Live Review - Then Comes Silence and Agent Side Grinder at Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, 10th January 2024

Just ten days into the New Year and already Scotland was hosting what looks likely to be one of the stand-out gigs of 2024, the very welcome return of the self-styled “Swedish captains of post-punk”, bringing their infectious gothic darkwave groove to the capital for the first time since a pre-pandemic double bill with 1919 in July 2019 in the atmospheric arched vault of Bannerman’s bar in the spooky Old Town.

This year’s gig took place just around the corner at the equally cool subterranean venue Cabaret Voltaire, with gig-goers having to find a drizzly path through the patrons of Auld Reekie's Ghost Hunter tours led by hyperbole-obsessed ‘resting’ actors accompanying  their gullible charges to Edinburgh’s allegedly hidden underground ghost town.

The name of the Cabaret Voltaire venue could hardly be more appropriate for the other band on an enterprising bill promoted by London’s Reptile club night, fellow Swedes Agent Side Grinder, whose 80’s influenced electro post-punk is partially indebted spiritually to the Sheffield band of the same name, who themselves were named after a short-lived Dadaist cabaret club in Zurich over a century ago.

Although representing very different musical styles, the two bands on show have much in common, apart from being based in Stockholm: both are at the more melodic end of their genre, both have not only survived but thrived after multiple line-up changes, and recently TCS figurehead Alex Svenson played bass on ASG’s 2023 album Jack Vegas.

        Agent Side Grinder, Edinburgh, 2024. L-R Peter Fristedt, Emanuel Åström, Johan Lange,

On this occasion, both bands were billed to play a full hour set, with ASG on first, and they won over an initially somewhat hesitant crowd with a varied set which spanned their career, from earlier hits like Wolf Hour to tracks from the last album, for which Svenson joined them on what became a very cramped stage, with the slow-burning Madeleine a highlight from this section of the set. Traditional crowd-pleaser Giants Fall also went down well, as the audience slowly warmed to an always eclectic increasingly EBM dancefloor-oriented retro synthwave set.

Visually, Emanuel Åström  remains the focus, half-Stiv Bators half-Andy McCluskey as he writhes around the mike stand and dances his way through the set in front of the band’s A/X logo, with founder member Johan Lange providing strong backing vocals and some wonderful old school analogue synth sounds alongside fellow stalwart Peter Fristedt, looking ever more like the mad professor, frantically seeking out the right tape loop from his box of tricks in the sound laboratory and constantly twiddling knobs and dials to tweak the ASG sound. After a brief encore, the band and their equipment left the small stage to be replaced by that rarity for darkwave bands, a drumkit, along with the usual pedalboard, only serving to accentuate the two very different strands which are pre-eminent in modern gothic culture.

        Alex Svenson joins Agent Side Grinder on stage, Edinburgh 2024

With a career stretching back to 2012 and soon to release their seventh studio album,  Then Comes Silence exude a solid dark professionalism, despite their relatively recent reduction to a three-piece, from the opening chord of a set which features songs judiciously selected from their last four albums, but all with the same energy and melody which has seen them rise to the very top of the current scene.

Set-opener Tickets To Funerals from the most recent album Hunger is a strong statement of intent with guitarist Hugo Zombie’s chugging riffs a perfect counterpoint to Svenson’s dusky vocal, with behatted drummer Jonas Fransson laying down a powerful beat behind them. Any sound mix issues were sorted quickly during the next two songs,  Flashing Pangs of Love (from 2017’s Blood) and Apocalypse Flare (on 2020 album Machine), in time for the first highlight of the set, Good Friday from the former release, Svenson’s powerful and moving paean to his late father, with Zombie absolutely nailing the solo after pummelling and pirouetting through the opening sections of the song in his own unique style, which is typical of the band’s obvious enjoyment of being back on stage again.

      Then Comes Silence on stage in Edinburgh, 2024 L-R Alex Svenson. Jonas Fransson, Hugo Zombie

As a trio, the band now has a raw power and energy in a live setting which is in contrast with their increasingly sleek critically-acclaimed studio releases, and the simple, descending dark punk riff of the evening’s next song, She Loves The Night (from 2015’s Nyctophilian) shows this to full pulverising effect.

Whilst some songs – Strange Kicks, and Dark End, for example – do lose some of their subtlety with the slimmed-down line-up, others have gained in effect from the more simplified structure, such as Rise To The Bait, the first song where the audience really cuts free and the first half-dozen rows of a very decent turnout for a wet midweek January evening become a lively two-step throng.

                               A rare shot of Hugo Zombie standing still enough for a photo

The next song, the “whisper to a scream” classic Mercury (from Blood) builds slowly to an epic impassioned crescendo from the peerless Svenson, with the sole guitar again providing a wonderful tonal range and the uplifting finale echoing round the walls of the subterranean chamber to a rapturous response. Predictably, the band has saved some of their best-known classics for the end, with Strangers and Animals from Nyctophilian book-ending a typically excoriating version of Blood’s The Rest Will Follow, with Fransson’s frenetic punky drumming dominating once more, leaving crowd and band exhausted yet fully sated, with the latter promising to return soon. The double headliner mini-tour now moves on to Manchester, Bristol and London (Saturday), and anyone within travelling distance is strongly encouraged to attend.

Reptile’s next Scottish show at the end of next month, also to be held in Edinburgh, is an even more eclectically impressive bill, featuring local 80’s goth punk stalwarts Twisted Nerve, now stretching their infamous Five Minutes Of Fame into a fifth decade, twenty-first century Italian synthwave darlings Ash Code, with 90’s French gothic legends Corpus Delicti topping the bill, all for a mere twenty quid. Tickets for the show on Feb 28^th at La Belle Angele are available here.

Bandcamp links:  Agent Side Grinder    Then Comes Silence

The Top 15 Goth/Post-Punk Albums of 2023

 

2023 was finally the year of the Goth Revival, but not in the way that many of us had hoped for. Rather than being the year the mainstream rediscovered the genial panoply of new sounds emanating from one of the most criminally-ignored and under-rated sub-genres, it was instead the year of Goth Nostalgia, forty years on from the original movement’s annus mirabilis of 1983 (not that it had yet adopted that sobriquet).

Not one, not two, but three critically-acclaimed histories of the genre were published in the UK (and garnered many mainstream column inches), one (which actually had the working title “Post-Punk”) by the drummer of a band who frequently flirted with the goth sound and culture without ever really being central to it, one by a then-very-young fan who became a leading music journalist and author, and the third by an alternative scene veteran and well-regarded alternative media figure whose band was never particularly associated with the scene at the time. All three are worth tracking down, and place the original 'gothic' music within a social, historical and cultural context, lending much-needed gravitas to a style of music often mocked and derided in the media as a whole as cartoonishly lightweight.

This general nostalgia-fest in the media coincided with many of the original acts creeping back onto the touring circuit as it recovered from the covid-enforced hiatus, with the unexpected returns of the major league likes of Siouxsie, ‘Death Cult’ and Bauhaus, in a year that also saw The Rose of Avalanche, The March Violets, Theatre of Hate/Spear of Destiny, Sex Gang Children, The Sisters of Mercy, Christian Death and most other acts you can think of from the original era hitting the road to boost the pension fund.

This should have been the signal for a surge of interest in the contemporary gothic scene, but my own observation was that current goth acts struggled to attract a crowd, particularly when the “heritage” acts were in town the same month. As in recent previous years, the best chance seemed to be for those bands who managed to get a support slot with one of the more established bands, with A Cloud of Ravens being particularly successful in this respect, bagging show-opening rights on tours by The Sisters of Mercy and Clan of Xymox, but such examples were sadly rare over the year.

Perhaps one of the main reasons for the mainstream failing to take an interest in newer goth acts, whilst wallowing in the pervading nostalgia, was the fact that many of the leading lights on the current scene took a studio sabbatical in 2023: well-established artists with multi-album careers, such as She Past Away, Then Comes Silence, Kaelan Mikla, Diavol Strain and Whispering Sons didn’t manage an album between them during 2023, although most are planning new releases next year.

In their stead, some of the more recent acts of the current wave took the opportunity to step up a level and stake their claim to higher status within the scene, as most of the bands featuring in this rundown of the best LPs of 2023 in the goth genre were not newcomers to the scene, but on their second or third albums already, and having found their musical feet, now producing the best music of their careers.

If 2022 had seen the resurgence of trad goth, the highlights of 2023 feature many bands with a more melodic mainstream-friendly gothic alt-rock sound, although more batcave/death rock/horror punk acts also fared well. This year’s list is notable for a renewed dominance of bands from North America and Western Europe, with fewer new artists of note from other territories than in recent previous years,

The fifteen selections below are presented in no particular order, but all have strong artistic merit and integrity and are all highly recommended!

                            ____________________________________________________

 

Ashes Fallen - Walk Through Fire

Husband and wife duo James and Michelle Perry’s goth rock act released its third album in 2023 which continued the project’s development from a more rock-based sound to a purer goth/post-punk sonic palette.  James Perry’s vocals have become stronger with each release, and with fewer guitar solos making the cut, the sound is sleeker and more modern, yet also less formulaic. Lyrically the band has always been one of the most political with a small “p”, taking on contemporary issues and championing the underdog in a way that the original goth bands, who grew out of punk roots, would surely approve of. With anthemic choruses and soaring melodies, Ashes Fallen are reminiscent of Manic Street Preachers at their polemical best, and are a breath of fresh air in a genre all-too-quick to regress to the lowest gothic trope lyrical denominator.

Bandcamp link

The Bellwether Syndicate – Vestige and Vigil

TBS’s William Faith may be one of the senior figures of the second (90’s) wave of goth, but the project’s 2023 release shows that he has lost none of his youthful vigour, energy and righteous anger. Building songs around bludgeoning, syncopated riffs (courtesy of Sarah Rose Faith) and grunge-esque song dynamics, The Bellwether Syndicate’s Vestige and Vigil was a real guitar goth tour de force, thanks to Faith’s infallible ear for a catchy chorus and a lyrical bon mot, the sound of an artist uncompromisingly raging into the dark night.

Bandcamp link

A Cloud of Ravens – Lost Hymns

Brooklyn duo A Cloud of Ravens maintained their reputation for angsty, earnest, pseudo-Celtic gothic rock with their latest album, which has the same authenticity and passion that has contributed to the enduring appeal of the likes of New Model Army or The Levellers. As effective on low-fi low-tempo reflective pieces as on arms-in-the-air choruses, AcoR confirmed their position in the new vanguard with another album of well-crafted 100% pure artisan goth.

Bandcamp link

Black Angel - Lascivious

Already onto their fifth album in as many years, Matt Vowles’ Black Angel continued their astonishingly consistent record of producing high quality albums stuffed with unashamedly retro and respectful references but with a full-on modern sound. With nods to the pillars of the original mid-1980’s UK gothic rock sound – Floodland, Phantasmagoria and Love – Black Angel create an original yet strangely familiar film noir soundscapes which never fail to impress.

Bandcamp link

The Waning Moon – A Dream Or A Vision

With The Kentucky Vampires continuing their studio hiatus, guitarist Zac Campbell has busied himself with a number of side projects, notably an innovative surf-goth project Los Vampiros del Mar and this fully-fledged trad goth project The Waning Moon, a collaboration with Costa Rican vocalist Ariel Maniki. Campbell’s multi-layered approach and golden guitar tone makes The Waning Moon’s debut album a delight for all fans of late 80’s/early 90’s gothic rock, giving full rein to his genius, with Maniki’s dramatic vocal adding an impassioned element to the overall sound.

Bandcamp link

Treponem Pal – Screamers

In a year when heritage acts like The Damned and Iggy Pop delivered unexpectedly good albums, the most pleasant surprise of 2023, Treponem Pal’s Screamers is the album many fans of industrial goth have been waiting for since The Young Gods’ seminal TV Sky. With tongue firmly in cheek and covering a range of sub-genres, Screamers is best played at the recommended “full power” and would be the perfect soundtrack to an all-night biker festival. This is the album Al Jourgensen has been trying to make for the past thirty years.

Link

Ground Nero – Blood Never Sleeps

Belgian/Manx trio Ground Nero had showcased half of their November 2023 release Blood Never Sleeps as singles over the past two years, their first full length release since Mark Sayle replaced the irrepressible Gwiijde Wampers on vocal duties. Ground Nero’s trademark wall of sound studio approach gives their songs a depth and richness of texture few can emulate, and Sayle’s velvet baritone is the perfect foil to Peter Smeets’ inventive guitar work over keyboard soundscapes which are heavier and more powerful than Sayle’s work with his other excellent band, Mark E Moon.

Bandcamp link

Byronic Sex & Exile – Everything But The Ghoul

The prolific Mr Heyes has built BS&E into arguably the most expansive and original UK goth act of the last decade, and his latest LP is by far his most consistent and accomplished set yet. Ranging from bar room piano laments to dancefloor filling Lucretia-esque goth bangers, Everything But The Ghoul is stuffed with a range of simply-but-beautifully constructed songs which Heyes’ beloved Damned would struggle to better.

Bandcamp link

La Scaltra - Mater

La Scaltra started the year with a bang with this stunning set of witch doom classics, the twin female vocal embellishments contrasting superbly with the sleek stoner riffs beneath them in a series of hypnotic modern gothic chants. Like most bands on the Solar Lodge imprint their image and sound flirt dangerously with the ridiculous at times, but they have the class and panache to pull it off.

Bandcamp link

Varsovie – Pression À Froid

The latest set from Grenoble-based Varsovie was the stand-out post-punk album of the year, combining intricate arrangements, a driving insistent beat, and a timeless, semi-spoken vocal that has been the hallmark of French language darkwave for over four decades, in songs which had enough musical and lyrical originality to rise above the competition and mark Pression À Froid out as a future classic.

Bandcamp link

Maletas Vacias – Bitacora Incognita

After Diavol Strain in 2022, Maletas Vacias maintain a Chilean presence in our annual countdown with their own uniquely singular take on the gothic darkwave sub-genre on a stunning debut album which bristles with a fresh energy and a willingness to dip into other genres, adding a haunting retro 80’s quirky dark pop sheen to their post-punk sensibilities.

Bandcamp link

Decena Tragica - Animal Moderno

The second Latin American selection of 2023 may only be a mini-album, but Mexican post-punk project Decena Tragica deserve plaudits for conjuring up the ghost of legendary early 80's Spanish post-punk outfit Paralisis Permanente on the main track of this release, with shades of death rock on other tracks.

Bandcamp link

Shrouds - Grimoire

Although this blog usually eschews artists who embrace rather too enthusiastically some of the more cartoonish aspects of goth, there were undeniably some excellent if cliché-ridden examples of Californian deathrock in 2023, with Grimoire, the physical release of an expanded re-working of Shrouds’s 2017 debut EP an undisputed highlight. Indeed an early version of the track below, Sin, initially featured on an even earlier EP back in 2015! Histrionic vocals, frenetic drumming, angular spooky guitar parts, the whiff of ultra firm hold hairspray and a wilfully muddy production mix conjure up ghosts from the 1981 heyday of positive punk.

Bandcamp link

Cemetary Girlz – L’envol du Corbeau

France’s Cemetary Girlz are another act not afraid to tie their colours (ok, colour) firmly to the 1980’s/1990’s goth mast, and their debut LP L’envol du Corbeau was a thrillingly haunting examination of some of the darker corners of the genre, exhuming corpses left untouched for thirty years. Their songs are intriguing guitar FX-drenched soundscapes which branch off into ever deeper, more melancholic sub-worlds.

Bandcamp link

In A Darkened Room – Sorrow

Another stunning debut, In A Darkened Room’s Sorrow was another release which brought together previous singles alongside new material. Slower, more melodic and more introspective than many other acts, with lugubrious shades of the 'miserygoth' sub-genre at times, Sorrow was another consistently excellent release from a North American scene which enjoyed a real renaissance this year.

Bandcamp link

Live Review - Byronic Sex & Exile and Gothzilla, Glasgow November 21st 2023

There’s always something really authentic and deeply satisfying about going to a goth gig at Nice n Sleazy in Glasgow – perhaps it’s the steep staircase, reminiscent of that of the legendary Phono in Leeds, leading down to the dingy gig room, it could be the timeless, simple layout of the venue itself, a rectangular low-roofed space with a very low stage at one end and a small bar at the other, or maybe it’s the wall of sound that emerges when you open the sound-proofed door.

Descending that staircase on Tuesday evening, I could still easily make out (through the opaque glass in the entrance door to the dimly-lit room) the instantly recognisable monochrome figure of Joel Heyes, sole member of headliner Byronic Sex and Exile, hunched over a desk containing the paraphernalia of the modern gigging goth artiste; presale list and highlighter pen – check; handstamp for pass-outs (on this occasion bearing the legend “Goth City, Leeds U.K” in, what else black ink – in my teenage years I would have avoided washing my hands for a week to try to prolong any vicarious cool which evidence of my attendance at a particular gig may have afforded) – check; copies of CDs and t-shirts for sale, the best chance for the artist to make any money from the show – check; credit card-reader – check; candelabra (well, this is BS&E)– check. Such is the glamorous life of the modern-day gothic-rock troubadour. I don’t remember the likes of Andrew Eldritch or Peter Murphy having to work on the door or sell their own merch in their band’s early days, but this is the norm in 2023 for even the scene’s leading lights. For this gig, Joel has left his trusty (or rather, untrustworthy) hearse at home and travelled four hours by train along with his Bronte hero/villain Victorian dandy stage garb, his guitar, the afore-mentioned items on the entrance desk and his other stage props, all lugged from station to hotel to venue.

Gothzilla

Looking towards the other end of the room, I could see Scottish goth duo Gothzilla starting their set to no more than a dozen punters, which included the members of the opening act who had already performed, It (made up of two-thirds of the former members of 90’s eclectro-goth stalwarts Libitina). But rather than bemoaning the lack of attendees, Gothzilla mainman Tim Jarvis seemed to positively revel in the situation, demanding audience participation which in the circumstances it would have been extremely churlish to refuse, and he and guitarist Mike (who replaced long-serving Stuart Harbut and rejoined the band earlier this year from The Dead Seasons, whom ironically they had replaced at this gig due to a last-minute covid-related issue) treated the few of us present a storming set of classic drum-machine driven upbeat goth rock from their multi-album career, but much more energetic and powerful than their studio releases. Jarvis is an excellent vocalist and usually bills the band as “for fans of The Sisters of Mercy” to give an indication of their main influence, and the pair’s tight renditions of the highlights of  their back catalogue certainly went down well, in front of their “Goth and Proud” stage banner. Ending their all-too-brief set as usual with a barnstorming rendition of goth club classic The Temple Of Sound, they left what passes for a stage with a reminder that they will be back in Glasgow in the spring, supporting 1919 (although they are playing a gig in Aberdeen before the end of the year), another double bill not to be missed.

            Stage Fright

Equally unperturbed by the poor turnout was Joel Heyes, a gothic national treasure if ever there was one, joining the ranks of the likes of Mick Mercer, Trevor Bamford and other keepers of the UK gothic flame. Label boss, festival organiser, charity fundraiser and uber-prolific one-man band, Heyes unbelievably also has a day job and still finds the time to maintain a strong social media presence, creating a strong brand that occasionally sees him pigeonholed as Leeds’ "Mr Goth" in the same way as others begrudgingly carve out a career for example as a “professional Northerner”.  A Byronic Sex and Exile show is as much an event as a gig, and Heyes took to the stage carrying his now-lit candelabra, lurching from the back of the hall towards. and peering at, the small gaggles of attendees like a latter-day graveyard-bothering Wee Willie Winkie as he prepared for the performance ahead. Not since The Virgin Prunes' infamous Channel 4 TV performance of 1982 has someone pulled off such a dramatic candle-related start to a gig, no mean feat when the audience barely reaches into double figures. Launching into Grave Is In The Heart (from the equally puntastically-titled but wonderful current album Everything But The Ghoul), Heyes puts on a typically impassioned one-man show, strumming frantically at his guitar over the pre-recorded backing, eyes closed as he strained for the lower reaches of his lugubrious Yorkshire baritone, with the show enhanced by the usual props - his famous sword during Death and Joy and the Hamlet-inspired skull to whom he addressed the opening of the more jaunty Damned-influenced Monster Man. The centre of the set was the typical Tombstone World, again from the new album, building slowly from a simple four-chord motif like many past BS&E classics. With the venue curfew approaching, Heyes ended with two bangers from his previous album, Your Name On The Wind and Leviathan, all Floodland guitar and anthemic chorus.

                                                               Is this a cheap rubber skull I see before me?

Taking a counter-intuitively positive take on the distinct lack of last-minute walk up customers – “quality, not quantity” - (probably due to this gig being sandwiched by expensive shows by Death Cult and The Sisters of Mercy and in the same week as local gigs by Sex Gang Children and Kirk Brandon), Heyes felt that the current tour is nevertheless a success having already broken even financially, and told me that variations in attendance are to be expected at his level (the previous night had seen a larger-than-predicted audience in Nottingham for example), but his (and Tim Jarvis’) indefatigability is what has kept the scene alive - or at least undead - during (no pun intended) dark days.

                                                                                En garde!

The current scene is arguably more deserving of your support than the afore-mentioned heritage/nostalgia acts trying to re-create past glories, and the newer band scene is certainly more democratic and unified, with the acts supporting each other to try to make ends meet. Whilst pairing older and newer acts on multi-band bills gives more recent acts at least the opportunity to prise open the closed minds of the elder goth community, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that like many current acts, Heyes was born twenty (or is it two hundred?) years too late, and, realistically, barring an unlikely mainstream goth revival, his impressive series of releases and live shows will never reach the size of audience they deserve.

 Bandcamp pages: Byronic Sex & Exile    Gothzilla

 

The Best New Goth/Post-Punk Releases of June/July 2023

 

As ever in the heat of summer, goths tend to head for the shadows and the recording studios, so the number of actual new releases tends to decline a little in June and July. However, on the back of renewed media interest in the genre, thanks to the Siouxsie comeback and the recently published histories of gothic music, there is still plenty of excellent new music to keep us entertained. This month’s new selection is a real curate’s egg, with old school deathrock rubbing shoulders with everything from trad folk goth to industrial goth rock. Enjoy!

 1.       Girls Under Glass – We Feel Alright

Back from the grave are legendary German goth industrial act Girls Under Glass, with this fantastically-produced spoiler track which heralded their current comeback album Backdraft, their first for nearly two decades, built around an electro darkwave strong metallic riff that recalls the over-the-top vibe of an early nineties Nine Inch Nails dancefloor stomper.

2.       Byronic Sex & Exile – Kiss of the Firebrand

There’s an equally Wagnerian epic This Corrosion quality about the lead track from the latest EP from the prolific Byronic Sex & Exile, Joel Heyes’ one-man project which aims to keep the gothic flame burning bright in its Leeds heartland. Other tracks on the EP such as Ectoplasmic Dreams are more typical of the project, gradually building huge slow-burning  Floydesque soundscapes from an initial simple, haunting riff.

 

3.       Temple - Submission

The Portland (Oregon) trio are back with a fabulous album of hauntingly heavy deathrock-influenced darkwave. The title track features some superb reverb riffing over a wonderfully muddy rhythm section, whilst the verse has an almost Chameleons-esque purity. Another essential purchase from the ever-reliable Swiss Dark Nights label.

4.       Perish - Reliquary

Reliquary would appear to be a hardcore five-track Bad Seeds meets Christian Death deathrock demo recorded by a supergroup of San Francisco band members in 2013 and finally given a Bandcamp release last month. Heavy, unhinged, scuzzy and inventive, there’s a raw energy and power in these songs which mark this out as one of the best releases of 2023 in a sub-genre enjoying a real renaissance.

No Youtube link but here is the project's Bandcamp page

5.       Decena Tragica  - Mirame

There’s a distinct Paralisis Permanente vibe on the opening section of this excellent new track from Mexican stalwarts Decena Tragica, although the song opens into a broader gothic darkwave soundscape in the skilled hands of producer Ariosto N Uribe (of La Procesion de Lo Infinito fame).

6.       Ember Sea – Meet Me By The Fire

Soothing trad goth folk from German band the Ember Sea on this new EP, like All About Eve at their most wistful. Acoustic guitars, strings and a predictably big soft goth metal chorus for this epic and melodic ballad which will surely go down well across Europe.

7.       Varsovie - Perspective  Nevski

Great new classic French wave track from Grenoble outfit Varsovie, a wonderfully full production with a busy, driving bassline, typically semi-spoken crache ton venin/je m’en fous-tiste vocal and even a bit of dark twang in an unpredictable song whose twists and turns whet the appetite considerably for forthcoming album on Icy Cold Records, Pression à Froid.

8.       Misery Eden - Woods

Fabulously dense and occasionally cacophonous post-punk production on this dark punk deathrock track from the excellent six track debut EP Thorns and Woes from Misery Eden, a project based in Tallin (Estonia). Of the other tracks, Salvation is less breathy and claustrophobic but equally intriguing.

9.       Grinning God – Arrow of Wrath

From the Rope Sect stable comes side-project Grinning God, with Sardonicus releasing a new version of the debut Sardonios EP with a couple of extra tracks of equally high quality. The droney dreamgaze of Divine Decadence is probably my favourite of the pair, with its dark garage psych vibe, but Arrow of Wrath has the same mix of sotto voce screamo vocal on the verse changing to a warmer melodic tone for the chorus in an unusual (note how I’m clutching at genres here!) yet highly effective manner.

10.   Final Gasp - Mourning Moon

Very strong late 80’s Killing Joke vibe for this Massachusetts band, with a chugging, versatile goth-indus guitar sound, pounding bass, thumping drums, haunting keyboard riff and an angry echoing vocal. Great production and dynamics on a well-structured if derivative song.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rose of Avalanche (and Heartbreak Noir), live at Audio in Glasgow, 12th July 2023

It’s a curious fact that whilst those most associated with the goth genre (Andrew Eldritch, Siouxsie Sioux et al) are always at pains to distance themselves from the epithet, those to whom it was erroneously or extremely tangentially applied seem more than happy to don the mantle. Take The Rose of Avalanche for example. The recently reformed (2019) band were immediately labelled as goth for the simple reason that they played guitar-based music with an occasionally melancholy twinge and came from the city of Leeds on their emergence in the mid-1980’s despite their music embracing a whole range of styles on their early recordings, whether their own compositions or their choice of cover versions, from up-tempo gothabilly rock’n’roll (Rise To The Groove or Dizzy Miss Lizzy), psychedelic doom (A Thousand Landscapes or Waiting for the Sun) or straightforward eight-to-the-bar rockers (Goddess or Gimme Some Lovin’).

Since their return to the scene after a near three-decade absence, T’Rose have again been embraced by the elder goth fraternity, touring with The Mission as well as playing both the Goth City Festival in Leeds and Tomorrow’s Ghosts in Whitby, delighting the large crowd at the latter with a surprise cover version of The Sisters of Mercy’s Alice. The Rose of Avalanche never really got the credit which they deserved the first time around, due to a combination of line-up changes, contractual difficulties, and the sudden decline of the genre in general in the late 1980's, and as a result to many they remain an unexplored by-road on the great map of goth.

Their current short summer mini-tour opened with a show at Audio in Glasgow, affording me and other Scottish goths the chance to see the band headline a show for the first time in over thirty years, thanks to promoters Songs of Preys, who will have been a little disappointed to have attracted only fifty punters (the usual names and faces of the central belt elder goth gig circuit) to the show despite a generous and inflation-busting ticket price of only twelve pounds. Audio is the perfect venue for these shows, one of those dingy, spartan, under-the-railway-arches dives with a decent stage, a small bar and a no-nonsense nowhere-to-hide rectangular empty space for the audience to bunch up and create an atmosphere, as was the case at The Rose of Avalanche’s gig.

Before the band took to the stage, the appreciative audience were treated to an impressive set from Heartbreak Noir, which is effectively an acoustic duo version of The Faces of Sarah, the last great goth band of the ‘second generation’ of the genre, according to this seminal and comprehensive four-hour YouTube retrospective ofgoth’s lost decade which has almost a million views, which features the band as its final track.

The acoustic backing, provided by Emma Newby on guitar (and backing vocals), showcases the powerful and emotional vocals of Nick Schultz, who delivered an impassioned performance in a set which was liberally sprinkled with classics from their Faces of Sarah era, with the stripped back and more minimalist backing allowing those present to better appreciate the complexity of the song structures of, for example, Belief or the set—closer Misery Turns, which originally featured supporting vocals by Inkubbus Sukkubus’ Candia. Introducing the highlight of their short set,  Nick explained the reason for the duo’s recent cover of Joy Division’s New Dawn Fades, which stemmed from seeing a young Costa Rican band enthusiastically covering JD songs when playing in the country as guests of fellow trad goth act Last Dusk, emphasising both the camaraderie and the global networking of the current goth scene, which is also very much in stripped-back form these days.

            Video from YouTube posted by Vonbat

After the now traditional set-opener Dreamland from their wonderful 1989 album In Rock, The Rose of Avalanche had a further Whitby-style surprise up their sleeve for their second song of the night, an excellent if shortened cover of the goth anthem par excellence, Bela Lugosi’s Dead, which delighted the crowd and was also clearly enjoyed by the band themselves, a feature of their live performances these days which was much discussed in Michelle Corns’ excellent recent interview with the band for the Reflections of Darkness website.

My (admittedly fading) memories of seeing the band in a live setting in the 1980’s were of a rather dour group with a vocalist given to speaking in a fake mid-Atlantic drawl and whose relationship with the concept of pitch was something of a moveable feast, but mercifully the 2023 iteration of the Rose of Avalanche are very much an uplifting experience, with singer Phil Morris’ Leeds accent to the fore and his vocals significantly stronger than they were in the mid-80’s. His relaxed demeanour and confident vocal delivery were typical of a band on the top of their form, with fellow founder member and lead guitarist Glenn Schultz’s rock flourishes on crowd-pleasers like Too Many Castles In the Sky and Goddess giving the songs both a certain bite and a sense of authenticity. The recent integration of genuine goth guitar legend Dave “Wolfie” Wolfenden (ex-Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and The Mission amongst many others) on second guitar (drafted in to replace the genial Paul James Berry, who sadly left the project again last year) has not only helped to raise the band’s profile, but enhanced the overall sound, as at Audio he showcased an astonishing array of technical skills acquired in almost fifty years of honing his craft, whether imitating the eldritch (in its OED sense) scratchings of Daniel Ash on Bela Lugosi’s Dead or improvising Asheton-style howling feedback loops on the second encore of The Stooges’ Loose. Cowboy-hatted bassist Alan Davis, another original member and the band’s driving force these days, provided a solid bottom line to the melancholic slow-burning epics which were the group's real forte such as LA Rain, Never Another Sunset and the band’s signature tune, Velveteen, where Morris' lilting baritone is best highlighted, whilst efficient drummer Mark Thomson, another survivor from the 1980’s, enjoyed an unexpected moment in the spotlight at the beginning of first encore Alice when the teasing Wolfie repeatedly faked playing the opening guitar riff in what turned into an extended intro. The latter incident sums up the spirit of an evening which was enjoyed as much by the band as by the small but enthusiastic crowd, old goths enjoying themselves and revelling in some of the best music of the past forty years.

Whilst the band only showcased the one recent composition, The Man, and seem in no rush to release new material, they will surely be in demand from European festival organisers and tour promoters looking for highly competent and professional first-generation goth acts with a stellar back catalogue happy to not only acknowledge their own roots but to pay their respects to their more successful contemporaries.

Click here to access The Rose of Avalanche's website

Click here to access the Heartbreak Noir Bandcamp page

 

Live Review - Vision Video and The March Violets, Glasgow 3rd June 2023

 Two great live bands from different generations of the goth scene? At one of the UK’s most iconic venues (where Alan McGee discovered Oasis)? For just twenty quid? No surprise then that the inspired pairing of current scene darlings Vision Video and returning old stagers The March Violets for a UK tour drew a capacity crowd to the dingy upstairs room at Glasgow’s King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, momentarily uniting the enthusiastic “baby bats” and grizzled “elder goths” of the city’s still vibrant alternative scene.

Founder and sole all-time member of The March Violets during their forty-two year start-stop history, guitarist Tom Ashton resides these days in Athens, Georgia where he runs SubVon Studios at which he has recorded and produced Vision Video’s two albums to date, the critically acclaimed Inked In Red and Haunted Hours. Both LP’s featured equally in the band’s Video’s high octane goth pop (think Head on the Door era Cure mixed with early Smiths with a bit of Chameleons guitar thrown in) Glasgow set which was deservedly well-received by an audience who know singer Dusty Gannon primarily from his humour-laden “Goth Dad” videos on the band’s TikTok account which has over half a million followers. Gannon was in confessional mood on the band’s first visit to Scotland, telling the audience that his guitar had once belonged to the late Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison, and dedicating the title track of their sophomore album Haunted Hours to him. Hutchison’s music had helped Gannon through a tough period in his life, a time covered in the song Kandahar, with the charismatic frontman confessing to those present in Glasgow that when posted there as a US Infantryman, he had a sudden realisation about the reality of war and its driving forces, and his life has changed direction as a result.

In case any of the audience were remaining in any doubt about the singer’s politics, the band’s most potent and arguably best-known song Organised Murder benefitted from a ferocious extended opening section, underpinned by the powerful rhythm section of scene veterans Dan Geller (bass) and Jason Fusco (drums), during which Gannon (a fine lyricist, incidentally) pulled no punches in describing the many ills and injustices of American contemporary society. Other highlights of an all-too-brief set included melodic opener Static Drone, their incendiary cover of Joy Division’s Transmission, debut single and crowd favourite In My Side and Comfort In the Grave, which features keyboard player Emily Freedock on main vocals, mirroring the male/female vocal assault for which The March Violets have long been renowned.

Since the Violets last played Scotland a decade ago, bassist Jo had left the band to be replaced by American goth royalty William Faith (ex-Christian Death, Mephisto Walz and Faith and the Muse amongst others) in time for the 2015 US tour, shortly after which main man Si D suffered a health issue which led to the band’s sine die suspension, until the remaining members finally decided to restart the project, with Faith also taking over Si’s co-vocal duties. The continuation of the band without Si has not met with universal approval from long-term fans (for some of whom, as in the mid-1980’s, no Si = no Violets), and the band acknowledged the significant loss of their frontman from the line-up and his key contribution to the band's legacy with both a heartfelt toast to former members of the band (reciprocated by the audience) and an impassioned speech from eloquent frontwoman and original co-vocalist Rosie Garland about the passage of time and importance of following your dreams and not putting off projects, because like the band, one day all the audience would be “old f---ers” like them (I think I still prefer the term “elder goths”, personally!).

I would love to be able to say that the Violets stormed the stage with a mesmerising opening salvo, but in reality the trio sort of shambled onto stage and opener Crow Baby false-started (“It’s always finished before it’s begun” in the words of another Violets classic), with the singer wryly acknowledging the appropriateness of this “chaos”, given the band’s history, and this theme returned later in the set with Ashton breaking a string and having to play Grooving In Green on the remaining five before borrowing Dusty Gannon’s instrument for the remainder of the set.

Once it began properly, from the opening drum-machine driven intro, Crow Baby showed that the Violets had lost none of their original power, with Ashton’s trenchant guitar sound very much the focal point. From the slashed gonzoid power chords of Radiant Boys, through the scratchy Gang of Four influenced punk funk musings of Grooving In Green and 1 2 I Love You to the one string riffs of Walk Into The Sun and modern classic Made Glorious, Ashton’s versatility and innovation marks him out as one of the premier guitarists of the original goth era, skilfully filling a musical space for which The Sisters of Mercy and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry required double the manpower. Garland herself was also on excellent form, her confident stage presence (“We’re having fun tonight, aren’t we? ….Ooh, goths having fun! ….We’d better keep that to ourselves hadn’t we, or else they’ll all want to join in!”) enhanced by her intervening time performing as Rosie Lugosi, vampire queen of the alternative cabaret scene, whilst consummate professional Faith handled Si’s vocal and Loz's bass parts perfectly for the most part and adds an effortless cool to the band’s visual aesthetic.

Although the pace of the set dipped a little during renditions of 2010’s songs like Dress 4 U and Mortality, excellent new song Heading For the Fire got things back on track, the rapturous reception delighting the band who have been working on material for a new album which should be released before the end of the year, before the inevitable Snake Dance brought the evening’s proceedings to a very satisfying conclusion.

The highly recommended Vision Video are promising to return to the UK in the autumn, and hopefully The March Violets will be following their own carpe diem advice and will also be back out on tour before too long, because otherwise, if they leave it another decade, we will all be seriously old “f---ers” by the time they return!

(My apologies to Kristeen Young who opened proceedings, but whose set I had evidently completely missed despite arriving 45 minutes after doors opened, although I am reliably informed that her theatrical performance further enhanced what was already a very strong bill and a great night's entertainment)

 

The Best New Goth/Post-Punk Releases - Late Spring 2023

 

Siouxsie’s first gigs for over a decade, including a lightning delayed show at Cruel World, The Sisters of Mercy’s first US jaunt for even longer, the definitive end (apparently) of Bauhaus, modern legends like Then Comes Silence and Diâvol Strain on tour in Europe and two new books on the History of Goth have hit the shelves. Just another average two months in the world of goth, a genre which continues to remain in an overtly "undead" state despite the constant media pronouncements about its apparent demise.

Intriguingly, the last eight weeks has also seen the release of new and well-received albums by both Ghost Dance (featuring Anne-Marie but not Gary Marx) and Skeletal Family (with a new vocalist but with Trotwood and Stan very much in situ), and German legends Girls Under Glass (with a new album next month) and The House of Usher (see below) are also making welcome returns to the scene. Treponem Pal released a great album which should please fans of Rammstein and the Young Gods, and Guillotine Dream put out a remastered version of their own latest LP. Fellow UK goth act Black Angel put on an impressive show in San Francisco and released the remastered live recording on Bandcamp within a week, showing their media savvy once again – other acts please note.

This last weekend the largest goth music event on the contemporary calendar, WGT, took place in Leipzig, and the current exponents of the genre have naturally continued to produce the high-quality new music to which we have become accustomed, making the selection of the top ten releases for April and May 2023 just as difficult as such a selection would have been in the “golden year” of 1983, forty years ago.

 

1.       Ground Nero – Stars

The Belgian/Manx trio are back with the best song yet, a slow burner with vibes of both Some Kind Of Stranger and Emma, showcasing to their best advantage both the expressive baritone croon of Mark E Moon’s Mark Sayle and the bass driven shimmering guitar wall of sound created by the two Flemish Peters, a stunning tribute to Sofie and well-deserving of the accolade of Goth/Post-Punk Best New Release of April/May 2023.

 

2.       A Cloud of Ravens – Parable

Brooklyn duo A Cloud of Ravens released their latest album Lost Hymns this month, with Parable the most recent single from it. The song showcases their earthy soft-punk appeal, melding the Celtic charm and sense of melody of Big Country with the wistful polemics of New Model Army whilst retaining their own distinctive sound. Tours this month with a most impressive trio of acts -  Then Comes Silence, Clan of Xymox and The Sisters of Mercy - should help the project to reach its rightful place at the forefront of the current scene.

 

3.       The Bellwether Syndicate – Noir Thing

Scene veteran William Faith’s current act the Bellwether Syndicate this month unleashed Vestige and Vigil, a confident and energetic album of in-yer-face punky darkwave including recent singles and this feature track, Noir Thing, which is an appropriate taster for the album, combining an on-trend scratchy verse with a hairdryer of chorus. A noted artist very much at the top of his form.

 

4.       The Shallow Graves – The Phantom Heart

More slow-burning glorious gothic bombast from German duo The Shallow Graves, with The Phantom Heart, the lead track from their new Promo EP. Derivative, trope-laden and highly unoriginal it may be, like their previous excellent work, but fans of classic graveyard goth rock will love this EP from the former Wave Records act which even contains a fairly straight cover of The Sisters of Mercy’s Peel Session classic, Good Things.

 

5.       Gallows Eve –  Oneirocide

The Swedish trad goth band return with a well-crafted atmospheric up-tempo slab of goth rock, replete with guitar riffs, a strong vocal and an anthemic chorus. Nothing stunningly original, just no-nonsense high-quality eight-to-the-bar ole-fashioned goth rock of a type which never seems to go out of fashion.

 

6.       Grey Gallows – Strangers

The title track from the Greek duo’s fourth album, which was released this month, is classic darkwave combining a distant guttural vocal, synth swirls, pounding bass and reverberating guitar in a complex and occasionally confused soundscape which will appear to those on both sides of the synth/guitar divide on the current goth scene.

7.       Words and Actions - The Snake’s Head

There’s a distinctive Amphetamine Logic feel to this debut track from a solo project from Detriti Records’ head honcho Davide Lace. Although somewhat let down by the demo quality and the under-par vocal, the classic goth one-string riff and driving bass still make this a rewarding listen.

8.       The House of Usher – Dreaming of You

Founded in 1990, German old school gothic rock legends The House of Usher released their twelfth album Echosphere last month, the first to feature their new third (!) guitarist. Whilst the sound overall remains impressively varied, the highlight for me is the jangly Rose of Avalanche-esque Dreaming of You, an upbeat love song without any of the sombre pomposity that can sometimes bedevil the trad goth genre.

9.       WitchHands – Black September

More 80’s single-string guitar riffing from deathrock project WitchHands, this time with distinctive March Violets tones, both in the slightly shouty vocal and the impressive guitar tone, on this track (one of eight) from the Colorado band’s sophomore album No Gods, No Masters, released by the impeccable Polish label Bat-cave Productions.

10.   Cemetary Girlz – The Last Kiss

The Last Kiss is the latest single from French gothic deathrock band Cemetary Girlz’s wonderful new album L’Envol du Corbeau on Manic Depression records. Outstanding post-punk guitar work, distant old school French coldwave vocals, sumptuous multi-layered production and mastering, and carefully-crafted songs make this album a masterpiece of a sub-genre which has been undergoing a real renaissance in recent years. The video, of some rather cartoonish goths doing their thang in cemeteries around the world, was released to coincide with World Goth Day last week.