berlin waltz.

Although clearly a man not afraid to don a frilly white shirt or post a smouldering selfie, the dandyish Heyes skilfully pitches the project with self-deprecating wit, using the same dry humour evident in his YouTube A Goth Guide to Leeds in describing BS&E as “romantic byro-goth for the discerning aristocratic rebel”, and crucially avoiding the ridiculous self-important pomposity of, say, Merciful Nuns. This album also introduces a Western audience to poets whose work had previously been inaccessible for reasons of language, and explores aspects of Transylvanian culture which go beyond Dracula stereotypes, a concept which Heyes hopes to explore further in his forthcoming Ph.D. project, which he is currently crowd-funding.

Frustrated like all acts by their inability to perform the new songs live for the time being, this Friday (22^nd May) at 8 p.m. (UK time), BS&E will be live streaming a show from “the relative comfort of their gothic crypt”, presenting some of the songs from Cu Foc in torch song cabaret style, with donations encouraged to the Leeds refugee charity PAFRAS for which he has already raised huge sums of money through previous gothic ventures. In the words of the man himself, “Put on your best cape, grab a goblet of wine and sit back for a decadent session of True Kult Gothery”!

Link to BS&E Bandcamp

Link to this Friday’s event: Cabaret Cu Foc: a Carpathian rhapsody

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1. You’ve previously been involved in more industrial punky projects like Action Directe or full-on dark “goff” rock like Quasimodo before starting up BS&E about four years ago. Did you just feel the need to do something a little more brooding and atmospheric?

Joel Heyes: First off, thank you very much for the interview! I guess this all started back when I decided in 2011, shortly before Action Directe split up for the second time, that they weren’t going to be my main project anymore. Up until that point AD had been the sole depository for all my writing (for good or ill!) and at that point I decided to work on many different, specific musical projects instead. Quasimodo were very much the first and most successful of these, but there were also I Demand Satisfaction, Carpathian Love Gods, Electroslav, Viet Bong, and Byronic Sex & Exile was very much conceived as one of those projects. Having done one E.P on 2015 I assumed that would be it, but it was only in 2017 that I began to see the potential of a project that could reconnect goth to it’s cultural & political roots, so that’s when things really took off with BS&E.

2. Who were your musical influences for BS&E in general and this new album in particular?

Joel Heyes: Although I didn’t realise it at the time, BS&E is very much influenced by overt ’90 gothic rock – London After Midnight, Horatii, Nosferatu, Rosetta Stone – as well as proto-goth influences such as Bowie, Iggy Pop, Diamanda Galas. The Damned and Lords of the New Church are probably the two big influences for everything really. In terms of the album, musically I was trying to broaden the pallet so there’s some Dead Can Dance and Carpathian folk & classical in there too.

3. The “dandy” end of goth can seem a little po-faced and self-important at times, yet you use humour whenever talking about BS&E, for example describing the project as “romantic Byro-goth for the discerning aristocratic rebel”. Do you think that it’s important to keep things tongue-in-cheek?

Joel Heyes: It’s important to have a sense of humour about whatever you do, because you’re meant to be having fun. One of the great paradoxes about the goth scene and in fact any alternative subculture is that the people most opposed to seeming po-faced are the ones who are very humourless about it – people really go a long way not to appear sincere, and get very annoyed at anyone who is. BS&E show that even if you are deadly serious about poetry & politics that you can still have more fun with it than those acts who are intent on not being ‘pretentious’. Self-consciousness really is the UK goth disease.

4. The new album Cu Foc has a Romanian title and several songs are based on Romanian poetry. Was it through the Dracula story that your interest in that country developed?

Joel Heyes: Obviously vampire culture is the gateway to an interest in Transylvania, but I’d been a longtime student of Romanian politics (I did my MA dissertation on it) so it’s been a longstanding interest. In a way, the Dracula element is probably the least interesting thing about the place for me these days. The first rough mix of Cu Foc had loads of vampire film samples, and in the end I ditched them all before the final mix because I didn’t want people to see this as another bog-standard Dracula tribute – it got in the way of the essence of the thing.

5. Was your aim in basing the lyrics on these poems to bring Romanian poets to a Western audience or did they just seem like potential lyrics when you read them?

Joel Heyes: I think in the same way as ‘Gothism’ (the first album) it was about reconnecting the concept to its true energy – the creative source. So I wanted to look behind the Dracula stuff to the real gothic heart of Carpathian culture, as even without the vampire stuff Transylvania is an incredibly interesting and creative place. The poems and ideas from Romania that are on the album are really about bringing out the real gothic elements of Carpathian culture to a wider audience. Why Eminescu isn’t as popular as Poe or Stoker amongst a western goth audience, I’ll never know.

6. You’re planning to base your Ph. D thesis on Dark Tourism in Romania. Can we expect further Carpathian influence on BS&E in the future?

Joel Heyes: Probably not, as I like each album and project to be a distinct entity – for me, creative projects have a shelf life of about 18 months and then I start to look at the next one. So although I’d like to showcase the Cu Foc live show at least once later in the year, it’s not a project I’m planning on living in for much longer – although I am considering an album of remixes & reworkings from Cu Foc, as there’s a lot of life in these tracks yet.

7. Apart from for the band, you’re also well-known as the organiser of the annual Goth City Festival/Event in Leeds, and you’ve recently announced a change to holding it in the summer in future to avoid other high-profile events in the region such as Infest and the various Whitby events. How big do you think that the Leeds event could become in the future – the British equivalent of WGT for example?

Joel Heyes: Leeds is the biggest city in the UK to hold a regular goth festival, and it’s clear that we have the venues, transport links, cultural legacy, local scene and accommodation to make a larger event successful. So if it’s going to work anywhere, it’s here. But the challenge is to build it on a sustainable, non-profit basis – we’ve raised £10,000 for our preferred charity at Goth City in four years, and we want that to be the benchmark for what we do. If HyperGlobalMegCorp come in to exploit the commercial potential it’d be a disaster for the UK scene, so it’s a matter of steadily building.

In terms of the summer move, we have no summer goth festival in the UK in June/July, and the Aug-October calendar for goth events is too congested. This way we can use many of the great outdoor venues in Leeds, which we can’t do in the winter.

8. You did a video tour of goth Leeds on YouTube last year that went down well. Thinking of your Ph D topic, do you think goth tourism could be a major contributor to the local economy? Do you think that Leeds as a city currently does enough to capitalise on its goth musical heritage?

Joel Heyes: Leeds is only just beginning to wake up to this – we’ve done a lot of work with our colleagues at Leeds Festival of Gothica to create a goth heritage network from scratch, and local tourism bodies have started to engage with us on it. So potentially yes, very much so. But the main issue was how Leeds goth sees itself – when I began Goth City I was told point blank that a goth festival would never work in Leeds, and a lot of people feel ownership of the culture and legacy of the scene here, so it’s never been easy. There are dozens of different interest groups pulling in different directions, so as yet there isn’t one voice we all speak in. We want to celebrate Leeds’ goth legacy, but as a living culture and not a retro activity.

9. How would you describe the strength of the scene in the city at the moment (pre-lockdown, obviously!)?

Joel Heyes: It’s probably never been heathier in decades – bearing in mind we have Goth City, Leeds Festival of Gothica, Carpe Noctum which is the largest regular goth club night in Britain, Absinthe Promotions who are now running Tomorrow’s Ghosts at Whitby, Bunker 13 who cater for the EBM end, not to mention in Yorkshire generally we have Infest, Night Shift, Shadow of the Castle. This is as good as it gets, really.

10. Having had to cancel your live shows to promote Cu Foc, you’re hosting a live event on Friday 22nd raising funds for PAFRAS. Can you share a few more details about what can we expect?

Joel Heyes: I’m trying to see what is possible in a performance setting from my home in Leeds during lockdown, so this will be a test to see what I can do – expect a lot of the tracks from Cu Foc that I can perform in a stripped-down, torch song format. I hope to start doing regular, one-off shows around new concepts every month during lockdown if it goes well, although nothing replaces actually being on stage.

Ten Questions to .... Arc (Guillotine Dream)

UK goth act Guillotine Dream are back with a new album in the pipeline entitled Damaged and Damned, to be released later this summer by Secret Sin Records, following on from their impressive 2019 EP for the same label, Something Shining, Something Bright. Having also previously recorded for Oskar Terramortis’ ground-breaking Gothic Rock label, the bemasked trio are at the forefront of the current revival of interest in old school 80’s-influenced guitar-driven goth.

As a teaser for the forthcoming LP, Guillotine Dream this week released a chilling video featuring the album's closing epic, Vermillion, a real slow burner of a track which harks back to the bombastic early days of Fields of the Nephilim, with a full two-minute instrumental build-up before vocalist Arc begins to intone a vampiric lyric ("Look at those blood-red beautiful lips!") in a suitably chilling voice over an extended, detuned and powerful jam solidly underpinned by powerful Dawnrazor-esque drumming from sticksman Mapk. Lake’s buzzing bass and Arc’s tense-as-tripwire guitar slashes hanging like dense sheets of freezing fog complete a multi-layered aural assault that ensnares the listener in a tale of bloodlust, with some well-edited mildly disturbing horror movie visual tropes as an accompaniment on the video. Sonsombre's Brandon Pybus was one of many contemporaries duly impressed, succinctly commenting "They have a wonderfully dark sound. They never disappoint".

Having followed Guillotine Dream’s progress since first becoming enamoured with the up-tempo track Signs (think Trees Come Down meets In The Flat Field) from their debut EP Lemuria four years ago, the new song represents a further refining of their brooding, evocative sound and the album seems set to catapult them to the forefront of a UK goth scene which retained a niche presence during the global gothic slump of the first decade and a half of the new millennium thanks to the Whitby festivals and the consistent excellence of bands like Grooving Green, The Last Cry, NFD and more recently October Burns Black and Sometime The Wolf, to name but five acts.

I was therefore pleased when Guillotine Dream’s main man Arc agreed to an interview (but also felt some slight trepidation having read his not entirely serious discussion with Absolution and the "Goth Tinder" humour of Primitive's video), and subsequently delighted when he gave such full and interesting answers to some fairly predictable questions!

Current Guillotine Dream releases can be obtained via Secret Sin records and from their Bandcamp store.

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1.           You’ve been in bands for the past thirty years or so, mainly on the death metal scene (and some of which are also still active) like many artists of the current wave of goth bands (eg Sonsombre). What for you are the similarities between the two genres, and do you find that certain elements of death metal survive in your Guillotine Dream compositions?

Arc: Yes possibly. The energy is similar. I have deliberately stayed away from using a distorted sound on most songs for GD. Overdrive all the way. We are happy to shove in a growl or some double bends occasionally but keep away from anything too metal. I did (and still do) play death/doom metal so we don't want GD to be a metal band. Songs are much easier to create with GD and have a very free feel to them. The lyrics are also very enjoyable to write without the usual rigorous self-analysis and soul searching that comes with writing in My Silent Wake. I play in MSW with Lake and three other friends. Mapk was once a member of the band. Another old MSW member, Ash plays some gigs with us on second guitar. Both bands are enjoyable for different reasons. Plenty of metal bands such as Paradise Lost and In The Woods were goth influenced. The band Celtic Frost had a very experimental and dark edge to them which influenced so many and annoyed a few closed-minded individuals.

GD was formed for our own enjoyment and to fulfil the desire to play fairly traditional gothic rock, which we all enjoy immensely. Since around 2010 I had had some experience playing with my friend Martin Bowes in Attrition. I contributed guitar to The Unraveller album and Gary Gilmore's Eyes EP and played a few gigs. This was such a departure from playing thrash or doom and a completely different way of playing the guitar and I loved it.

I was in a goth band around 1990 with my friend Danny called Children of Power which had members of my thrash band Seventh Angel and another friend. Sadly, we only did one gig and split. In the end, many years later Danny recorded one of the songs with his band Zonei. Since then I have had a hankering to play trad goth again!

2.           Your initial EP release Lemuria got very positive reviews and saw you sign with Gothic Rock records for your first full album release, incorporating many of the EP’s tracks. Was the aim mainly to get your music to a more worldwide audience?

Arc: The EP tracks we used on the album were re-recorded so both versions could be enjoyed. Lemuria and Signs were extended and Darkling Rooms has a number of differences too. The aim was to be able to sustain regular recording sessions without having to plough any more of our own money in!

Of course we want more people to hear our music but we do it primarily for ourselves. It was a shame that the album was released just as Oskar was finishing the label. It had no real promotion.

3.           Many reviews of the early releases pointed out a similarity to Fields of the Nephilim. Were they an influence? Which other goth bands did you listen to when you first got into the genre?

Arc: Of course they were a huge influence! We all love them. The atmosphere they create is wonderful. For me my other major goth/alt/punk influences are Sisters, Bauhaus, The Damned, The Cult, New Model Army, Dead Can Dance, Faith and The Muse, Type O, NFD, And Also the Trees, The Mission, Rosetta Stone, Joy Division etc etc. I have always been a fan of goth and alternative as well as metal, classic rock and folk. Recently I discovered the music of The Blue Angel Lounge which I adore. My first few singles as a kid were Adam and The Ants, Saxon, Rush, Maiden and Bauhaus. Bowie's Ashes to Ashes and Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime were also real eye openers at the time. I must mention U2 as well.

 I don't see alternative styles as that different from each other in spirit and it's good to see more open-mindedness since the days I was growing up and the restrictive camps of punks, rockers, mods, teds. I still remember a school friend being appalled at me at about the age of twelve for liking Saxon as well as Adam and the Ants. If you love music an open mind is the best way. We all stand together against the mainstream shit. The useless crap on the radio masquerading as music these days sickens me. I grew up with Visage, Ultravox, Maiden, Motorhead, Priest, Bauhaus all entering the charts and all sounding incredible.

4.           You did a cover of The Sisters of Mercy’s Marian on the last EP, your first for Secret Sin Records. Why did you choose that particular song?

Arc: We had been covering it live and are all big fans of this song. I think it was an ambition especially for Mapk to cover this. We haven't covered many songs in GD. We did play Celebrate at our first gig and also covered a My Silent Wake song which is strongly goth influenced.

5.           For Marian, your more traditional “growled” vocal was more of a croon. Was that just because the Eldritch vocal line lent itself to that style, or are you looking at branching out in terms of your vocal style?

Arc: Actually Mapk sings lead vox on this song! This is the only song like this. He sings backing vocals on other songs.

6.           For the first Secret Sin EP, Something Shining, Something Bright, your guitar sound certainly had a shinier, brighter almost ringing tone to it, especially on songs like Three O’Clock and Creatures See, Is that something which will be carried over to the new LP?

Arc: Yes it has been pretty much. I haven't actually changed the tone much since we started but maybe added a little more gain etc. The sound on Wych Elm Bella was different due to my amp being a bastard on the day of recording that song. I think I used a Mesa boogie instead. Generally my trusty Vox/Schecter combination has worked well.

7.           The first track released as a teaser for the new LP, Vermillion, is a real slow-burning epic, like a stoner doom version of Dawnrazor. Are you aiming for a more epic, bombastic style of sound this time around?

Arc: I suppose it is similar in tone to Dead Genius on the debut. There is a lot of variety in tempos on this album again. It contains lots of the things we love about goth, but with a rawer, punkier edge this time. The recording was done in two days. When we went in, one song was just one small part and another was written from scratch during this time. The others were very roughly arranged. Pretty much everything was first take and the mixing had to be done without us being there. Some parts are very improvised and experimental but it all seems to work.

                           ("Look at those coated beautiful Rings!")

8.           The video that accompanies Vermillion is very chilling, and very removed from the “Party Rings” humour of the video that accompanied Primitive for example. Is that an indication that you’re taking Guillotine Dream more seriously as a project?

Arc: My girlfriend Sarah and I made it a few days ago for fun and it turned out very well. It was filmed and edited on my mobile and was done just behind where we live in the Welsh countryside. An element of the band has always been humour and disinformation or at least something a bit tongue-in-cheek, as it adds to the enjoyment and creates a bit of much-needed chaos. The band began life in a shop window in Stafford, believe it or not! A music shop had electric drums and amps set up and we couldn't resist. We aren't young and haven't/won't/don't want to, make any money from this so why take things too seriously at the risk of spoiling the chaos which is GD?  This is the first straight interview I have given tbh! We just make it up as we go along, a bit like our music!

9.           The band’s image – name, appearance, logo, album covers, videos - seems to be based on horror movie tropes. Is that an interest which you all share?

Arc: Of course! I am a fan of Hammer and the like and the more cerebral or supernatural side of things. I have a fascination with all things Fortean as well which has inspired many of the songs including Man ov Fyre, Number 16 and Lemuria. Mapk likes his gritty, gory stuff. Not sure if I have ever discussed this extensively with Lake.

10.         So far you’ve only played some relatively low-key gigs. When the current lockdown ends, do you intend to tour Guillotine Dream a bit further afield, as you’ve done with some of your other projects?  

Arc: If we get offered anything and our lives and health permit it, we will do at least a few gigs.

Live Review - Then Comes Silence live stream gig, Hus 7, Stockholm, 14th May 2020

Then Comes Silence don’t do things by halves. Rightly regarded by commentators as disparate as The 69 Eyes’ vocalist Jyrki and veteran Leeds goth DJ Mark M as the best new goth/post-punk act of the twenty-first century, the Swedish band has already delivered probably the best trilogy of albums since The Cure’s dark masterpieces of the very early 1980’s with Nyctophilian (2015), Blood (2017) and Machine (2020). Their recent contribution to the Gothicat Online Festival, a quarantine cover of Siouxsie and The Banshees’ Christine, was widely considered to be by far the best on the night, and when they announced a live stream concert of their own for Thursday 14^th May, it was clear that this was not going to be a half-hearted affair.

Renting one of Stockholm’s most atmospheric clubs (Hus 7) as the venue, and with stage lighting and a professional camera crew orchestrated by Damon Zurawski, who produced the stunning video of their last single Apocalypse Flare, Then Comes Silence set a new standard for other musicians to follow in what may be an extended period when normal touring is not possible, creating the illusion of a live club performance in the comfort of the viewers’ own living rooms, and transporting me personally back ten months to the night when I saw them on top form in a cellar bar in Edinburgh.

The band made the gig even more inclusive for fans by allowing them to vote for the setlist via an online poll on their Facebook fan club, with the top twelve songs selected for the show. In the end, Ritual was excluded from the gig (presumably because of the unavailability of True Moon’s Karolina Engedahl who duets on the album version) but otherwise all the fans’ favourites were played in a well-paced show covering the last three albums, beginning with the opening track from Blood, The Dead Cry For No-One. What was immediately apparent was the sheer quality of the sound production, which was as sharp as at any gig I have attended in the past forty years: Jonas Fransson’s drumming underpins the whole live experience, and the value of the human drummer over a machine was demonstrated on several occasions, for example when there was a false start to the band’s best known track (measured by YouTube views), Strangers from Nyctophilian, and in songs like The Rest Will Follow, where twin guitarists Mattias Ruejas Jonson and Hugo Zombie have licence to show their flair. The latest recruits to the band, Jonson and Zombie are a dream partnership of opposites, the former impressing with his precision and extensive use of a bewildering array of pedal effects, whilst the latter the band’s visual focus, a whirling dervish in perpetual motion reacting to the moment in the best tradition of alternative rock’n’roll.

The clear focal point of the band is centre stage however, with panda-eyed founder member, singer and bassist Alex Svenson dominating the show with his lugubrious baritone croon and magnetic charisma, dramatically raising his bass to a vertical position at crucial points in the more up-tempo songs like Flashing Pangs of Love and She Loves The Night. The brooding Good Friday, Svenson’s emotional farewell to his dying father, the punky Strange Kicks, the dramatic Dark End and the band’s cinematic signature tune W.O.O.O.U. from the new album were other highlights in a triumphant main set that ended with a wonderful rendition of the epic Kill It, with Fransson and his illuminated drumkit lost in a sea of dry ice whilst Ruejas Jonson successfully replicated the six string alchemy of the version on Machine. After a suitable gap mirroring the pause in a gig, with frantic demands for an encore raining in on the comments from fans on the YouTube live stream, Svenson lead the band back on stage for a further two numbers, ending with a celebratory romp through Animals, always a live favourite.

With this exquisitely filmed virtual gig, Then Comes Silence have reinforced their position at the very forefront of the current goth/post-punk revival and set a new standard for live stream shows, matching the consistently high standard of their studio work, and exhibiting both a professionalism and a musicality (combining melody, power and atmosphere) worthy of a huge mainstream following to go with their current cult fanbase of like-minded cognoscenti. Any promoters dropping in on this stellar show will surely have pencilled the band in at the top of their festival wishlist for the time when live gigs ultimately recommence, but for the time being the Swedes have served up a wonderful boost for the mental and emotional well-being of their adoring fanbase, who were encouraged to contribute to the significant cost of staging the event either by direct donation or via the virtual merch table.

Ten Questions to .... Hugo Zombie (Then Comes Silence)

Sweden’s Then Comes Silence seem to have been one of the few bands who have been as active during the pandemic as they were before, albeit in a more remote manner. Not only did they post two quarantine cover versions online (All Tomorrow’s Parties and Christine), but they have been involved in various remixes (Wisborg remixing their own last single Apocalypse Flare and TCS frontman Alex Svenson remixing the likes of The Foreign Resort and Wisborg as well as producing two tracks on the new EP from aux animaux ).

The undisputed highlight though has been the announcement of a Then Comes Silence live stream this coming Thursday (14th May) at 8 p.m. UK time, 9 p.m. CET, with the setlist of twelve tracks chosen by members of their Facebook fan group. Hopefully this live broadcast (link here) from Stockholm’s Hus7 venue will help to finally bring the band to the wider audience which their music deserves, and those who have yet to witness TCS in concert are in for a treat.

Over the past two months on this blog we have individually interviewed the band members in the order which they joined the band, starting with founder member Alex, then drummer Jonas, followed by Mattias – and today I am delighted to say that we are completing the set with Hugo, who first filled in on some dates in the latter part of 2018.

 (Hugo Zombie [left] on stage with Then Comes SIlence, Edinburgh July 2019 pic: NVL)

Many TCS fans were/are unaware that the new guitarist (whose permanent recruitment was announced shortly after that initial trial stint) was in fact already one of the most revered on the global deathrock/goth scene, having spent almost the entirety of the previous two decades with seminal Spanish outfits Naughty Zombies and then Los Carniceros del Norte, the Basque horror punks who are legendary figures on the alternative scene in the hispanophone world, although barely known in the more traditionally inward-looking English-speaking markets of the US and UK.

Zac Campbell, guitarist of leading US goth outfit The Kentucky Vampires, rates Hugo Zombie as “one of the biggest inspirations” in his career, and told me about the adulation he witnessed the one time he was fortunate to see Los Carniceros del Norte live, at a show in Mexico City (which was filmed and later released on the “Live In Mexico” DVD). "The venue was over capacity for sure and it was the craziest show I've ever been to. The crowd were going crazy for them, and it reminded me of the old videos you see of the public reaction to The Beatles. I wanted to meet the band after the show but it was so crazy we just ended up leaving." With LCDN records difficult to obtain outwith Spain, it has taken Campbell years of painstaking research to proudly assemble a full collection of the band’s releases.

Hugo Zombie was not only guitarist but also the chief songwriter and producer for Los Carniceros del Norte (The Butchers from The North), and he also found time for side projects, whether as a journalist (writing about his visits to WGT and even interviewing Then Comes Silence after his initial temporary guest slot with the band!) or as musician, using the name H. Zombie for his solo work (which often involved familiar collaborators).

He has recently made these projects available from Bandcamp, and I would particularly recommend the 2013 Deathrock is Dead EP, described by that oracle amongst goth commentators, Mick Mercer, as “a monstrously beautiful juggernaut” upon release, adding “I like noise when accompanied by artistry, and few people in the world better exhibit the alchemical ability to blend these two aspects than young H. Zombie.”

Not only did Hugo Zombie bring this musical expertise, experience and ability to Then Comes Silence when he joined, he has also significantly enhanced the band’s visual profile. Too many of the young bands and artists my own kids go to see these days amble on stage in a cardigan and jeans, whereas I’ve always wanted my rock stars to look like rock stars, and Hugo certainly doesn’t disappoint in that regard: with his make-up, leather cap and studded belt he looks like he’s permanently auditioning for a Lords of The New Church tribute band. Onstage he runs the full gamut of rock guitarist gestures, legs splayed one minute, jumping up and down and heading back to the monitors the next, the very epitome of Johnny Thunders-esque cool, and clearly an artist who lives for live shows.

With his fascinating past and interesting present I found it a struggle to stick to just ten questions, and I'd like to thank Hugo for taking the time and trouble to answer my questions so fully.

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1. You were in two bands before Then Comes Silence, Naughty Zombies and then a decade as the main songwriter and guitarist of Los Carniceros del Norte, a goth-punk deathrock band which many of the newer bands on the scene cite as an influence. Do you think that you were just before your time?

Hugo Zombie: I don’t know, but those were good times anyway. When Naughty Zombies started in early 2000s, there was a lot of great bands in the deathrock goth-punk scene. Our influences at that time were mainly current bands like Subtonix, The Vanishing, Lost Sounds, Black Ice, The Phantom Limbs... There was also Strobelight Records releasing amazing albums and their New Dark Age Compilations giving visibility to new bands, Drop Dead Festival [originally a US-based deathrock event] came to Europe... The first DDF European Edition was in 2007 in Prague, and I played there with both Naughty Zombies and Los Carniceros Del Norte. I kept playing with both bands for a couple of years, I was very busy, so yeah, I think those were good times to be doing what we were doing.

Having said that, I’m truly honored to hear that my music could have influenced newer bands on the scene, and I really hope that it helped to keep the flame alive too.

2. After Los Carniceros del Norte split up, you moved to Stockholm from Spain. Were you looking to join a new band at that point?

Hugo Zombie: I’m a Rock n’ Roll junkie, so yes, absolutely. I was friends with Jonas before I moved to Stockholm, and almost every time we met, I asked him the same question: “Hey, do you know if there’s any band in town looking for a guitar player? I fucking miss playing!”

I had hopes that some day he’d tell me something like “Yeah, I have some friends who are starting a new band and looking for a guitar player...” which was also not very likely, because there’s a lot of guitar players around everywhere. So I was very surprised and really, really happy when Jonas sent me a message asking me if I wanted to join TCS as substitute for a small tour. I had enough time to think and realize how much i had missed the stage, so even if it was only going to be a couple of shows, it sounded like heaven.

3. As I said before, in your two previous bands you were the driving force, as guitarist/songwriter/producer. Have you found it hard to adjust to joining what is effectively someone else’s band?

Hugo Zombie: No, not at all, I’m a team player and I know my role in TCS. It’s not like being “the driving force” was my choice in previous bands, but all the band members lived in different towns, and that meant no rehearsal space, no band jamming together or anything like that. I had some knowledge about music production software, so my home studio (Zombiestudios) became the virtual operations center. I wrote songs from scratch, but also my bandmates sent me melodies, bass lines etc. that i used as pieces to build songs: sequence drums, add guitars, keyboards, arrangements... then recording, mixing, mastering... I had to learn how to do it and take care of the whole production process, but now I can just focus on playing guitar.

I also have a solo project that you can check out on hzombie.bandcamp.com . I started this in 2008 to release “experiments” that wouldn’t fit in any of my bands. I even made a Dark Electro / Aggrotech EP just for fun, and surprisingly it got great reviews in specialized media. So if some day i feel like writing/producing music again, probably it will be for this.

   (Funeral is from H. Zombie's Deathrock Is Dead EP available on Bandcamp)

4. Alex has said that he worked out the basis of many of the songs on Machine with you. Did you enjoy writing with someone else?

Hugo Zombie: I think that Alex meant that he wrote the music having me and my way of playing in mind, because I didn’t actually write anything. That’s not a problem at all: Alex is an amazing songwriter and he knows better than anyone how TCS sounds, so I’m more than happy to play whatever he asks me to play.

5. On FB you recently said that Apocalypse Flare and Cuts Inside were your favourite tracks on Machine. What about those tracks do you particularly like?

Hugo Zombie: Yes, Apocalypse Flare was one of the first new songs that I played with TCS when we started to practise together. Good memories. I liked it very much from the beginning, but it has developed since then and it’s even better now. Cuts Inside is newer, but I’ve also liked it a lot since I heard Alex’s demo for the first time. I was mildly upset that it was going to be one of the outtakes of the album, haha. What I like about those songs are the strong rhythms and powerful choruses, and a good mixture of energy and melody.

6. You have a very distinctive visual style, which is reminiscent of Johnny Thunders, Lords of the New Church and Hanoi Rocks. Were some of these artists a big influence on you?

Hugo Zombie: Absolutely!!! Johnny Thunders is my guitar hero. Also Brian James from Lords of The New Church and early The Damned. I’m not the biggest fan of Hanoi Rocks but Andy McCoy is really cool too! And I would also add as influences Eduardo Benavente [Parálisis Permanente], Johnny Ramone, Joe Strummer (I’m a left-hander playing like a right-hander too) [The Clash], Poison Ivy [The Cramps], East Bay Ray [Dead Kennedys], Rikk Agnew [Christian Death], Daniel Ash [Bauhaus]... and last but not least the father of them all, Chuck Berry. As you can see, I appreciate passion and attitude more than technique.

7. You will have seen the video released before Blood where Jonas and Alex spoke about which albums had influenced them. Which records from your own collection would you have brought to the video shoot if you had joined TCS before rather than after Blood?

Hugo Zombie: I agree completely with the albums they show in the video, but some of my personal choices could’ve been (to mention a few): Parálisis Permanente El Acto, The Stooges Funhouse, The Cramps Songs The Lord Taught Us, The Clash London Calling, Sex Pistols Never Mind The Bollocks, Lost Sounds Black Wave, Eskorbuto Anti-Todo, The Beatles Please Please Me, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers L.A.M.F., Lords of the New Church Killer Lords,  David Bowie Ziggy Stardust, Stray Cats Stray Cats, The Adicts Songs Of Praise, Misfits Walk Among Us... and I can’t choose only one Ramones album, so I would have brought their entire discography.

 (Paralisis Permanante, a key band of the post-Franco Madrid "movida" featuring frontman Eduardo Benavente, who was tragically killed in a car crash several months after this footage was filmed in 1983. Los Carniceros del Norte recorded a tribute EP to Paralisis Permanente in 2011)

8. On the recent video for All Tomorrow’s Parties, one of TCS’ quarantine covers, you had the video of goths dancing to Killing Joke at a club in West Yorkshire in 1984 on in the background. Are you a big student of goth history?

Hugo Zombie: I’m interested in the history of music, I enjoy reading books about artist/bands that I like and had interesting lives, but I wouldn’t consider myself a big student. The idea about that video [All Tomorrow's Parties] was to somewhat make it look like we were having a party ourselves, so I got some beers and choose this select audience for my interpretation. Then it turns out that the TV is not as big as I thought and I’m covering most of it, so I’m very surprised (and glad) that you recognized the video.

9. I have to ask you about your cat, who was the unexpected star of Then Comes Silence’s quarantine cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Christine, running up the wall at one point. Can you tell me a bit about him/her?

Hugo Zombie: Sure, she’s Pixi, one of my cats. My girlfriend and I adopted her and her sister, a beautiful tortie called Zombita, 7 years ago. They’re our children and they made it all the way from Spain to Sweden too. Pixi, the cat that you see in the video, she’s some kind of diva / movie star, she poses in front of the camera and she likes to be the centre of attention all the time. So, as it had to be, she found her way to make it into the video and be the star of the Gothicat Festival.

10. If Alex asked you to suggest a Los Carniceros del Norte song for Then Comes Silence to cover, which one would you choose and why?

Hugo Zombie: I don’t think that’s very likely to happen, and I don’t think that it would be very suitable either, but if I’m forced to choose one it would be Las tres Caras del Miedo, because it’s more goth rock oriented than most of LCDN’s discography, it’s one of my favourites and we never played it live.




Then Comes Silence recordings and merchandise are available here.