rescuing musical virtue in distress.
There is always the thrill of the unexpected felt when diving into a new song from Beauty in Chaos. Not because you go in wondering if they are going to knock it out of the sonic park… that is pretty much a given…the excitement comes from seeing who BIC main man Michael Ciravolo has got... Continue Reading →
Although music is something which should be universally celebrated all-year round, some of it makes more sense at certain times in the calendar. You wouldn’t sing carols in the middle of summer nor Auld Lang Syne before sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner. And although there is so much to love found on this gorgeous... Continue Reading →
A new album from Beauty in Chaos is always something which generates a lot of excitement. There are not many bands who manage to marry alt-rock swagger, post-punk inventiveness, brooding, gothic overtones and old school rock and roll so effortlessly, certainly none which do so without falling for the usual cliches. And if Michael Ciravolo... Continue Reading →
I’m not a fan of covers, not really. Whichever path you take, you loose, generally speaking. Remain too faithful to the original and people question why you even bothered reworking a song if you are going to bring nothing new to the table. Get too creative and you risk accusations of arrogance. Did you really... Continue Reading →
Although ideas of isolation and abandonment, loneliness and longing have always been subjects explored by musicians, especially those who follow a more alternative path (after all, these subjects don’t lend them self to a particularly perky pop format), the fact that this sophomore release is the product of a band trying to plough their creative... Continue Reading →
The fact that both classical piano and avant-garde metal have featured in Leah Hinton’s past comes as little surprise when you listen to the first full blown Murmur Tooth album. It’s not an obvious thing but it might account for the fact that the album is on the one hand peppered with a sense of... Continue Reading →
Some artists use their music merely as a delivery system for the lyrics, perhaps reasoning that the ability to make you think is more important than the ability to make you feel. Then again, artists who think like that rarely deliver music which makes you do either. Harry Stafford, thankfully, has delivered an album which... Continue Reading →
Theatrics and high drama have always had their place in rock music, both in performance and in the songs themselves. Its a genre it has always been about escapism and whilst some choose to seek that by writing songs about fast women and faster cars, others wander into far more mystical places. Mono Inc have... Continue Reading →
It’s very easy to get this type of music wrong. This blend of classic rock drive and synth wave futurism, historical narratives and gothic drama has been done often but rarely well. For every 69 Eyes or Sabaton there are a dozen bands whose inspiration comes from Buffy The Vampire Slayer rather than Polidori’s Vampyre,... Continue Reading →
The classic rock sound and the gothic world have always made for comfortable bed fellows. Denizens of the former scene have more than a passing interest in the shadowed themes and dark romances that form the latter's hallowed ground. When you look back at the history of the gothic musical thread you find that most... Continue Reading →
They say that a man is known by the company he keeps. The same can be said for a band. So the fact that Audra have been found on the road in the company of the likes of Peter Murphy, The Mission, AFI, She Wants Revenge, Gene Loves Jezebel, New Model Army and Nitzer Ebb, speaks volumes... Continue Reading →
I always worry when I’m heading into a review where the first image appears to be of someone who used to knock about with Aleister Crowley or perhaps runs a stall at Whitby Goth Weekender. Immediately I expect music made by ex-metallers with an unhealthy fascination with Clive Barker novels and lyrics written by people... Continue Reading →
The post-punk/indie/goth act A Projection formed in 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden, and have released two albums to date - ‘Exit’ (2015) and ‘Framework’ (2017). The band’s brand new album, ‘Section’, arrives following a period of reinvention after the departure of their original singer, with former bassist Rikard Tengvall eventually proving to be a more than adequate replacement behind the mic.... Continue Reading →
Want a quick review of m1nk’s debut album? Sultry! Oh, you want more, how about…really sultry. Okay, I’ll play nice, but as opening track Some Elusive floats from your speakers, no other word is sufficient to describe this dark and slightly dangerous vibe, this weave of the illicit and the exciting, this transient and intangible... Continue Reading →
Getting old is no fun, but it isn’t all bad. All of those years listening to music enables us more aged types to have a long field of reference when discussing and dissecting the new music of today. That music is cyclical might seem like a cliche but it isn’t, all musicians creating their own... Continue Reading →
We know that Troy Petty is drawn to music which seems to wallow in a bleakness, to a washed out and harsh sonic pathway that is both beautifully stark and starkly beautiful and this time out he seems to wander even further down such shadowed byways. Kept seems to weave its slow burning ways from... Continue Reading →
Bands with such provocative titles tend to go one of two ways. Either the name is chosen for purely emotive reasons and the whole affair turns out to be a bunch of 17 year old screamo-metalheads who think such mystique is a sure way of getting a girlfriend (it isn’t, believe me) or it is... Continue Reading →
Books and covers, well, more properly Cd’s and covers; I never learn do I but I’m sure that I’m not the only person to look at this side project release from Jezebel Jones and automatically conjure words such as gothic, pagan, theatre, pathos, cliche, etc. But this is actually far removed from the Buffy watching,... Continue Reading →
As we head into the halloween weekend, houses are being suitably be-decked in all things spooky and it is the perfect time to re-immerse yourself in the much misunderstood genre that is goth. Not only does it make for the perfect soundtrack, you will be reminded just how great some of the music was. Those... Continue Reading →
I Am The Dark sits on the edge of a wonderful vanishing point, one where recognisable music forms are being sucked into a musical black hole. Pop, indie and rock strands are all enticed over the edge into this abyss but just before the colour and vibrancy are replaced by a stark grey musical nihilism,... Continue Reading →
The further down this dark, spacious path Leah Hinton takes her solo Murmur Tooth project, the more I love it. Always aware that there is more musical currency in atmosphere and anticipation than bombast and clutter, here she builds a powerful and punchy piece from the bear minimum of sonics. The icing on this rich,... Continue Reading →
This year marks 40 years since the formation of Bauhaus. To mark this occasion, founding member David J has announced two one-off solo UK concerts, to occur in between several festival dates with Bauhaus vocalist Peter Murphy and their newly-announced world tour. The second of these shows, 'Back to Beck (The Crucible of ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’), is... Continue Reading →
No matter what anyone tells you about current musical fashions, what the zeitgeist might happen to be blowing in from cooler taste making circles, what the papers say is the next big thing or any of that sort of rhetoric, one thing never changes. The underground, the outside, the left field, the other…call it what... Continue Reading →
Heptapod exists at a point where pop falls into a dark abyss, where electronica starts to become self aware, where gothic music finds its way from the dark basement venues and onto the neon glare of the clubland dance floors. Apocalyptic disco? Doom pop? Gothtronica? Take your pick, they all work. Imagine if Depeche Mode... Continue Reading →
Gothic music all had a touch of the melodrama and theatre about it, even those embryonic bands like Bauhaus who held the keys to the musical crypt revelled in a filmic, widescreen persona. By the time you get to the likes of The Mission and The Nephilim and the lines are completely blurred. Church of... Continue Reading →
Any band worth their salt should be able to fill a book with anecdotes and stories of their touring and recording life, one that is a flame for moth-like fans and at least piques the interest of the more general reader. Any band, after even a few years on the road, who can’t fill such... Continue Reading →
No matter what anyone tells you about current musical fashions, what the zeitgeist might happen to be blowing in from cooler taste making circles, what the papers say is the next big thing or any of that sort of rhetoric, one thing never changes. The underground, the outside, the left field, the other…call it what... Continue Reading →
Much has changed in the Murmur Tooth camp since 2016’s The Room. Now a solo musical vehicle and described by its creative driver Leah Hinton as being “dedicated to the passing of time, to the peeling of memory and to the shedding of skin,” which before I have even pressed play sounds like my sort... Continue Reading →
If someone like Nick Cave best typifies the dark, sweeping and majestic end point of the western blues derived musical experiment; this is the flipside of that coin. Portland/Atlanta trio, We Are Parasols, makes music which comes from a younger, though similarly angst ridden, oddly sultry and intense place, but one that has evolved out... Continue Reading →
Whilst there has, in the modern age at least, been a real disconnect between the potential of the original goth scene with all its pomp and drama, knowing pretence and theatrical allure and the grit and integrity of the modern alt-rock and fractured, tribal metal community, Black Bluebirds feel like that missing link, that bridge... Continue Reading →