It’s less than three years since the unusually fully-formed new
act Black Angel burst onto the goth revival scene, with Matt Vowles’
transatlantic crew immediately impressing with their dark atmosphere, earworm
melodies and in particular, the uber high quality production values on their debut
album The Widow.
Actor/singer Corey Landis replaced the more theatrical Rob
Steffen for second album Kiss Of Death, a more homogenous set of songs
which mixed up-tempo gothabilly with slow burning goth rock to forge a unique template
which illuminated both 2021’s concept album Prince of Darkness and the
new release, this month’s The Black Rose.
Whilst there’s a cosy familiarity throughout The Black Rose in the song-writing
style, with its easily recognisable musical tropes, strong melodies and
somewhat cliched lyrics, the production and mastering is very on-point, and
Landis’ velvety croon is the perfect icing on a classic gothic rock cake, so
whilst there is nothing startlingly original going on here, when the overall
package is so enjoyable, it would be pedantically churlish to quibble on that
score.
The scene is set with first single and opening track on The Black Rose, Breathe with its insistent stomping beat and riffs which remain consistent throughout the song, eschewing the traditional verse/chorus/verse straitjacket, revealing a band fully confident in its own skin four albums in, whilst retaining the spirit of legendary 80’s albums like Phantasmagoria and Floodland which inspired the Bristolian Vowles to form the band in the first place.
Title track The Black Rose tightens things up a notch, with its gothabilly drumming, grungy descending riffs and a strong multi-tracked semi-falsetto chorus taking seasoned Black Angel fans to more familiar territory. Recent single All Or Nothing is arguably the band’s most obviously influenced track yet, where the distillation of Love-era The Cult is very much to the fore (Vowles took the band’s name from the eponymous track on that album), and Billy Duffy himself would surely be proud of the riffing on this new track as Vowles effortlessly slides up and down the strings as Landis’ vocal theatrics match Astbury’s “I’m On Fire” wailings of over thirty years ago as he hits the higher octave. After the beautiful Take Me Down, with its slower pace and quieter, more reflective ambiance, with Landis again in more subtle, magisterial form, Look Me In The Eye returns with a class goth rock chord structure and motif, but developing this time into a huge chorus where Maneesha Jones makes a welcome return on backing vocals.
Sinner begins with another wonderfully rich guitar tone
and is another song that builds from effectively humble beginnings to bigger
chorus, with Vowles, the master of guitar dynamics, adding some Bauhaus
harmonic atmospherics in the background. Carnival Man starts more
laconically, over a swirling backing which is vaguely reminiscent of The
Stranglers’ Golden Brown, and it is certainly the most experimental
track on the album, but normal service is resumed with arguably the album’s
best track, Intoxicated, which features all the classic Black Angel touches,
a sultry Landis vocal, driving bassline, in-your-face catchy riffing and
memorable chorus with more than a touch of classic I Wanna Be Your Dog
honky-tonk swagger. The album finale, Battle Cry starts with a mournful
guitar arpeggio and falling bassline combination, building to a slow-burning (think
A Rider In the Snow rather than Spiritwalker) epic soldier’s
lament, a slight discordance in the chorus and a sudden-ish ending adding to the love song's poignancy, to round off another album of mature and accomplished gothic rock.
I was delighted when Matt Vowles
immediately agreed to submit to another Ten Question interrogation for this blog,
and his answers illuminate this latest album’s genesis and hint at major
changes ahead for a project which has been synonymous with quality over a four
album career to date. Thanks as ever for Matt for taking the time and trouble
to furnish such full and honest responses.
___________________________________________________________________________________
1.
New album The Black Rose is Corey’s third
album with the band. Do you now write with him in mind, as the songs seem
perfect for his range and timbre? And do you do the same for Maneesha’s parts,
can you “hear” her voice in your head when you’re writing?
MV: Now that this is the fourth album for Corey and I, I
will actually do some research into this, normally I just write how I think it
should be and I keep my fingers crossed that it’s going to work for Corey but
this time around I will actually start listening through the tracks where I
think his range is the best and start writing in that key.
2.
You’ve always handled all instrumentation
yourself, but the sleeve notes on the CD credit an additional drummer. Was that
just on one or two tracks (Intoxicated would be my guess!), or is this a
new direction for Black Angel?
MV: I credited one drummer on the sleeve notes, this
person is entirely fictional: my favourite movie of all time is Spinal Tap
and on each album I like to credit one of the drummers from the film! If you
know the story, different drummers explode on stage all the way through the
movie and they keep getting replaced, so I like to pay homage to the film by
citing one of those drummers, with a slight name change or spelling change. I
still do all the drumming!
3.
Haha! The new album features a striking
monochrome image of clasped hands with ultra-long fingernails, rather than a
more predictable film noir photo of a black rose that I was expecting! Why did
you choose that image to accompany the new songs?
MV: Choosing album covers takes longer for me than
writing and producing a whole album of music. I spend months trying to think
what would be the best image for the cover. This time I decided to reach out to
a very talented artist, Eshmoon DM, and see if they fancy having a crack it. I
had the idea in my head already and over a few months. We managed to get it to
a point where I was happy and it looked awesome, I’m probably more particular
about the album cover than I am about the music if it comes down to how good it
needs to be.
4.
Have you had offers to produce/master other
band’s releases over the past couple of years? Who would you like to produce?
MV: You know I haven’t! I thought someone would’ve
reached out and asked me to produce their record! To be honest, with my film
career and family career I would never have the time, producing an album, to
put your heart and soul into it, takes months and months and you get consumed
by it, so, maybe being a bit selfish, I have only got time for my material -
and, as soon as I finish one album, I’m right onto the next one.
5.
Early reviews have picked up on the track Carnival
Man, with its fairground organ sound and waltzing Golden Brown feel.
Does the positive reception to this track encourage you to take more risks on
the next release?
MV: Yes, Carnival Man seems to be going down well,
the first person to hear it was Corey and he particularly mentioned that he
liked the direction of this new track so I think on the next album, which is
going to be called Devil In A Black Dress, I don’t know if I’m going to
take more risks but I’m definitely going to be more experimental, although, it
needs to stay within the gothic rock lines so it’s going to be a tricky balance
but I’ve started writing already, only a week after the last album came out (!)
and I’m really excited to see what I can come up with.
6.
When I interviewed you when the last album was
released, you said that the next album would contain a cover of Duran Duran’s The
Chauffeur. Will this now go onto the next album, or do you have a bigger
cover project planned?
MV: It’s still on the list, I did write a version of the
song for the last album but I tried too much to make it sound like the original
and there is no way I could ever do that justice, or want to, so I think I need
to go in a completely different direction this time, stay tuned…..
7.
Well-respected scene commentator Simon Lebby
commented that many of the tracks on the new album seem to have similar chord
progressions or repeated motifs, giving The Black Rose a concept album
feel. Was that deliberate?
MV: Definitely not deliberate, on the last album Prince Of Darkness, I tried to keep a theme running throughout but on The Black Rose if there’s any theme or motif that get tagged as repeating themselves or being connected then that’s all by chance.
8.
You mentioned recently that the band have been
approached about a publishing deal. In what ways will that help the band to get
to the next level?
MV: We were approached by a major label and we are still
in negotiations as to whether we will sign with them or not. It’s important for
me to have Black Angel reach a larger audience, it’s not about stardom or money,
it’s just about connecting with more people. We’ve had a really great
experience on Bandcamp and I think we have the goods to take things further and
reach more people, we just don’t have the marketing power, money or expertise
to really cast the net wider. It’s really great when you hear from people that
say “I was clicking around today and I heard your music and I really like it”
or “Somebody told me about you guys and then I listened to the album and I
really love it” - so it’s really just having the opportunity to get the music
to more people.
9.
Let’s get to the elephant in the room. Industry
lawyers have suggested that it might be wise to change the project’s name to
avoid potential litigation from longer-standing projects with a similar name.
Do you look on this as a chance to relaunch the band to a new audience? Will
you tweak the name or go for something different?
MV: Yes, that definitely is the elephant in the room
right now, I never really gave it that much thought before and the music is so
oversaturated with bands and from so many different genres but as we have been
advised by our legal friends this could be a sticking point in the future. It’s
been weighing on me this week whether this is a positive or negative thing, on
the negative side it means we need to remove all of all media from all digital
streaming platforms which is a task in itself, we then need to re-publish
everything with the performing right societies, an even bigger task - and then
I have read that there is no guarantee if we re-submit the music whether the
big streaming companies will even except it, so the administrative side of this
is an absolute nightmare. We also need to keep a connection with the name Black
Angel otherwise nobody is going to really know who we are - and to start
building a fanbase again is another potential nightmare, we are not looking for
new fans, we love the ones we have already:) on the positive side….. I don’t
think there is one……
10.
What’s next for the project? Do you have songs
in mind for a new album, and will you be playing any live shows in 2022?
MV: Plans for the new album is to make this even better
than the last one, the great thing about The Black Rose was I felt
really good about every single track on the album, I think on previous albums
I’ve always had doubts about some of them, my acid test is when I play the
album in the car, do I skip the track or not. Starting a new album is always
tough, there’s a very long road ahead, and there is also the pressure of it
needing to be better or equally as good as the last one - so my usual process
is to find new guitar sounds that inspire me and just start writing, I already
have 15 song ideas down over the last couple of weeks and I keep an audio
recorder with me so if I get any ideas I drop them down, and then I’ll come in
the studio and see if something can blossom from it. As for live, yes Corey and
I have chatted about it briefly, we’d love to play some big festivals. A North
American tour would be cool, maybe supporting a bigger band - so if there’s
anyone out there that wants to play, please drop us a line!
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