Gothic rock band, Sirens Of Light have just unveiled their cover of the Led Zeppelin classic song, ‘In The Evening’.
Says Sirens Of Light main member, Andy J. Davies, “I have always thought this was possibly their best work and has always seemed to be underrated. This version is based on the original studio recording and the live version from the Knebworth concert in 1979… which I listened to live from the garden of my home as I was too young to be there!”
Check the video here:
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Sirens Of Light is a gothic rock band from London, originally formed in 2004.
Drawing on influences from the earliest days of gothic rock and the 80’s/90’s London Goth and Glam scenes – Sisters Of Mercy, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Southern Death Cult, March Violets, Rose Of Avalanche, Bauhaus etc. Their first album, Nullus Magis Gothica was recorded in 2004 and saw a very limited release in 2005. It is now almost impossible to find……
Sixteen years later, in 2021, after the lost original recordings were discovered by chance, a new re-mixed version of the record was released on November 8th, 2022.
UK industrial band Binary Order just unleashed their new EP; a release containing three remixes of previously released tracks and a reimagined, industrial cover of Papa Roach’s song, ‘Thrown Away’.
Says Binary Order’s creator, Benjamin Blank, “The song’s subject matter is something that resonated sharply with me when I first heard it. It’s about being an outcast and only knowing a life of being rejected. It has continued to resonate with me till this day.”
The Thrown Away EP is available now on all digital platforms.
FRAYLE deliver a beautiful take on SOUNDGARDEN’s ‘Head Down’, fueled by the mystery of Gwyn Strang’s haunting vocals and down-tuned frying guitars. The fast-rising doom act from Cleveland, OH has furthermore illustrated this dark song with a stunning video, which you can see here:
The massive double album Superunknown Redux has been scheduled for release on July 14.
Parallel to Superunknown Redux, Magnetic Eye Records will release the by now customary companion album entitled Best of Soundgarden Redux that contains further 15 cover versions of deep cuts and all-time classics from across SOUNDGARDEN’s extensive catalogue recorded by more exciting artists.
FRAYLE comment: "Soundgarden was an integral part of our development as musicians from an early age with brillant songs such as ‘Fell on Black Days’,”’Black Hole Sun’, the list just goes on and on", singer Gwyn Strang writes and multi-instrumentalist Sean Bilovecki continues: "For ‘Head Down’, we deconstructed the song and switched its timing to 4/4. The song as recorded by Soundgarden has overlapping drum parts and complicated timings for example. We stripped it down and gave the track elements of tribal drumming, while we added layers of vocal harmonies and voices coming at the listener from all angles."
Continuing their project of releasing a single a month, Argonaut’s apparently unique open-ended album, Songs from the Black Hat makes a bit of a swerve on this outing, in that it’s neither an original song nor a studio recording.
The single for June is a live cover version of the Stooges punk rock classic, performed in all of its ‘raw power’ at the Hope and Anchor on 4th February 2023, and is accompanied by some far-out artwork that’s absolutely barking.
Today I did something that was pretty alien to me: I took a break. Having dropped the car at the garage for a service, I walked some four miles back into town, and with another mile and half to get me back home, I stopped in at a pub and sat on the first floor with a pint, just looking out of the window watching people drift by on the street below. There were some interesting tunes being aired through the hidden speakers, from early New Order to The Jesus and Mary Chain. At some point, Dum Dum Girls’ cover of ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ came on and not for the first time in recent months, began to reflect on The Smiths, since I recently offloaded my entire vinyl collection of their works. It wasn’t just that I need the money – and the £800 I raised was certainly useful – but this was an act of purging. That Morrissey is a monumental cunt had certainly been bugging me for some time, but then I have many records by people who have long been known to be monumental cunts and I haven’t felt the compulsion to jettison their junk. No, his cuntdom was just the tipper after I came to the conclusion that these records no longer spoke to me and hadn’t been played much since I left my teens, and the death of our monarch, which led to the obvious song gaining ubiquity on my social media feeds simply left me weary.
But on hearing this cover, I found myself thinking ‘but this is a great song’. And so, arriving home to find Spiritual Front’s cover of ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ in my inbox felt somewhat serendipitous.
Taken from their upcoming album of Smiths covers, The Queen is Not Dead, it’s a very straight cover that not only pays homage but great attention to detail in terms of the arrangement, mostly only adding swathes of strings near the end. And it, too, is – still – a great song. Although not all of The Smiths’ songs were great – the albums included a a lot of pap, like ‘Frankly, Mr Shankly’ – but it’s hard to fault their singles and the craft. Perhaps, then, it does come back to the issue being Morrissey, his cuntiness and his adenoidal tones which my wife always hated so – meaning that, ultimately, at least for me, it becomes a question of context, and hearing covers of the songs is preferable and less problematic than hearing the originals.
As the bio which accompanies the release details, ‘With The Smiths carved so deeply into the Romans’ collective heart that they had played full shows featuring the English rockers’ classic hymns in recent years, it was only a short step to record a full tribute album when taking a break from touring. Spiritual Front went about their task with the explicit aim to pay a respectful homage yet at the same time to stay away from cloning. Across the album’s fifteen tracks, which many consider sacred, the Italians stayed true to the original recordings, while pulling those songs closer to the sonic world of Spiritual Front for example by adding strings and horn parts.’
This, of course, is the ultimate pull of The Smiths: anyone who has endured those awkward teenage years as an outsider, who’s been sixteen, clumsy, and shy, will feel that connection to these songs. And for a band whose recent output, dubbed ‘nihilistic suicide pop’ has drawn comparisons with Nick Cave, Swans, and Scott Walker, it still makes sense that The Smiths would be there in the background.
But to hear the weathered, tattooed Simone Salvatori enunciating ‘ah-ho, la-la, ladadada’ – well, it does seem somehow incongruous. For all that, he pulls it off well, and while I’m on the fence with the video, it’s a solid cover that suggests the album will be worth hearing.
The prospect of another cover of ‘Wicked Game’ did, I’ll admit, give cause for an eye roll. It’s a great song – a seriously song – that arguably can’t be improved upon, and yet countless have tried, or at least felt compelled to pay homage, to the point that it’s been done to death.
Even the PR point out that ‘Wicked Game’ has been released over 800 times in different versions – 800! Imagine! Although HIM’s version is perhaps one of the best known, it’s always irritated me because it simply felt so obvious. The same can’t really be said of JW Paris’ rendition – after all, as they also point out, ‘nobody ever attempted to turn it into a sleazy Brit pop/indie anthem!’ adding ‘There is more Iggy Pop than Roy Orbison in it!’.
And I can only agree. JW Paris, who last graced our pages about a year ago, have packed some punk attitude into this effort. It’s certainly a lot less dark, a lot less broody than the original, and driven by a chunky bass, and the verse builds nicely into a rip-roaring rendition of the chorus that’s strong on energy, but succeeds in preserving the essence of the original – albeit with the kind of twisted anguish you’d associate with Kurt Cobain. ‘Fiery’ isn’t an adjective one would commonly associate with the song, but that’s exactly what this version is, and it comes as a pleasant surprise. Kudos.
When industrial bass artist, Bug Gigabyte heard TikTok star, Kamarah Rae’s ‘a cappella’ rendition of Sam Smith’s ‘Unholy’ with her lyrical re-write, he immediately felt inspired. He wanted to write a full track sampling her vocals while adding his own. So….. he did.
“When I first heard her version, it inspired me to continue the story and emotion of what she is talking about in the track. I wanted to express the emotions of her lyrics through the music, to bring her idea deeper down the "rabbit hole. This is my tribute to all the female witches in the world, much love goddesses”. – Bug Gigabyte
You can only find the track on SoundCloud, YouTube and as a free download on Bandcamp.
Cathedral In Flames were slowly preparing for live shows and writing their next record during the Covid pandemic when Vladamir Putin and Russian armed forces invaded Ukraine.
The band immediately decided to take action. They will donate all royalties and proceeds from their Hang Me High And Bury Me Deep record to support Ukraine, specifically to run Nexta, an independent news channel that brings the breaking news from across the battlefield.
In order to draw attention to the cause and raise additional funds for Ukraine from their fans, the band decided to record a cover version of Nick Cave and Blixa Bargeld’s duet ‘The Weeping Song’.
Phil Lee Fall says of the whole thing, "The war in Ukraine is horrible, the terror on children, innocents, the helpless. This song is maybe about crying, but at the end it sings "… we won’t be weeping long" because I’m convinced that Russia will be defeated in the end."
Whoever said goths and industrialists have no sense of humour? Or that they hate pop? It’s long been a myth perpetuated by outsiders pedalling stereotypes that goths and fans of industrial music are moody, po-faced twats who mope around looking glum while listening to depressing music and reading depressing literature. Cheer up goth – have an Irn Bru! The early noughties advertising slogan pretty much sums up the popular perception of anyone with dyed black hair and black clothes, but in a position of polarity to so many straights who are crying on the inside, you’ll likely find adherents of shadier subcultures are laughing on the inside, while rolling their eyes at the normies.
There’s a long history of whacky covers going right back to the post-punk roots of the genre, with Bauhaus and The Sisters of Mercy making some inspired cover choices spanning ABBA to Dolly Parton, not to mention Fields of the Nephilim’s stunning take on Roxy Music’s ‘In Every Dreamhome a Heartache’, and Revolting Cocks’ crazed, audacious ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy’.
And if the outré cover has over time become rather standard form, there’s always room for a good one, and this, people, is a good one, courtesy of LA-based quartet FleischKrieg, who you’d never guess were influenced by Rammstein and 3TEETH.
Lifted from the forthcoming FleischKrieg album, Herzblut, due out in October of this year, they’ve cranked up the sleaze for this one. It may be a fairly straight cover, but it amplifies the original eightieness and adds a while lot of grind. Instead of blasting up the guitars, the synths are more grating, the drums bigger, more explosive, and of course, it’s the gritty metal vocals that really define it. If it’s a shade predictable in its straight-up approach, then it makes up for it just by being so damn solid. Hurgh!
Chicago-based industrial rock band Nuclear Sun has released a new single/visualizer clip covering the iconic Nine Inch Nails hit, "Head Like A Hole." The track appears on Nuclear Sun’s new tribute release, Couldn’t Have Said It Better Vol. 1, available digitally via Bandcamp and all major streaming services.
Aural Aggravation 