Posts Tagged ‘goth’

West Wickhams – Vivre Sa Vie

Posted: 8 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

My introduction to West Wickhams was the day their debut single ‘He’s Acquired a New Face’ crashed my inbox in the Autumn of 2019. Something about it absolutely gripped me. Something about it was strange and different. And of course, it’s no longer available anywhere. But it was the only thing they had out at the time, and for various reasons, I didn’t get wind of subsequent releases, the first of which arrived almost a year later, and now it turns out I’ve got some catching up to do, as it turns out they’ve knocked out not one, but two five-track EPs since June 2022. But first, Vivre Sa Vie. A nine track EP!!!

Admittedly, when most of the tracks are around two to two-and-a-half minutes in length, it’s definitely got an EP running time, and would easily fit on a 10” record, but still.

It’s a joy to discover that while the songwriting has evolved and expanded, they’re still magnificently idiosyncratic, and still revel in every layer of echo and reverb going. ‘I am Sparkling Cyanide’ is a mid-tempo shimmery tune that’s almost poppy, bringing together early 80s synth pop with a dash of The Jesus and Mary Chain, all spun through a shoegaze filter. But ‘The Maddening Crowd’ is a piston-pumping blast of fucked-up psychedelic surf rock with an agitated bassline and relentless cheapy drum machine creating a rigid spine, over which even cheaper synth notes tinkle and twinkle.

With its nagging bassline and monotonous programmed beat ‘Carla Suspiria’ plunges into haunting early 80s goth territory, its heavy atmospherics reminiscent of early Danse Society. The vocals – like the guitar – are almost lost in a cavernous reverb. The atmosphere gets darker still on ‘I’m Spinning I’m Spinning’: the fat bass sound is pure Cure and listening to it feels like floating in space – detached, disorientated, out of body.

‘At the Cinema’ transforms the mundane into a heightened emotional experience, channelling Joy Division all the way, even down to the sounds of breaking glass.

The large number of tracks is by no means an indication that they’ve just bunged everything on there just because they’ve got it: Vivre Sa Vie is quality all the way, and they’ve utilised the space afforded by the longer format to structure the sequence in a way that feels like there’s a flow and a certain linearity, punctuating the really bleak gloomers with the poppier efforts.

The final track, ‘Damned Defiant!’ crashes in on a barrage of beefy percussion countered by chiming synths, and it’s a total assimilation of The Cure’s catalogue, and it’s rendered so magically, and in the space of two minutes and nine seconds that it can only be described as doomy goth-pop perfection.

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Scarlett Woolfe – Poor Suzy

Posted: 30 December 2023 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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14th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Scarlett Woolfe has been honing her sound and style and building a fan base in London throughout 2023, taking her solo singer-songwriter project to the stage with a full band. Her debut single, ‘Poor Suzy,’ it seems, has been quite a while coming, but there’s no doubt that it was worth the wait.

Her own choice of tags include ‘alternative rock’, ‘dark wave’, ‘post-punk’, ‘dark-pop’ and ‘gothic’, and these very much serve to give a sense of what to expect: it’s spiky, edgy, and oozes attitude. There are hints of early Garbage in the instrumentation, with the poppy elements balanced by just the right amount of grit and bite.

The lyrics ‘Poor Suzy / lying in the snow / Poor Suzy / nowhere to go’ are hardly Sylvia Plath, but it’s all in the delivery. I doubt I’m first do draw the obvious comparison, and certainly won’t be the last when I proffer that the Scarlett’s voice – and her delivery, which swoops and dives, and shifts effortlessly from breathy to full from-the-centre of-the chest strong – is strongly reminiscent of Siouxsie Sioux, It’s pretty punky, and pretty punchy to boot. Building to a climactic close, it all stacks up to make for a powerful single.

The artwork, too, captures the stark style of the post-punk era, and this feels something that’s been carefully thought out as a complete package by way of an introduction to the world of Scarlett Woolfe.

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Poor Suzy

Velour Fog – Dopehead

Posted: 29 December 2023 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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23rd October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I’m not quite sure what this is. There are a fair few fags being smoked, but there was some wide-brimmed hats being worn, too. What to make of it? The style says mid-80s goth, but there are some heavy stoner vibes… and then it slams in full metal. Long hair trailing and waving, heads banging in slow-mo, and rapped vocals over some sinewy guitars and a chunky bass.

It’s a bit RATM, it’s a bit Alice in Chains. It’s a bit OTT. It’s a bit retro. It’s crackers, but it’s good.

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Panik Flower – Dark Blue

Posted: 25 December 2023 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

New York’s Panik Flower, purveyors of shoegaze / super washed-out guitar indie rock released their debut single ‘Pretty Face’ in September 2022, and promise ‘dream pop with an understated heaviness. The result is a unique soundscape of soft harmonies, hard-hitting instrumentals and cutting lyricism that evokes the hazy nostalgia of distant memories – ones of love, loss and identity.’

Watching the video to single cut ‘Playground’, which features four of the bandmembers – presumably because it was shot before the current lineup coalesced – pulls a chord of sadness in my chest. It depicts an afternoon spent at a fair, emanating youthful carefree fun, the likes of which is never appreciated at the time, but only ever in hindsight. However aware of the finite nature of youth, there’s a period where it feels that your life lies ahead of you, and every day is a new day. And then, suddenly, it isn’t, and you’re clawing through life a day at a time, strangled by the suffocating sensation that every day that passes is a day lost.

As a jaded, downbeat, saddened old bastard facing decline, I can’t help but be envious of Panik Flower. My youth doesn’t seem so far away until I realize that the bands they remind me of, and the bands from who they draw influence, date from the 90s. The 90s feels like maybe a decade ago: the idea that 1993 was 30 years is both depressing and terrifying. But Dark Blue brings a flighty balance of joy and melancholy.

And so it is that ‘Charades’ brings wistful indie vibes and some bold wells of guitar which grow and grow into crashing waves by the song’s finale. The title track is a solid FX-heavy indie tune with evocative vocals which bear a folksy edge reminiscent of All About Eve’s Julianne Reagan.

The aforementioned ‘Playground’ brings a heavy melancholy and an ache to the chest with its chiming guitars and panging vocal melody, as well as a sturdy chorus. Things get both poppier and also heavier in the choppy, chuggy final track ‘Dilute Me’, which brings big guitars and Garbage vibes and attitude to wrap up a solid EP that packs great songs back to back.

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Cold in Berlin – The Body is the Wound EP

Posted: 19 December 2023 in Singles and EPs
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New Heavy Sounds – 19th January 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Cold in Berlin’s latest project, The Wounds looks to see the band scaling new heights of ambition, being a multi-record work consisting of an EP, The Body is the Wound, and an album, due in 2024, and promises ‘a musical vade mecum of what is to come in a fresh era for the band.’

I was gripped by Cold in Berlin from day one, on the release of their White Horse EP, a tense and intense burst of spiky goth which was razor-sharp and raging, bringing a zippy electro element to jagged guitars and a vocal that drew clear influence from Siouxsie and Skeletal Family. I must have conveyed my excitement pretty well, since my review is quoted on the BandCamp for the release, some twelve years on. Their debut album, Give Me Walls, still stands as a latter-day goth / post-punk classic.

Over the course of three further albums, the band have further defined and refined their style, becoming doomier, darker, heavier, but still with a clear commitment to concise and focused songwriting, proving that doom doesn’t have to be all about formless seven-minute dirges. I’m a fan of formless seven-minute dirges, but variety is the spice of life, and Cold in Berlin are one of those rare acts who’ve succeeded in creating their own niche in not one, but two crowded genre spaces.

Two of the EP’s four tracks have already been released as digital singles, both accompanied by visually striking videos. It so happens they’re the first two tracks on the EP, and they’ve been released in the order they appear. But the rest of the EP is absolutely on a par.

As the band write, ‘The lyrical themes dance around sex, murder, suicide and broken dreams, brought together in loose storytelling that allows listeners to add their own experiences and bring personal meaning.’ The words only begin to emerge after a few listens, after you’ve shaken your head clear from the initial impact. It’s a proper punch in the face, a full-force kick in the eye. The Body is the Wound packs four songs of equal quality back to back, and is as strong a document of the band’s work that they’ve laid down to date.

‘Dream One’ is a towering monolith which combines pulverising power chords with stark, icy vocals, and the effect is spine-tingling. Maya’s vocals have never sounded more powerful, more commanding than here. Then again, ‘Spotlight’, which slows the pace and amplifies the weight matches it, while emphasising the band’s doom leanings. It’s some heavy shit, alright, and hits with a punishing intensity.

The cuts which haven’t yet been unveiled are every bit as strong as those which have. ‘When Did You See Her Last’ twists stark synths and gothy guitars behind a chilling set of lyrics – the most spine-chilling I’ve encountered since ‘Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting’ by The Twilight Sad.

To describe the final cut, ‘Found Out’, as ‘poppy’ might be slightly misleading, but it’s a question of context. There’s some stealthy picked reverby guitar that’s pure 1985 goth that laces the verses with some fine texture before the thunderous chorus blasts in on a tidal wave of distortion. And in some ways, it very much recalls their earlier works, only thicker, denser, more driving, more powerful on the riff front, and they deliver all-out epic compressed into less than five and a half minutes.

Not only is there not one remotely lesser track on this EP, but it’s consistent and utterly relentless from beginning to end: no breathers, no ballads, no instrumental interludes. In short, The Body is the Wound is an utter blinder and absolutely blistering, and if the album is half as good, it’ll still be their best yet.

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Raven Said – Showtime

Posted: 12 December 2023 in Singles and EPs
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3rd November 2023

James Wells

New single ‘Showtime’ from Russian ‘occult wave’ / goth duo, Raven Said, arrives just over a year on from the EP Chants to Dissolve, and it promises to be the first from their next full-length release.

They describe it as ‘a kind of exciting prologue telling about the themes of a personal awareness and braving of one’s own internal boundaries. It’s transcendence of individual subconsciousness, even in the face of the inner fear or the despair. When you’re getting the power to create and transform despite seeming hopeless; when the curtain is raised and time freezes for a moment, when the stage is lit with the spotlights and the noise of the crowd is heard ahead, you take a step towards… Showtime!’

This reminds us that there is considerably more to Russia than the news of the Western media, where they’re broadly portrayed as ‘bad guys.’ We rarely stop to consider the reality of daily life in other countries – or, indeed, how our own countries are perceived internationally, while we’re getting on with everyday life, and generally struggling to stay afloat. In all this, we rarely see the people, the society, and fail to separate these things from their governments, their diplomats, and their military.

‘Showtime’ is what one might call a ‘banger’. Thumping disco beats and bold layers of synth provide the musical backing for the vocals, delivered in a brooding cross between a croon, a whisper, and a growl, packed with classic goth theatricality, and their touchstones of Clan of Xymox and second-wave goth acts like Rosetta Stone onwards, are strongly in evidence, crunching them together to create a synth-driven song that’s strong on both melody and groove.

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Watch: ‘No Justice’ by Orcus Nullify

Posted: 20 November 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Orcus Nullify has just unveiled their highly-anticipated new full-length album, Creatures Of The Wheel.

The new LP was influenced by the current of darkness running blatantly through the United States’ politics. This has brought with it a blood red flood of gun violence, inequality and cultural warfare.

Society’s eyes are closed tightly shut as it votes in well-branded neo-fascism. This blindness is an abandonment of a government for and of its people. There is indifference and lack of respect towards our fellow man. There’s a struggle between environmental policy and greed. It’s a short, dark road we’re on.

As a taster, they’ve released a video for the track ‘No Justice’, and a song that’s brimming with early 80s UK goth vibes. Watch the video here:

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Orcus Nullify is mainly a solo project of Bruce Nullify. Bruce is a multi-instrumentalist that has been creating music under this name since 2012.

Bruce had his start in the mid eighties, playing bass for a  hardcore band, Birth of a New Generation (BONG). During this time, Bruce was fortunate enough to open for acts like 7 Seconds, Agnostic Front and Gang Green. He then played guitar and performed vocals for a few other local bands in Central Florida.

After almost a fifteen year hiatus from music, Bruce returns with the band name Orcus Nullify – a name that he created for a previous band back in the 90s.

Despite his youth, Bruce had been hurt, seen people hurt and hurt others deeply. He saw that lies were very powerful and evil – something to be destroyed. Orcus is a mythological Roman god, specifically, the punisher of broken oaths. Orcus Nullify is the weapon which destroys lies and takes revenge for the oppressed.

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we be echo – Do Not Switch On

Posted: 18 November 2023 in Albums
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23rd November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Dark post punk and music of a gothy persuasion appears to be enjoying – if enjoyment is an accurate description – of late. Dark times call for dark music, and the echoes of the 80s which resonate in the presents are deep. As financial turmoil continues to bite hard – and hardest on those who struggle the most – and war rages around the world, the new state of cold war which hovers has been relegated to a mere shadow in the background, bur remains very real. Add climate change and constant surveillance, massive inflation, and a global political shift to the right to the mix, and we have the perfect cocktail for an explosion of music which channels dissent and frustration.

But what goes around comes around, and it’s a truism that if you stick with what you’re doing long enough, it will inevitably come back into fashion at some point. And so here we are presented with Do Not Switch On, the latest offering from we be echo.

Canadian Kevin Thorne has been doing what he does for a long time. As he set out in his bio, ‘I formed Third Door From The Left with Raye Coluori in 1979. I left to form we be echo in 1981, and released Ceza Evi on cassette and contributed to several compilations. I’m still recording now, some 40 plus years later. And what do you know? The world has come back around and caught up with his mode of musical output once more.

Do Not Switch On is straight in with bass that snakes and crunches: ‘Cold Rain Gun’ is dark, dank, weighty and throbs away as Thorne paints a word-portrait of a bleak and dangerous world. Depressingly, any depiction of near-future dystopias are more or less the reality in which we find ourselves.

Instrumentally, ‘At You, Because’ sounds like a cut from The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Honey’s Dead, with a driving bass and shuffling beats locking down a solid groove. The same is largely rue of the pulsating psychedelic throb of ‘Sometimes’, which calls to mind the cyclical stylings of Pink Turns Blue, only with more bass – much more bass – and more noise – much more noise.

‘Grey, Grey’ is a blistering riff-driven tune, and it’s swampy, dark, dense, with a tinge of not only psychedelia but of swampy surf. For all that, The Black Angels stand as the closest comparisons, at least on this absolute stomper, and hot on its heels, ‘Die For You’ follows the same hypnotic template, a motoric beat thudding away through various explosions of sound while Thorne croaks and croons a monotone amidst the swirling tension, and ‘Sepia’ locks into a groove that feels longer than it is, in a good way. If ‘Shallow Hallow’ leans rather heavily on Bauhaus and ‘R.U.N.’ takes a bit much from both The Black Angels and the Sisters of Mercy simultaneously, it works.

Do Not Switch On is a solid album, and that’s a fact. Most of the tracks run past the five-minute mark and drive away at a single repetitive riff for the duration. But within what may appear to be limited confines, Thorne really wrings a lot out of what is, in real terms, a minimal setup.

This stuff never ceases to excite, either live or recorded. Do Not Switch On is solid, and nags and gnaws unexpectedly.

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Neon Funeral – Banned From The Goth Club

Posted: 9 November 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Cleopatra Records – 8th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The goth crowd are an odd bunch. Like many subcultures, there’s a strong tribalism ingrained among them, and not even simply the older adherents or trad goths. There’s a perplexing contradiction here, in that a subculture born out of a broad church of outsiders should be so defensive and exclusive, even antagonistic towards those outside their club, while at the same time many are the most broad-minded and accommodating people you could encounter. I suspect the less accommodating are keen to protect their thing from people who aren’t really into it. Casuals, weekend goths, emos and metallers who misrepresent what it is to be goth… yeah, there’s a logic to not want to be tarred with the same mascara brush as some.

In my experience, some goth gigs – and I have been to many, although can’t claim to have been ‘there’ in the early 80s when it was all starting out because I simply wasn’t of an age – do seem to attract more than their share of ‘gother than thou’ posers, and while my collection is very heavy on vintage goth records (and CDs) and my wardrobe is 90% black (as Andrew Eldritch once quipped, and I paraphrase, it saves on laundry), I’ve always felt that I’m not goth enough for the weekend tribal gatherings in Whitby.

This is all to say that I get where Neon Funeral are coming from with this release. The New Jersey-based darkwave/post-punk band, are on Cleopatra Records, which has some pretty strong goth credentials. But then no doubt there will be British goths who will say that it’s an American label and the Americans don’t really ‘get’ goth and created their own strain and yadda yadda yadda.

As the blurbage explains, ‘The EP’s theme is based upon the band feeling alienated from the goth scene. The name of the EP, Banned From The Goth Club was given because of the band’s challenge in finding their audience given their contradictory sound.

The band states, “The goth audience can’t exactly get fully immersed into the music because of the aggression and intensity of the vocals and the hardcore scene can’t exactly understand the softer and dance-driven instrumentals for moshing. We once performed at a goth venue and seemed out of place and out of touch with the audience. We then coined the phrase ‘Banned From The Goth Club’ to welcome the eclectic sound and introduce it playfully.” As is to accentuate this point, the last track on the EP is a cover of Eddie Murphy’s 80s foray into music-making, ‘Party All The Time’.

‘A Void’ is probably too synthy for the traditionalists who like their guitars, trebly and drenched in chorus – but then the switch to gritty, snarling vocals are too metal for the darkwave fans. Of course, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but what do you do when the people are ultra-picky and pedantic? In the words of Valor Kand – fuck ‘em! It’s a cracking tune, dreamy on the surface but with a heavy dash of nightmare in there. On ‘Avolition’, the heavy synths and hyperactive programmed drumming, melded to solid bass and overlaid with theatrical vocals bring all the ingredients of 90s goth as represented by the likes of Suspiria and the Nightbreed Roster (although thankfully not Every New Dead Ghost). ‘High Tech Low Life’ is short – a mere two minutes and fifty seconds – and gloomy, a droning, drifting synth that lands between Faith era Cure and New Order circa Movement, but with some roaring metal vocals, before it skips into something that’s more like The Mission on crack and fronted by Carl McCoy. All to often, hearing the popular elements of goth being jigsawed together is a bit of a yawn, but it would be way off to describe this as derivative. With its harder edge, Banned From The Goth Club isn’t going to appeal to a large portion of the crowd, particularly the trads and the purists, and it’s not one for the dreamwave, darkwave, or cybergoths either. But for anyone who isn’t set on genre limitations, and with ears, and who likes it dark and a shade gnarly, this is a winner.

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Distance H – Intimacy EP

Posted: 7 November 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

It’s a common issue for artists, even those with labels, that a release simply fails to gain traction. There are myriad reasons and multiple factors, and it’s often a combination of them which contrive to leave a release sunk like a stone, dead in the water. It’s rarely a question of quality. Even A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’ and ‘West End Girls’ by the pet Shop Boys took more than one attempt to break through, despite major label backing at a time when labels would plough absolutely hods of cash into new artists.

Sometimes it’s simply a question of timing: some weeks and months there’s a glut of major releases or releases that otherwise grab the attention that mean some great records slip through the cracks. This month is a classic example, and it seems there are at least half a dozen truly killer releases all landing on the 10th. I can’t even listen to them all, let alone write about them.

And so it seems to have been the case when Distance H dropped debut EP Intimacy a few months ago. The single cuts released in advance of this EP grabbed my attention, not least the first, ‘Bitch 16’, featuring Ophelia from Saigon Blue Rain. In fact, there wasn’t a weak selection among the three singles: ‘Waters of Woe’ by Distance H feat. Marita Volodina was – and remains, as I described it at the time – ‘vintage goth with a contemporary spin’ and ‘a cracking tune’.

But having failed to make a splash, Intimacy is getting a PR reboot, and it’s a good thing, because the tracks which didn’t get single releases a year ago or whenever, are just as strong, and this makes for a full and founded EP. Casting an eye back to the 80s and 90s when big bucks were doing the rounds, it was often the case that albums would depend on a strong single or two, and that those singles would stand as beacons in set of mediocre slop, or, as was often the case, indulgent turd. It’s rather harder to get away with that ‘lead single’ marketing approach now people can stream the album or hear to by other means in advance without needing to go and check out a listening booth or blag it off your mate.

But Intimacy is truly all killer. ‘Twilight’ is a big, sweeping slab of majestic melancholy, balancing cool synths and chiming guitars that lean on Disintegration era Cure and sits nicely alongside The Twilight Sad circa Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave. It’s a song with a sadness that aches, but at the same time, there’s an ethereal majesty about it, due in no small part to the sweeping, soaring vocals. The epically multi-faceted ‘Waters of Woe’ we’ve already raved about here, but hearing it afresh in the context of the EP, it seems to gain power. The same if true of ‘Reasons to Rush’ which features Liset Alea, combining heavy goth vibes with the electric rush of 90s alternative acts like Curve.

The final track, the epic six-minute ‘Leaden Sky’ now selected to lead the reboot, again features Ophelia on vocals. It’s another gothy epic, clocking in at over six minutes, with a bulbous bass and a wash of echo-soaked guitars weaving a richly textured backdrop cut through with programmed drums which punch out a rolling rhythm. In the context of the EP, it rounds off a big journey ending as it begins, while stepping through some memorable terrain. For these collaborative cuts, Manu H has made some truly immaculate selections. Each of the vocalists brings a subtle but essential twist to the sound, and while tied tightly to the templates of his stated influences (The Cure, Joy Division, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Cocteau Twins, The Sisters of Mercy or The Chameleons), Intimacy sees Distance H emerge victorious by capturing the atmospheric aspects of his forebears without falling to cliché, and the quality of the songs seals it.

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