Archive for January, 2025

Metalogue – Apposition Breach

Posted: 7 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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10th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Metlaogue’s Bandcamp pitches the project as ‘Industrial/IDM/breakcore with cinematic tendencies’, while the notes for Apposition Breach note how it ‘explores the threshold of geography and inner world – where landscape becomes the medium for emotion’. This, for me, seems to carry almost Ballardian connotations, the idea of inner geographies, the way in which the geometry of a landscape can slide between the literal and the metaphorical, how one can become an analogue of the other. The inner and outer worlds exist almost separate of one another, and the only point at which they intersect is in the mind as one processes the physical world as experienced through the shading of the emotional state. A sunny day may be a joy to behold, but may not bring joy in the face of a trauma. How we respond to our surroundings is influenced by not only circumstance, but the way we react to it. Yet rarely do we pause to consider these variables. Why did you have a shit day at work? Was the work itself shit, or did you arrive carrying the burden of something else which made something comparatively minor a catastrophe? You may walk the same route daily for a year, but it will never be the quite the same experience. The variables are infinite, and on Apposition Breach, Metalogue interrogates those variables and the reflex of memory and their complex relationship on a nuanced suite of compositions, some six years in the making.

The atmospheric ‘Threshold’ draws the listener into that fluid space, where soft ambience wraps itself around hard mechanical drones, and the percussion shifts in pace and intensity, at first muted, subtle, but firing forth in explosive bursts to become the dominant feature, and in doing so marking a dynamic shift in mood. It’s somewhat akin to climbing a gentle hill and suddenly finding a sharp crag just as the wind picks up and clouds darken the sky. The temperate changes with the change in tone.

While the images which accompany the release are illustrative, the soundscapes themselves evoke rusted machinery, dilapidated mills and farming equipment gradually yielding to the elements. As much as it’s industrial, Apposition Breach offers haunting echoes of industry, once-thriving communities and factories abandoned – not the collapse of civilisation, but the decline which comes with ‘progress’. Wraith-like synths wisp and envelop pulverising beats on ‘Triangulation’, a composition which builds and transitions through a series of different forms. The pieces tend to be on the longer side, in excess of six minutes and pushing to almost twelve on ‘Outer Margin’. This gives them time and space in which to evolve at a pace which feels natural and necessary.

‘Ilira’ is ominous, scraping drones create an eerie fog of tension which is punctured by hard, violent beats. Between the snarling mechanical grind of ‘Reflection’ and the dark, pulsating title track, Metalogue conjures an array of sonic sceneries which present a journey of sorts. Not a linear journey whereby one travels from A to B, B to C, but one which seers the retinas and scours the mind with a succession of scenes, flashbacks, rapid cuts, with the effect being not dissimilar to the way memory skips here and there in time and space when triggered by seemingly unconnected and unrelated prompts – a word, a sound, a smell, nothing at all – or a dream, in which one suddenly finds themselves in a different location or setting seemingly apropos of nothing. Just as William Burroughs remarked of his discontinuous narratives that he was not concerned with explaining how characters get from one place to the next, so it is that we, as participants in the immersive experience that is Apposition Breach, find ourselves effectively teleported.

There’s the hard attack of ‘Redoubt’ and the echoing mystery of the swampy but hypnotic ‘Day Marker’, and in between, all shades of hefty percussion and cold, razor-edged synths shiver and scrape kneed and throb to render an altogether uncomfortable experience. Apposition Breach is expansive, ambitious, and meticulously realised.

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Watch: ‘Church Of Bones’ by Underheaven

Posted: 6 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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‘Church of Bones’ is the first music video released by Underheaven, the Lower Bucks County, PA duo comprised of multi-instrumentalist / producer / songwriter Chris Gelok and songwriter / bassist / vocalist Howard Wuelfing. The video was created by Gelok, an experienced creator of CGI video. The song is a haunting portrait of a human being’s last moments of consciousness. Have a look here:

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Philadelphia-based multi-instrumentalist Chris Gelok has been an active part of the local Metal scene since the early aughts, playing guitar with Chorea from 2005 through 2013, then Disgorgement from 2013 through 2020. Along the way he took time out to participate in Funk-bound side ventures including Bassnectar and Big Pimp Jones. He’s also provided musical settings for a number of television networks.

Howard Wuelfing was active in the original Washington D.C. Punk scene, playing in The Look, Slickee Boys, Nurses, the original version of Underheaven, and finally Half Japanese before relocating to New Jersey.

The first edition of Underheaven was founded by guitarist Don Zientara and Wuelfing who first met when Don recorded several of the groups Howard played in at the first incarnation of Zientara’s now-storied Inner Ear Studios. After the band opened for acts like R.E.M., The Bangles, etc. and recorded an EPs worth of material with Ian MacKaye at the control board the members went their separate ways. Decades later, Zientara and Wuelfing reconvened the group joined by Half Japanese guitarist Mark Jickling on guitar and Dan Buccino on drums. When lockdown thwarted live performing, they recorded a pair of vintage originals, ‘One Mad Answer’ and ‘The Moment I Die’ before calling it quits – some of the last recordings done at Inner Ear before it fell prey to developers; these tracks were released digitally in mid-2023.

Gelok and Wuelfing joined forces soon after the D.C.-based line-up dissolved to record a growing body of original songs, his first new compositions in decades. Since they began working together, their stock of distinctive original material has grown steadily and plans are to release their full length debut.

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Karobela – Afterthought

Posted: 6 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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20th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Here we are on the cusp of the second week of January and still mopping up releases from December. And that’s ok. I don’t get why everyone is so hung up on the end of year / new year thing anyway, and I certainly don’t get why so many end of year lists are published in November. It made sense when we were tied to print media, and monthly magazines went to print a good month in advance, meaning the December editions were being written in October to hit the shelves at the end of November, but in the age of the Internet? Nah. And the sheer volume of music being releases means that things often have a slower diffusion, in contrast to the 80s and 90s when people raced to buy 7” and CD singles on the week of release after a big advance push which was essential for that chart placing, which meant Radio 1 Top 40 airplay on a Sunday afternoon and the possibility of being on Top of the Pops.

So, my somewhat belated coverage of this new single by Kent-based alternative act Karobela is anything but an afterthought. Boom.

The song is, they say, ‘a kick back, in your face retaliation to everyone who thought they could just kick you to the curb’. Many of us have been there: left out forgotten, excluded – not necessarily by design, but because ‘oops’. Well, you can tag along if you like, why don’t you? Out of sight, out of mind as the phrase goes.

The band have clearly put plenty of thought into this tune that’s structured around a low-slung bass groove and builds to climactic, impassioned choruses. It does teeter perilously close to classic rock / indie funk in places, but the energy and raw sincerity carry it through, and they sound like a band who will really grab certain demographics in a live setting, while the relatable content of ‘Afterthought’ is also likely to be a winner.

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Trek with Quintronic – Stranger Than Today

Posted: 5 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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17th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s inevitable that with the sheer volume of music in existence, there will be a fair bit which bypasses even the keenest enthusiast of the obscure. Trek and Quintronic is a pairing I feel I really ought to be familiar with. Emerging in 1980 Paul Wilcox (Trek) and David Kane (Quintronic) recorded two albums, noted for pioneering ‘electronic rock’, with Landing in from 1980, and the self-titled follow-up Trek w/ Quintronic LP the following year, created using an array of synths, plus pedals and six- and twelve-string electric guitars. There was a reissue, entitled Landing Plus, released in Europe in 2012 and the US a couple of years later, which featured the entirety of Trek w/ Quintronic and a couple of additional cuts by way of the ‘plus’, but twelve years on, it’s not exactly easy to come by, and this new release offers something quite different, featuring as it does ‘9 of the original Tw/Q tracks plus 11 new, never released songs written by Paul Wilcox, spanning a period of 40 plus years, all remixed and remastered.’

This means that some of the material was recorded after their second album, without seeing the light of day, while some of the contemporaneous recordings have been flaking away on old tapes since 1980 or thereabouts, and their restoration and repair has been quite an undertaking, achieved quite remarkably by David Lawrie of The Royal Ritual. The aim, as they state on the website, was to ‘present the definitive collection of the best of Trek with Quintronic’, and containing some twenty tracks, this is a wide-ranging, and in-depth summary of their work – and it’s often the case that musical careers consist of considerably more than the material that was released at the time, for whatever reasons.

That ‘You Might be Lonely’ and ‘As We Sing’ first appeared on Landing makes this a truly career-spanning document, which showcases the full span of their musical vision and innovation. It’s often easy to forget just how new to the market (affordable) synths were at this point in time. The advent of 80s synthpop and industrial music came about as a result of the emerging technology, which also, notably, included drum machines. It was a revolution.

There’s a gothic, church organ feel to the introduction, and its grandeur also makes a nod to the prog past of the pair, but it’s listening to ‘You Might be Lonely’ that the span of their influences coupled with the use of the kit at their disposal becomes apparent: it’s like Hawkwind but with synths, both rumbling and swirling and with additional laser blasts and primitive drum machine knocking out a metronomic rhythm, all coalescing to provide a backdrop to a vocal delivery that’s an overt Bowie rip.

The Bowie influence looms equally large on the glammy ‘All the Rave’, only here with the addition of sweeping string sounds. It sounds remarkably fresh, as well as prefacing – by a long way – the trend for orchestral flourishes which would be a big thing in the late 90s with, and winding up with a big, flashy guitar solo. It’s visionary stuff, and the execution is remarkably sophisticated, particularly for the time.

Some of the songs sound more of the era: ‘Zolian Space’ lands somewhere in the region of OMD and Ure-era Ultravox, but it’s a nifty enough pop song. There are a fair few of those on offer here, not least of all the bouncy Suicide-meets-Bowie ‘White Hoods’, and the hyperactive twitch of ‘Twin Forces’.

The guitars are to the fore on the previously unreleased ‘Built to Average’, hinting perhaps at one of the many directions they could have veered. It’s a solid tune, but coming on like a collision between Bauhaus and Mr Mister, it’s dated more than some of the other material, whereas, in contrast, the spiky ‘Wally And The Rich Kid’ is pure vintage yet still more impactful in its stark, dramatic stylings.

Some of – what at least I assume to be – the later material stands out because it sounds different: ‘Religion’ is slicker, the drum machine in particular more ‘real’ sounding, and in a way it tells a story of technological advancement and its effect on music-making. Objectively, it sounds better, in terms of clarity, fidelity, separation, but for everything that’s been gained, something has been lost, and it’s something that using emulators or even vintage gear can never fully recapture. There was an unmistakeable zeitgeist about the ‘79-’82 spell, which was unique, and Trek with Quintronic were right there and probably didn’t even realise at the time. No-one did, really.

Hindsight really is everything. Stranger Than Today is an outstanding compilation which goes beyond in providing a hitherto unseen insight into the context of their groundbreaking second album and beyond.

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Nate Wooley – Henry House

Posted: 4 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Ideologic Organ – 10th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s already looking like 10th January is going to be an intense date in terms of the sheer volume of releases. Time was when January was something of a quiet spell for new music, as everyone recovered from the Christmas glut, and labels tended not to release much since people were skint. It also used to be the case that unexpected releases would sneak unexpectedly high in the charts, especially the UK singles top 40, with remarkably low sales figures, usually with cult acts with savvy labels whacking out a release that would have barely scraped the charts any other month – White Town’s ‘Your Woman’, released 13th January 1997 and hitting number one in the UK and going top ten globally – however briefly – is a classic example.

There’s no danger of Nate Wooley registering on any charts with Henry House, released on the Ideologic Organ label, curated by Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))) legend, and home to a long line of truly magnificent avant-garde and otherwise most unusual musical works, of which this is very much one. That’s not because it’s not good, it’s just that the nature of charts has changes beyond recognition over the last thirty years. There is also the statistic which recently came to light that there was more music released on any single given day of 2024 than during the entirety of 1989. It’s a pretty staggering statistic, and one of many factors when considering just how difficult it is for artists to make a living from making music. Something I have touched on previously is the fact that simultaneous with this explosion of output, culture has become both more homogenised and more fragmented. In terms of the mainstream, this homogenisation has facilitated the advent of multimillionaire and even billionaire ultra-megastars like Taylor Swift – but at the other end of the spectrum, there are tens of thousands of artists releasing music on Bandcamp and Spotify with no backing or publicity whatsoever, to be heard by maybe five people.

But we need music that’s unpopular, that isn’t created with any commercial intent, and we very much need labels like Ideologic Organ to provide a platform and to point us toward the cream of those artists who may not otherwise reach the audience they so richly deserve.

And as an album containing a single composition split into five parts, described as ‘a recurring dream song’ with a running time of some eighty minutes, this is a work which is very much non-commercial in every way.

As the accompanying notes detail, this is a work which combines ‘closely tuned instruments and sinetones, tape-music editing techniques, field recordings, and voice,’ providing the context that ‘this eighty-minute, five-part song cycle is an evolutionary step away from the spontaneity of the free jazz/noise aesthetic usually found in the music of Nate Wooley. Henry House expands on the ecstatic, durational work found in Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain, a six-part composition that has been premiered over the last ten years by an ensemble that now includes multiple drummers, guitarists, a twenty-one-person choir, and the composer on amplified trumpet. But its ritual is more serene, more natural, slower.

‘Henry House is the first long-form piece that doesn’t feature Wooley’s trumpet. It is also the first to be constructed around his poetic writing. Wooley weaves a strange funeral mass for a fictional everyman from isolated phrases culled from essays, poems, and non-fiction written by Wendell Berry, John Berryman, Joseph Mitchell, and Reiner Stach. After organizing the fragments into a dream narrative, Wooley rewrote the text dozens of times, manipulating the stitched-together story until only glimpses of its sources remained.’

It’s ten minutes into the twenty-minute opener, ‘Acacia Burnt Myrrh’ that the poetical oration begins, with the words spoken by Mat Maneri. He speaks in a calm, not entirely flat, but level tone, of geometry, of space, of time. The words conjure abstractions, images, moods, against backdrops of elongated hovering hums, oscillator-driven quivering drones. The words are audible, but comparatively low in the mix, and it’s not always easy to stay focused on the narrative, such as it is: instead, the mind focuses on absorbing the atmosphere. There’s a lot of that, and Henry House is an immense project with near-infinite dimensions. Megan Schubert’s faster-paced, more driven-sounding delivery is quite a contrast to Maneri’s, and from these counterpoints, the album grows in terms of dynamics and depth.

So much happens: listening to Henry House is like reading a book which contains stories within the story, and illustrations in a range of styles. No two tracks are really alike, and the arrangements change across the course of each piece. It draws you into a dark fairytale, a unique world which isn’t exactly scary, but unsettling because it feels unfamiliar, dissonant. The fact that two of the pieces bear the same title only add to the bewilderment. Horns and drones radiate between the narrative segments, and the final piece, ‘Aleatory Half Sentences’ is led by some flighty piano work, which trills and flickers against a heavy, nagging, low-level hum. It’s one that really takes some time to process, but it’s very much worth the effort.

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Morlocks – Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi

Posted: 3 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 10th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

According to their bio, ‘Morlocks are a Swedish act who combine elements of industrial rock, neo-classical, darkwave and metal with epic production values to create an exciting hybrid sound. Having issued the long-awaited and well received album Praise The Iconoclast in late 2023, they subsequently promoted it with two US tours in 2024, both in support of their friends and occasional collaborators KMFDM.’

Asked about the inspiration behind the song, the band state: “Watch the world from a distance. Get angry at first, but also inspired. Take the darkest parts of it and twist them into something weird, beautiful and batshit insane – something that you could either dance to, brood in the shadows to or scream at the top of your lungs at the moon. Preferably all of the above. Everything can be turned into art, and art must hurt. Situation normal: all fucked up.”

‘Everything can be turned into art, and art must hurt’ is a phrase which stands out here. It may seem somewhat dramatic, but to summarise Buddha’s teaching, ‘all life is suffering’, or ‘life is pain’, and the function or art – true art – is to speak in some way of deep truths of what it is to be human. Art must therefore, reflect life and capture something of the existential anguish of the human condition. If it doesn’t, it isn’t art, it’s mere entertainment. And if the idea that ‘Everything can be turned into art’ may superficially seem somewhat flippant, a diminishment of serious matters, if the work is, indeed art, and not entertainment, then the obverse is true: using the pain of life as source material is the only way to interrogate in appropriate depth those most challenging of issues. In other words, making art from trauma is not reductive or to cheapen the experience – but making entertainment from it very much is.

There’s a snobbery around what constitutes art, even now, despite the breakthroughs made through modernism and postmodernism. It’s as if Duchamps had never pissed on the preconceptions of art for the upper echelons of society who still maintain that art is theatre, is opera, is Shakespeare, that art can only exist in galleries and is broadly of the canon. This is patently bollocks, but what Morlocks do is incorporate these elements of supposed ‘high’ art and toss them into the mix – most adeptly, I would add – with grimy guitars and pounding techno beats. Art and culture and quite different things, and those who are of the opinion that only high culture is art are superior snobs who have no real understanding of art or art history.

The five songs on Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi are therefore very much art, although that doesn’t mean they don’t also entertain. ‘The S.N.A.F.U. Principle v3.0’ arrives in a boldly theatrical sweep of neoclassical strings and grand drama – and then the crunching guitars, thumping mechanised drums and raspy vocals kick in and all hell breaks loose. Combining the hard-edged technoindustrial of KMFDM – which is hardly surprising – with the preposterous orchestral bombast of PIG and Foetus bursting through and ascending to the very heavens, it’s complex and detailed and thrillingly dramatic, orchestral and choral and abrasive all at once.

With tribal drumming and bombastic, widescreen orchestration, ‘March of the Goblins’ has a cinematic quality to it, which sits somewhat at odds with the rather hammy narrative verses. It seems to say ‘yeah, ok, you want strings and huge production and choral backing to think it’s art? Here you go, and we’re going to sing about radioactive dinosaurs like it’s full-on Biblical’. It’s absurd and audacious, and makes for a truly epic seven and a half minutes of theatrical pomp that’s admirable on many levels. Ridiculous, but admirable.

‘The Lake’, split over two parts with a combined running time of over ten minutes explores more atmospheric territory, with graceful, delicate strings, acoustic guitar, and tambourine swirling through swirling mists before breaking through into a surging tower of power, melding crunching metal guitars with progressive extravagance, and medieval folk and martial flourishes.

Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi is remarkably ambitious and unashamedly lavish in every way. Quite how serious are Morlocks? They’re certainly serious about their art. But while delivered straight, one feels there’s an appropriate level of knowingness, self-awareness in their approach to their undertaking. And that is where the art lies: theatre is acting. The stories told are drawn from life, and resonate with emotional truth: but the actors are not the action, and there is a separation between art and artifice. Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi is something special.

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Flin Van Hemmen – Luxury of Mind

Posted: 2 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Self-Released – 13th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, the notes artists pen to accompany their latest works are somewhat dry, rather technical. Others provide effusive essays, while others still no details whatsoever. Flin Van Hemmen’s words which accompany Luxury of Mind are poetic, somewhat vague and elliptical, but lyrically rich and personal, if vague.

In order to thaw matters of the heart, one must go to where it’s cold.

It was the summer of 2022 and I was finally summoned there.

My personal winter had come, a place at once foreign and familiar.

In a flash I was made aware of all my life’s dimensions – the ones less welcome, or simply too big to face.

My sense of musicianship was temporarily halted, at that point unsure of its return.

Early 2024 I knew my personal winter was waning, and so I started tinkering away again, musically.

The pitter patter of the rain, the orchestra rehearsing their parts simultaneously, the sounds inside the corner store where I buy my daily coffee.

And how do they sound, together?

What indeterminacies reveal itself, or do I pick up on?

That’s my journey and a journey I wish to share with you in Luxury of Mind.

I have elected to quote in full because they are clearly pertinent to the substance of this material. Van Hemmen is clearly and peculiarly specific that he feels the need to share this specific journey, which clearly has involved stasis and self-doubt. Writer’s block? He seems to allude to rather more than that here.

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‘A Picture of Your Face (In the Light of the Fire)’ is bold, choral to begin. It’s not grand in the bombastic sense, but feels deeply spiritual, ceremonial, and for wont of a better word, ‘churchy’. While the sense of grandeur is uplifting, and spiritually powerful, the drone of organ and voices coming reverberating in a large, echoey space reminds that where there is a ‘churchy’ aspect, religion – particularly of the Christian persuasion – for all the exultation, is laced with guilt, apology, pleading – pleading forgiveness for sins, pleading for entry into heaven. And as such, it reminds of the paradox whereby Christians prefer to confess and atone their sins rather than simply try harder not to err in the first place. There are scratches and crackles which rupture the graceful smoothness of the piece, and the title track slips into a darker, danker space, with a sound like torrential rain on a tin roof, with murky ambience lurking about.

‘Eloquence and Grief’ brings new levels of disorientation, sort of a film-soundtrack piece with discordant background babble and crowd noise as an orchestra forges a soundscape which evokes mountains and canyons. Its meaning is difficult to extrapolate: it feels like multiple narratives occurring simultaneously, and the same is true of the eerie dark sound collage of ‘Volition & Velocity I’, and its equally gloomy, dolorous counterpart, ‘Volition & Velocity II’.

The whole feel of Luxury of Mind is haunting, unsettling, like walking through the soundtrack to a vague and abstract film, traversing time and space, intersecting scenes of bustling medieval towns, and post-apocalyptic shots of burning villages, intercut with occasional psychedelic visuals, while electronic circuits in heavy rain and church bells chime for the funerals of unnamed bodies. It’s not quite horror, but it’s heavy with gloom and trauma, and, by this measure, Luxury of Mind sounds like the soundtrack to a period filled with anguish and psychological pain. It concludes with the sparse and dank clanks of ‘Last Year in Cantecleer’ – and it must have been a washout.

It feels as if we’re sinking in floodwater, drowning in a tidal wave of toxic bullshit, while all around everything goes wrong. But at least one thing has gone right for Flin Van Hemmen: Luxury of Mind is an album with so much texture, so much depth of texture, so much mood, that it’s impossible to deny its creative success.

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Plague Garden – Under The Sanguine Moon

Posted: 2 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Bleeding Light – 3rd January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Under The Sanguine Moon is the fourth album from Denver, Colorado-based goth rock band, Plague Garden. As the pitch tells it, ‘The album features a prominent vampiric theme. Delve into the catacombs of a nocturnal world, where tales of bloodlust at dusk reign supreme. Listen to fantastical tales of the undead and even a little bit of Greek mythology added in for variety… From the album’s blood-red artwork to it’s [sic] hemophilic lyrics, this LP is bound to please even the darkest children of the night. For fans of gothic rock, post punk, deathrock, darkwave.’

Having got into gothness around 1987, just on the cusp of teenagerdom, I would come to discover that, just as with metal, this was a genre with many disparate threads. The vampiric fascination, which represents the popular image of goth – and espoused by the myriad dark souls who descend upon Whitby for the legendary goth weekends and trace the steps of Dracula following the small port town’s prominence in Bram Stoker’s genre-defining novel – is a league apart from the origins of the music which would come to be synonymous with early goth – predominantly Leeds-based acts such as The Sisters of Mercy, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, The March Violets, and Salvation. You won’t find a hint of vampirism here. Bauhaus’ debut single, ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ predates the emerging Leeds scene, and the whole vampire / spooky template can be pinned squarely on this single, which can’t exactly be considered representative of their output as a whole. But still, people like to latch on to easy tags.

This perhaps unduly preface is to say that the goth / vampire thing is something I find difficult to fully embrace. Goth bands doing vampy stuff is simply not the same as Steven Severin providing live soundtracks to classic silent movies.

The other thing I find difficult to really align is that while there is a whole new wave of acts of a goth persuasion emerging, there are a lot of goth acts loitering and lingering featuring older guys – in the forty to fifty-plus demographic, which I will, in the interest of transparency record as being my demographic – doing this. Plague Garden do sit within this bracket.

Under The Sanguine Moon is a solid album. It sits in the third wave goth bracket alongside the likes of Suspiria and the Nightbreed roster of the late ‘90s – brooding, theatrical, with booming baritone vocals that are sort of aping Andrew Eldritch but fall into that more generic ‘fah-fah-fah’ singing down in the throat style. With piano taking a more prominent position among the standard musical arrangement of drums / bass / guitar, Plague Garden create a layered sound which does stand out from many of their peers, and they so absolutely nail that quintessential goth sound with the solid foot-down four-square Craig Adams style bass groove. This is nowhere better exemplified than on ‘Shadows’, with its spectral guitars, the perfect cocktail of chorus, flange and reverb creating that brittle, layered sound which defined the 80s sound.

The vocals are mixed fairly low, and it’s the bass and drums which dominate, and this is a good thing – not because the vocals are bad, but because it puts the atmosphere to the fore, and means the lyrics are less obvious, which is probably no bad thing.

‘The Dirty Dead’ is a crunchier, punkier take on the sound, and carries hints of early Christian Death – think ‘Deathwish’ – and this carries on into ‘Pandora’.

The cover they mention is ‘#1 Crush’ by Garbage, an early B-side that’s one of the hidden gems of their catalogue. Plague Garden’s take is unsurprisingly lugubrious, theatrical, and makes sense as a song selection with its nagging, picked guitar part and crunching percussion.

There’s a flood of blood at the end, with ‘Blood Fingers’ and ‘Blood Debt’ closing the album. The former, haunting, hypnotic, a classic moody goth cut, the latter offering a slower, dreamier take on the former. These guys have got their sound honed to perfection, and if you’re into more trad goth delivered with a more contemporary spin – but not too contemporary – you probably can’t go too far wrong with Under The Sanguine Moon.

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Watch: ‘Curse Breaker’ by Miss FD

Posted: 1 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Dark electronic music producer, MISS FD has just released her latest bewitching cinematic gothic music video for her song, ‘Curse Breaker’.

‘Curse Breaker’ is a liberating dark piano piece with laid bare female vocals that channel raw emotion, empowerment, and mystique.  A spell unbinding transformative song about overcoming and letting go.

The music video, directed by long-time collaborator and friend Tas Limur, was filmed in a Victorian mansion in Historic Old Louisville, KY.

The video follows MISS FD through a curse-breaking séance which releases her from a haunting apparition, symbolizing freeing oneself from the binds and limitations of the past.

Watch it here:

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Stoneburner – New Year Same Fuckin You

Posted: 1 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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COP International – 31st December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The adage that you should never judge a book by its cover is a nonsense, and certainly doesn’t apply to records. I was instantly drawn to Stoneburner’s ‘New Year Same Fuckin You’ for its referencing – by which I mean almost direct lifting – of the artwork for the Foetus All Nude Review ‘Bedrock’ 12”, one of JG Thirlwell’s first forays into the ‘big band’ swing sound back in 1987.

It transpires they’ve got form: previous releases ape the fourth Foetus album, Nail, as well as Big Black’s Atomizer, and no doubt other releases reference things I’m unfamiliar with, as it’s impossible to know everything within another’s sphere of reference, and Stoneburner have released a hell of a lot in a comparatively short time. But I always maintain there’s more honour in being up-front in acknowledging one’s influences than trying to hide them, and have all the admiration for Stoneburner for their unashamed referencing. By now, we all know – or should know – that there’s nothing news, so better to front up and embrace the fact instead of feebly proclaiming artistic innovation.

The solo project of Steven Archer, best known for his work with the electronic rock band Ego Likeness, as well has is abstract electronica project ::Hopeful Machines::, he’s one of those creatives who simply gushes new material.

For ‘New Year Same Fuckin You’, Archer has enlisted Rodney Anonymous, Matt Fanale, and Mark Alan Miller, and it’s something of a departure from the majority of the Stoneburner catalogue, which, while very much given to industrial leanings, also place considerable emphasis on atmosphere and drama (in the way JG Thirlwell and Raymond Watts do, setting Foetus and PIG apart from the majority of the field). There’s no such subtlety here: ‘New Year Same Fuckin You’ is a balls-out blaster.

The track is pitched as ‘a rallying cry for a time when so many feel defeated and powerless. A time when giving up seems easier. But when I think of those who marched across the bridge in Selma, knowing full well what was waiting for them; when I think of the women who sacrificed everything for their autonomy; when I think of every brave soul who stood tall against oppression, I know this: we owe it to them to rise again.’

It’s a strong sentiment delivered at a time when mood and energy feels like it’s at an all-time low. It’s hard to recall a festive season that’s felt less festive, and celebrating extravagantly with gifts and feasts has felt quite wrong while the world is at war and hyperconsumption continues to drive climate change. What are we actually celebrating here? The idea that we’re ‘doing it for the kids’ rings rather hollow when you know that every overpriced piece plastic of tat stuffed in a stocking is another nail in the coffin of the future they’ll inherit.

And this brings us to the gimmick of New Year’s resolutions. How many last past the first fortnight of any given new year? Mostly people seem to resolve to get fitter, and take out gym memberships with good but misguided intent. Gym conglomerates rub their hands as they make half the year’s profits in a week or so, knowing that the regulars won’t be complaining of overcrowding again come February. Most goals set are as pointless as they are unattainable., but how many set themselves the target of being less of a cunt in the coming year, eh? Eh? Yeah – New Year Same Fuckin You.

This is a full-throttle raging technonidustrial banger, and curiously, as much as it’s in the vein of KMFDM and the entirety of the Wax Trax! catalogue with its pounding, hard-edged disco beat and snarling synths and mangled vocals, I can’t help but be reminded of ‘It’s Grim Up North’ by the JAMMs.

As an anti-trend anthem, with it’s ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’ refrain, ‘New Year Same Fuckin You’ is the perfect counterpoint to all of the motivational guff that circulates all year round but becomes particularly prevalent at this time of year as every agency going advertises to appeal to your shame – shame for your indulgence, your weight gain, your slacking, your failure to move forward in your life goals – in an attempt to take your money and convince you that spending with them will make your life better. Yes, fuck you! Get a grip. You want your life better? Start by taking control of your own direction, instead of paying for apps and influencers and life coaches to tell you what you already know. Need reminding that this is the true way forward? Listen to this on repeat for an hour daily.

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