Posts Tagged ‘dark’

Girls Under Glass – Backdraft

Posted: 21 May 2023 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Dependent Records – 2nd June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Now in their twenty-seventh year, Girls Under Glass return after an extended break – of some seventeen years – with a new album that wasn’t wholly planned. As the bio notes, explain, when they started composing some new tracks for an EP to round off a planned boxset of their complete works, ‘The fire reignited and songs kept coming… [they] understood that their batteries had recharged to bursting point after a 17-year break and the projected EP turned into a full-length.

The trouble with being forerunners and progenitors is that time catches up. What was innovative at one time becomes assimilated, absorbed: ‘influential’ becomes commonplace, however much you keep moving. And while Backdraft shows that Girls Under Glass have progressed, it also shows how external elements have, too – even within the spheres of post-punk and goth, which on the face of things, haven’t evolved all that much. Emerging bands are still emulating The Cure and The Sisters of mercy circa 1985, and oftentimes if feels as if these are genres locked in time – but then, the same is also true of punk, and contemporary grunge acts.

At least Girls Under Glass can lay justified claim to being there at the time and laying the foundation stones for the sound that endures over thirty years on, and they’re fully accepting that this new outing draws on the sound and sensations of their previously active years in the 80s and 90s. ‘Night Kiss’ brings all the synth-goth vibes where early New Order and third-wave goth acts like Suspiria meet, but there’s much to chew on across the ten songs on Backdraft. ‘Tainted’ – which features Mortiis on guest vocals – has a more industrial feel – but that’s industrial in the way that Rosetta Stone drew on Nine Inch Nails for Tyranny of Inaction than Ministry. It’s got grit and magnetic bubbling synths and some hard grooves, but the aggression is fairly restrained.

Single cut ‘We Feel Alright’ has a vintage vibe and sits in the bracket of ‘uplifting goth’ – it may not bee recognised as a thing, but it sure is, and propelled by a pumping disco beat, it’s one of those songs that brims with an energy that makes you want to raise your arms and your face to the sky as you’re carried away on the driving rhythm and expansive synths and guitars.

The six-minute ‘No Hope No Fear’ blissfully ventures into Disintegration-era Cure stylings, with a bold, cinematic approach, while ‘Everything Will Die’ is a quintessential slab of Numanesque electrogoth It’s uptempo, even poppy, but it’s dark, and if the Hi-NRG pumping of ‘Endless Nights’ is a shade cliché, but they redeem the dip with the sparse six-minute ‘Heart on Fire’ with its sepulchral synths, before erupting into an epic climax that’s like a shoegaze / synthwave take of Fields of the Nephilim.

Ultimately, Backdraft is a solid album: its roots are deeply retro, and it’s not one hundred percent hit, but it’s a solid addition to the catalogue of a band whose longevity speaks for itself.

AA

077216

Watch: ‘Release The Pain’ by Cathedral In Flames

Posted: 21 April 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Prague-based gothic rock band, Cathedral In Flames presents their new single, ‘Release The Pain’ – a hypnotic ballad about coping with pain and death. Gatsby’s throbbing bass and Ambra’s angelic vocals complement Phil’s vocals about the contemporary unlearning of the perception of death and pain through social media.

Vocalist, Phil Lee Fall says,  “When the song was written, I was having a pretty bad time. I was taking long night walks through old Prague and I realized that all the people I meet are going to die sooner or later.”

And Gatsby adds: “’Release The Pain’ is a catharsis for our whole band. For me, there is so much emotion in this song that if it doesn’t knock you on your back, nothing will.”

A narrative music video was also created for the track, showing the band in the abandoned magical corners of Rudolphine’s Prague combined with the mystical hills above the contemporary city. Both sceneries are connected in the image and lyrics of the number 9 in various forms. 9 is the number of fulfilment, closure and completion. It also symbolizes the coming of age and the connection between dimensions and worlds on all levels.

Watch the video here:

AA

23ee6bd8-12b8-f634-756f-7ddb327adcb2

Spotlights – Alchemy For The Dead

Posted: 18 April 2023 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Ipecac Recordings – 28th April 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

As their bio explains most succinctly, ‘Spotlights occupy the space between a push-and-pull of jarring metallic catharsis and sweeping distortion. Even as either side vies for supremacy, neither extreme ever completely tightens its grip, allowing waves of melodic vocals and expressive sonic sorcery to breathe in the middle. This deft balancing act has enabled the trio—husband-and-wife Mario Quintero [guitar, vocals, keys] and Sarah Quintero [bass, vocals] joined by Chris Enriquez [drums]—to carve a singular lane. Armed with an uncanny ability to wield darkness or light, the trio’s fourth full-length offering, Alchemy for the Dead [Ipecac Recordings], finds them exploring something we all face, yet few embrace…’

Expanding on this, Mario explains the album’s overarching theme, which the title alludes to: “One of the major parts of our lives, is the fact we’re all going to die,” he says “Most people are terrified of it, some people learn to look forward to it, and some see it as a way out of their misery. Various cultures view it differently. There isn’t necessarily a story to the album as a whole, but each song deals with the theme of death. It could be fantasy such as bringing a loved one back to life or darker moments like suicide and deep depression.”

It’s a fact that, at least in Western culture, death remains perhaps the last taboo, something of which even the dying tend not to talk about, not properly.

It was back in 2018 that I first encountered Spotlights: their cover of ‘Faith’ by The Cure from their Hanging by Faith EP was an instant grab. This was a band that really ‘got’ the atmospherics of the track and captured the essence of what, for many, myself included, remains as an untouchable trilogy of albums, 17 Seconds, Faith, and Pornography.

Alchemy For The Dead doesn’t sound like any Cure album specifically, but still takes cues in terms of weighty atmosphere. Following a gentle introduction that borders on dark synth pop, it’s not long before the blasting power chords crash in, thick and dark and heavy. And the thick, processed bass on ‘Sunset Burial’ blends with a rippling guitar that’s richly evocative and reminiscent of Oceansise at their best. But when they break into monolithic crescendos of distortion, I’m reminded more of the likes of Amenra, of BIG ¦ BRAVE.

There are some extravagant guitar breaks, but somehow, they’re as forgivable as the more processed prog passages, which in the hands of any other band would likely sound pretentious: Spotlights sound emotionally engaged and sincere without pomp or excessive theatricality: this isn’t something that’s easy to define, not least of all because it’s such a fine line when weighing up musical that’s so reliant on technical proficiency and very much ‘produced’. And the production is very much integral here: the arrangements require this level of separation and clarity. But this is where it’s important to distinguish between production and overproduction, and it’s testament to Mario’s skills at the desk that he’s realised the band’s vision so well. The bass really dominates the sound, which is so thick, rich, and textured, and also explores a broad dynamic range: the quiet passages are delicate, the loud ones as explosive as a detonation at a quarry.

Similarly while the songs tend to stretch beyond the five-minute mark, there’s nothing that feels indulgent or overlong here. ‘Repeat the Silence’ builds on a simple repeated sequence almost reminiscent of Swans’ compositions, but thunders into a bold, grungy chorus that’s more Soundgarden.

The album’s shortest song, the three-and-a-half-minute ‘Ballad in the Mirror’ is also the most overtly commercial, a straight-up quiet/loud grunge blast, and the riffage is colossal.

‘Crawling Towards the Light’ marries monster riffage with Joy Division-esque synths, and somewhere between Movement-era New Order and Smashing Pumpkins, but rendered distinctive by the propulsive drumming which drives the track which builds to a roaring climax.

The seven-minute title track is sparse and suffocating. It has a nostalgic quality that’s hard to define, and it’s perhaps something that’s only likely to punch the gut of nineties teens in this specific way, but it’s understated and emotive, and then the guitars crash in and it’s fucking immense and… well, what a way to conclude an album.

Alchemy For The Dead is a huge work, an album that draws its own parameters and digs new trenches around genre definitions before bulldozing them to the ground with riffs. Complex, detailed, and unique, Alchemy For The Dead is something special.

AA

SPOTLIGHTS_AFTD_LP FULL.png

Tim Hecker – No Highs

Posted: 1 April 2023 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Kranky – 7th April 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I had been warned. A fellow reviewer who received this before me had said that this album had made him feel ‘unwell’. It was a compliment, of course. This comes as little surprise: Tim Hecker is an artist capable of creating the most intense and all-encompassing experiences, and while the live performance I attended in 2014 may not have made me feel ill, it did make me feel pretty weird, detached, disorientated. As the only artist I have ever known to use more smoke than The Sisters of Mercy and Sunn O))) combined, filling the room to the extent that it was impossible see your own hand in front of your face, let alone the person next to you, Hecker made me feel uncomfortable, and in some way a little scared in a claustrophobic way.

I’ve had a few records which have had a physical effect on me: listening to PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me for the first time with a brutal hangover is one standout experience, its raw and up-front lurching guitars punching my head and stomach simultaneously with puke-inducing results which went far beyond the post-booze discomfort. Because listening to music is not a passive activity, and as well as requiring focus, it would seem also degree of compassion – you feel its force physically as well as psychologically.

The notes which accompany Tim Hecker’s latest album are bold, to say the least, describing the Canadian composer as ‘a beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive capitalist ambient currently in vogue’ and continues, ‘Whether taken as warning or promise, No Highs delivers – this is music of austerity and ambiguity, purgatorial and seasick. A jagged anti-relaxant for our medicated age, rough-hewn and undefined.’

Clearly, this is exactly what I need, having felt tense and on edge, unable to catch my breath properly for several days now. If the album’s title sets the initial expectation, the track titles reinforce the album’s mood: ‘Monotony’; Pulse Depression’; ‘Anxiety’; ‘In Your Mind’; ‘Total Garbage’ – all the shades of dark, of bleak, of miserable, of self-questioning, panic.

The aforementioned ‘Monotony’ pings a single note back and forth for almost eight and a half minutes. Drones build sonorously behind it and swarm the mind as the volume grows and then shrinks again, and the buzzing and extranea become siren-like. And so, there is movement behind the tedious repetition, but it’s tense and unsettling. Moments of levity which appear to suggest tranquillity is within reach prove to offer nothing but false hope as we’re soon plunged into the gloaming, or otherwise into glitchy, lurching passages of unease. Soft sounds which ought to be mellow and soothing are rendered uncomfortable, or mournful, or both.

‘Lotus Light’ initially intimates a Krautrock pulsation, but some bending frequencies and melting notes swiftly take this trip on a rapid descent. If the lotus flower is supposed to signify rebirth and enlightenment, then this is one which is wilting, poisoned, and if eating the lotus is supposed to provide a conduit to pleasure, this is the soundtrack to picking the wrong plant, as everything rushes forward too fast and you’re not in control. You don’t feel right: you feel drugged, delirious.

‘In Your Mind’ picks and stabs away with tempo changes galore, surging and sweeping this way and that, echoing reverberations around the cranial cavities before booming stabs of synth blast through the drifting haze, before ‘Monotony II’ returns like a waking memory of a traumatic dream from the night before. The trilling saxophone does nothing to calm the mind or the mood. And over the course of more than eight minutes, ‘Anxiety’ recreates the experience if that increasing heartrate and the clenching of every muscle perfectly. That is to say, it’s brilliant, and also brilliantly difficult, and potentially triggering to some. The flickering, fluttering electronic throbs are practically Jean Michelle Jarre reimagined as a fibrillation.

No Highs is a difficult album, but how difficult depends on our headspace: from a certain perspective, it’s a cinematic electronic set, but from various others it’s the soundtrack to being unable to settle, to relentless tension, to jitters and fretting, and worse. The notes oscillate and you clench; sudden spurts of sound burst and you jump momentarily., before ‘Sense Suppression’ pulls you down, slowly, into a sea of sound, before the album drifts away to nothing on the drifting tides of ‘Living Spa Water’.

No Highs is sad and dark and deeply affecting, and not necessarily in the ways you’d expect. Listen and share the suffering.

AA

a2157297652_10

The Funeral March – Persephone

Posted: 29 March 2023 in Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

17th March 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

This new EP from the bleakly-monikered The Funeral March is described as offering five tracks which ‘whisper of dreams, murmur of despair, cry out in madness, and reflect on hope and loss’, inspired by the Greek queen of the Underworld, Persephone, reflecting on the ‘transition between death and rebirth’.

We’re deep into the realms of heavy concept here, and such weighty topics warrant weighty music. The Funeral March certainly do themselves and their subject matter justice here.

It begins with pounding percussion and heavily effects-laden bass and guitars. I’m instantly reminded of Pornography-era Cure. It’s dense, heavy, intense. Hell, the first time I heard that album I could hardly breathe. It’s liked having your ribs stood on. The first time I heard music so suffocating was on being passed a tape of The Sisters of Mercy’s First and Last and Always and I was still indifferent to The Cure. It was Pornography that really hit me.

It’s that seem that The Funeral March are mining here. With that tumultuous drumming paired with a thick, thunderous bass, and the dark, murky theatricality of early Christian Death – completed with a dark and dirty production that sits between early 80s goth demo and black metal dirt – it’s a compelling and intense listening experience, with ‘Two As One’ proving particularly hellish in its claustrophobic density and ‘Kiss Me’ channelling the synth drone of ‘A Strange Day’ and doomy atmospheric of ‘Siamese Twins’.

The atmospheric ‘Nite Nite’ brings synths to the fore over the trebly mesh of guitar, providing variety of tone and texture not to mention a classic 80s feel, and drenched in reverb, J. Whiteaker’s vocals sound lost as if trapped between two worlds.

The final track, ‘Wasted Moon’, is again driven by a supremely thick bass and trudging beat that echoes beneath the murk. Whiteaker sounds desperate and anguished and you feel the pangs of panic rising.

Listening to Persephone is like being wrapped in a carpet and tossed in a car boot to be buried – not that I have first-hand experience of this, but it’s how I imagine the experience – and that sense of panic and entrapment, of feeling lost and alone is palpable, is real. It leaves you feeling tense, and hollowed out, emotionally drained. Powerful music isn’t about making you feel good, it’s about making you feel. Persephone is powerful and drives straight to the heart.

AA

357743

Listen: ‘Die Tonight’ by Cliff and Ivy

Posted: 27 March 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Alaska’s premier goth rock band, Cliff And Ivy recently unveiled their new single, ‘Die Tonight’ on their label, House of Extreme Darkness.

‘Die Tonight’ is a dark punk song for those who love like vampires – legendary, eternal and full of fire.  Almost an eternity in the making, it was inspired by the undying flame of love that exists between immortal lovers and in the natural world.

Death and life are always linked together, as it takes the clearest dark night to be able to see the aurora in the northern sky. ‘Die Tonight’ was recorded in Alaska while the northern lights exploded above. 

‘Die Tonight’ is available on all streaming services including Bandcamp.

Listen here:

The Martyr – My Friends Look Funny

Posted: 23 March 2023 in Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

21st February 2023

There’s some debate as to whether or not they really ‘get’ ‘goth’ Stateside, favouring more vampire / horror cliché stylings to anything that defined the disparate ‘movement’ as it emerged from the bleak urban sprawls of England in the early 80s as a darker strand of post-punk. Admittedly, the fans were always the ones with the greater shared affinity rather than the first wave of bands, none of whom recognised the ‘goth’ tag and the ones still going still don’t to this day, but still, quite how or when it morphed into genre let alone a stereotype is unclear.

The Martyr’s sound is certainly rooted more in the UK post-punk sound than anything else – brittle guitars and a thudding drum machine call to mind Alien Sex Fiend, and all crunched into just two minutes and thirty-eight seconds – but at the same draws on dark electropop and dance elements – a dash of Depeche Mode, a hint of dark disco – to create something that’s both spiky and danceable.

Lyrically, it’s serious but at the same time isn’t too serious, and it’s certainly not corny or cliché, and if ‘My Friends Look Funny’ employs a number of common stylistic trappings of the hi—NRG dance end of contemporary goth, it’s different enough to be worth a listen.

Watch: ‘Abyss Perihelion Transit’ by Dødheimsgard

Posted: 16 March 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Following the announcement of their forthcoming album Dødheimsgard return with their exceptional first single ‘Abyss Perihelion Transit’. The ten minutes plus track weaves a sombre tapestry incorporating elements of multiple sub genres in the world of Extreme Metal and thematically tackles ideas of epistemological dualism.

Regarding the single Vicotnik had the following to say:

“The whole album revolves subjectively around perception, experience, psychology, objective/subjective reality vs external pressure, tropes, taboos, the laws of motion/causality which influences one’s life. The subjective perception of reality vs the objective causal effects of reality and how they are bound interact. Epistemological dualism.”

Vicotnik continues:

“I guess mental health, or rather instead of health, let’s call it mental condition is a big topic on this record. Not as in a complaining way, or as a good or bad notion, but rather a subject’s study of his own psychology (en)during everything.

Like the ambiguity of Being. What is Being? Is it a meta-physical stratum of subjective emotionally fuelled notions or is Being just explaining a physical object that is, therefore being. Epistemologically I guess these lyrics dwell a lot on naïve realism vs representational realism. Cognitivism vs behaviourism, and then bringing it all to an artist context obviously. So, it is experiential renditioning, not solution driven.”

Accompanying the single is a video and single cover art from visionary artist Costin Chiorenau who brings the disparate and incredibly solemn existence of ‘Black Medium Current’s first single to life. Working together both the song and the video evolve over the course of the ten-minute run time to create something truly visionary both in a sonic and visual context. Costin elaborates on the video below:

“I’ve been following Dødheimsgard for 20 years now, and the genius of Vicotnik always captured my highest focus, being at the same time a huge inspiration, both musically and aesthetically. I always perceived Dødheimsgard being more as an artistic movement than a black metal band, another aspect which excites my creativity and I feel fulfilled that I could express all this passion through the ‘Abyss Perihelion Transit’ art video and single cover.”

He continues: “When I first heard it, I felt that void left behind by the desperation of the root-sense of old structures of perception. That void, which shakes the black matter foundation every time when manifestations tuned with and born in the past overleap the fresh sight of the present which fights hard to penetrate the dense walls of repetition. The main characters of this movie are the absence created by the vanishing old, the observer in search of a new fitting cloth of identity for its avatar and the desperate need of giving shape to the yet-not assimilated nor understood living new.

Secondary characters are different types of glitches in the matrix between self-imposed reality and the golden mean dream state, measuring systems for various types of space found between the layers of perception and the omnipresent shadow. These characters are interfering one with another in a multiverse of contrasts between defined and undefined, forming a brick-dust flavoured whole, at times exotic, at times smoked in bitter nihil. These characters are also the topics spoken but the energy of this song, by the voice of now and I consider the proper ones to be dissected through art.”

Watch the video here:

AA

thumbnail_2021-09-12 DØDSHEIMGAARD0819

AGLO – Into the Maze

Posted: 16 February 2023 in Albums
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Gutter Prince Cabal – 16th February 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

There aren’t many guitar-based genres of music where one-man bands are particularly commonplace. Of course, I’m not talking about folk or acoustic-based music, but the kind of music where, on listening, you’d expect a full band. Industrial is something of an exception because early exponents like JG Thirlwell – aka Foetus – developed through the use of tape loops and studio experimentation, and the same is also true of later exponents like Nine Inch Nails, with Trent Reznor’s studio-based project evolving from being largely synthetic into a live proposition.

But black / death metal are genres unto themselves. One might joke that it’s because most of the people who make this kind of stuff have no mates or are too antisocial to form bands, although it may not be much of a joke. Either way, Melbourne-based Aaron Osborne is one of those one-man operations, handling all aspects of writing and playing to create the sound of several. And what a sound it is. If you want dark, dense, and sludgy, with bowel-loosening guttural vocals, then you’re in luck.

Into the Maze – a twenty-seven minute album – or mini-album – actually comprises two new songs plus four cuts previously released as the Collector EP.

You don’t listen to this stuff to be uplifted – but you do dive into it for escape, and Into the Maze brings that cathartic release.

The title track is monster slab of downtuned darkness. There are some guitar screeches which emerge from the relentless trudge that call to mind Fudge Tunnel, but this is denser, slower, doomier, and somehow less organic-feeling, like early Pitch Shifter but with live drums, and passing a nod to how they take ‘the swagger and groove of Entombed’s Wolverine Blues and infuse it with the tar-thick pull of doom’. But against Wolverine Blues, it’s half the pace and the lyrics are unintelligible grunts, so it’s very much an example of taking an influence and steering it in a different direction. And this is a good thing. The production is perfectly dingy and oppressive, and over the course of just short of half an hour it really grinds you down in just the way it should. In all, it’s pretty bloody brutal. I dig.

Oh, and that’s one hell of a logo.

AA

a3701776308_10

Johnathan|Christian – Strip Me EP

Posted: 11 February 2023 in Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
1

31st January 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It might sound daft now, but seeing Depeche Mode perform ‘Stripped’ on Top of the Pops in 1986 felt like something risqué. It was a family show, after all, and I was ten years old. It wasn’t your average pop subject matter, and even at that age, I was aware that this was a bit dark and sleazy. It’s not just that I’m now forty-seven years of age, but times have most definitely changed. It isn’t that sex is necessarily more mainstream now – as a kid I’d see my grandad’s copy of The Sun whenever I visited, and Page 3 calendars were commonplace décor in offices and places – but the slant is different. Whereas Duran Duran’s ‘Girls on Film’ video was simply something you wouldn’t see, but Cardi B’s ‘WAP’ wasn’t the only song to have gone stratospheric in recent years which was hyper-explicit on every level.

‘Strip Me’, the lead song from the latest EP from Johnathan|Christian harks back to the mid 80s, both sonically and in terms of how it feels simply ‘a bit naughty’ and ‘a shade raunchy’ rather than full on porny – and besides, it’s more of a metaphor here than anything literal or kinky. It’s a cracking tune, a mid-tempo string-soaked slow-burner that’s as much Kylie’s ‘Confide in Me’ as it is anything by Depeche Mode, and it’s a quality dark pop song.

‘Sway Back’ brings some swing, and ‘This Too’ crunches Disintegration era Cure with Depeche Mode circa 86 to create a slick and expansive song that conveys an emotional depth beyond mere words.

Strip Me is an EP of two halves, with a remix of each of the three tracks following on. And if you’re going to do the remix thing, it probably pays to get some notable names on the mixes – and Johnathan|Christian achieve that with Ministry’s John Bechdel, EBM legend Leæther Strip, and Steven Archer (Stone Burner/Ego Likeness) all pitching in.

Of the three, ‘Strip Me’ still stands as the standout, but the other two are nicely done, with Leæther Strip delivering a dark disco stomper. Solid stuff all round.

AA

870643

Older Entries
Newer Entries