Posts Tagged ‘The Mission’

Spear of Destiny – The Crescent, York, 17th October 2025

Posted: 19 October 2025 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

For many so-called ‘heritage bands’, the gig circuit can be trail of diminishing returns – then again, for others, the gigs are bigger now than in their heyday. Nostalgia is a powerful market, but one that often tapers off as the fanbase ages. Our older population may be expanding, but that doesn’t mean they’re all up for gig-going in their retirement years. Spear of Destiny sit in the middle of this range: they’re not playing the 1,500-2,000 capacity venues of some of their peers, but they’re packing out smaller venues, such as this one, often. You have to wonder if Kirk Brandon can even remember what his home looks like given his intense touring schedule, if not with Spear of Destiny, then, more recently, with the resurrected Theatre of Hate. They only finished their Janus tour in June, and here, they are, back on the road after barely time to do the laundry and restock the merch. The frequency of visits to destinations with smaller demographics does nothing to diminish the attendance, either: the fanbase is hardcore, and they do seem to be drawing younger people in, too, as interest in the bands kids’ parents listened to appears to be on the rise. I’m not going to claim that the 80s and 90s were better than now for music – not least of all because I don’t believe that’s the case, despite it being harder to find stuff now if you want to escape the algorithmic force-feed – but there was something about those times that’s lacking now, and it’s not just innovation. Politics and protest seemingly had a more central place then, too: in recent years have

It was only last September that Theatre of Hate stopped by this very same venue, and the Spring of 2023 that Spear of Destiny trod these same boards – and yet tonight, perhaps because it’s a Friday – the place is packed, perhaps more so than on the last two visits.

Immediately they dispel that whole ‘heritage band’ thing by opening a solid set with a slew of newer material, delivered with vigour. It’s also very much a set for the more devoted fans: popular songs and hits like ‘So in Love with You’, ‘Tinseltown’, and ‘Young Men’ are bypassed in favour of a set that works its way through recent tunes and deeper cuts, and only really goes all out on the big popular choices in the second half. No-one’s complaining, though, and the band look to be enjoying themselves: at one point, Kurt exchanges grins and chat with bassist Craig. And I’m reminded – as a huge, huge Sisters of Mercy fan, but one too young to see them in their first era – that I’m standing maybe six feet away from the bass legend that is Craig Adams. The fact that The Mission were the first major-league band I saw, from what felt like a mile away, at Sheffield City Hall in 1990 is the context here.

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Kirk’s voice may not sound quite as strong as on his last visit, but the chap’s been poorly, and he’s still capable of belting out the tunes, and, soaring in all directions and, when it matters, leaping an octave in an instant and hitting all the high notes. And as a four-piece, while the absence of sax is notable particularly on some songs, they create a sound that’s dense, and as always, they play with precision tightness while maintaining a fluidity and a palpable energy. Everything else is in place, with a dominant rhythm section, from martial beats to thunderous tribal percussion, paired with Adam’s sturdy grooves.

Up front, there’s ‘Strangers in Our Town’, and ‘Never Take Me Alive’ lands early on, too. It’s easy for forget that this is a band who’ve released significantly more albums since their eighties heyday than during that time, and the set offers a fair balance of post-eighties material with a selection of songs from that commercially fruitful spell – and it’s worth noting that fan favourites aren’t necessarily the singles, but key album tracks. ‘Mickey’, for example, was only a single in The Netherlands, but is one of the highlights of World Service, and tonight’s set.

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Into the final leg, ‘Rainmaker’ really rouses the rabble, and ‘Radio Radio’ prompts a huge singalong before they depart the stage. The place erupts when the band come back on, and the encore launches with a spirited ‘Soldier Soldier’… and finished with ‘Liberator’ – because there is simply no other way to end a Spear of Destiny set. It brings the house down – every single time. More of the same next time, please.

Papillon de Nuit – Frozen Charlotte

Posted: 8 August 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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8th August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

The seventh single released by the Papillon de Nuit project / collective / ensemble centred around Stephen Kennedy is perhaps the most ambitious yet. It’s clear that Kennedy, who has for a number of years, operated as a live music promoter under the guise of The Velvet Sheep, is an irrepressible creative, a restless spirit never content to do or be any one thing. In Papillon de Nuit, he’s songwriter, arranger, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, bringing to this track vocals, found-sounds, additional percussion, additional piano. And here, in just three and a half minutes, he and his collaborators have produced a song which is many things at once. They’ve also got Steve Whitfield, known for his work with The Cure and The Mission (admittedly, some of my least favourite works by The Mission, but that’s more a matter of material than production) in as producer again.

Being drawn to certain names because of songs is, I suppose, only natural: favourite songs create images and associations which in some way we use to orientate ourselves within the world, internally. And there’s no doubt that Charlotte, like Alice, is a name with special resonance to those with musical tastes which lean towards the gothier domains. That Robert Smith’s inspiration for ‘Charlotte Sometimes’ was inspired by Penelope Farmer’s haunting 1969 novel of the same title was reason enough for me to track down and read a copy of the book, and in context, the doubling / overlapping of the vocals can be seen to represent the parallel / interchangeable lives of the lead character.

‘Frozen Charlotte’ is also a work of a historical persuasion, described as ‘a dark Victorian morality tale about the folly of vanity.’ And it is, indeed, dark. It arrives with a sharp squeal of feedback and the crunch of feet on gravel, before a low but springy – classic goth – and ultimately stealthy bass strolls in and completely shapes the song’s framework. Rolling drums – a minimal, Mo Tucker style, which adds to the stark, brooding atmosphere. The addition of cello and piano builds things further ahead of the arrival of the vocals. It is all about the intro and the build here, but Kennedy gives a magnificent performance. It’s not the overdone booming baritone goth cliché, but a rich, soulful delivery which imbues the lyrics with meaning, in what I can perhaps best describe as a ‘literary’ sense. What I mean by this that while studying English literature at university, some lecturers had the ability to get you completely hooked in a writer because the way they delivered the quotations had impact: they felt the words, and could convey them in a way that opened your eyes to the fact the word on the page contained so much more depth when orated with passion.

The chorus here is understated, the emphasis very much on the dark atmosphere, although the vocal melody does still provide a clear and vital hook, and the ultimate result is alchemical.

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Frozen Charlotte artwork

Listen: ‘Ariadne (feat. Jared Hardwick of Tengu Taiko Drummers)’ by Papillon de Nuit

Posted: 24 March 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Having completed a trilogy of experimental songs, Papillon de Nuit begin a new cycle, reaching for the epic, and with a more structured (but no less adventurous) approach. With Steve Whitfield on board (The Cure, The Mission) as Producer, and an array of incredibly talented, diverse musicians and singers, Ariadne is the first release in this phase. We are delighted to share it with you.

Continue with us on our journey….

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The Awakening – The Awakening

Posted: 15 February 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Intervention Arts

Christopher Nosnibor

While eponymous debuts are commonplace, apart from artists who name all of their albums eponymously, it also seems to be a thing for long-established bands to release a self-titled album well into their career, and, to my mind, it seems somewhat strange. Nevertheless, Killing Joke have in fact done both, and Interpol have also managed two eponymous albums (if you count album number five, the anagrammatic El Pintor). Have you run out of ideas or something?

The Awakening has been a thing for a good quarter century now, during which time Ashton Nyte has also released a number of solo albums, a brace of books, and been a constant feature in the lineup of industrial / goth collective Beauty in Chaos. He’s a busy man.

The twelve tracks on The Awakening represent something of a revisiting of the classic goth template, and in this context, the title makes perfect sense. It’s a return to the beginning, treading the ground where it all began, and feeling that spark once again: an awakening, indeed.

‘Shimmer’ creates the atmosphere with dolorous bell chimes and slow, deliberate, ceremonial percussion, before single cut ‘Mirror Midnight’ thumps in with a sturdy bass groove melded tight to a relentless, solid drum machine beat. Laced with delicate traces of brittle, chorus-laden guitar, it provides the backdrop to a crooning baritone vocal delivery. Lyrically, it’s rich in esoteric imagery and it’s classic goth – mid-80s in style, md-90s in production. And this is essentially The Awakening: it’s dark, brooding, espousing the doomed romanticism that was central to The Sister of Mercy’s genre-defining debut album, First and Last and Always.

‘Through the Veil’ goes epic, and if its arena aspirations seem somewhat removed from the claustrophobic confines of the first phase of goth, it likely owes something of a debt to Floodland, while the acoustic-led ‘Your Vampire’ evokes The Mission circa Children (I’m thinking ‘Heaven on Earth’, but perhaps a little less bombastic), although ‘Island in a Stream’ is an equally valid reference point.

‘Haunting’ – also a single – and an obvious choice, it has to be said, is a burly burst of muscle-flexing guitar propelled – again – by a throbbing bass and pumping drum beat, draped with cool Cure-esque synths, culminating in a climactic rush of a finale. ‘See You Fall’ stands out as another quintessential goth banger: the instrumentation again is reminiscent of early Mission songs, and the drumming, with its dominant snare is absolutely cut from the same cloth as The First Chapter, although Nyte’s vocal reminds me – quite happily – of Andrew Eldritch demoing vocals on ‘Garden of Delight’.

Things take a turn for the heavy – and the political – on ‘Fallout’. It’s a reminder that the music of the 80s emerged from a time of terror, a political lurch to the right, and living under the shadow of the bomb. And here we are again. We can never escape history: it simply repeats. And so, it stands to reason that music is also cyclical.

‘Not Here’ hints at Bauhaus, while the thunderous ‘Cabaret’ – which seems to take certain cues from ‘Dead Pop Stars’ by Altered Images and The Psychedelic Furs’ ‘Soap Commercial’ in terms of its spindly lead guitar line – is a modern goth classic.

The Awakening mines a seam of trad goth which straddles the first wave and the 90s revival, or second wave – which is precisely the starting point of The Awakening. This album feels rather like time travel, in the best possible sense, and, in context, it’s less a case of homage as revisitation and renewal.

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The Awakening 1 - photo by Ashton Nyte

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – Driving Black EP

Posted: 7 October 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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COP International – 6th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

What a year this is proving to be for bands who have lain dormant, at least on the studio front, for quite literally decades. And when it comes to Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, it really has been a long time. The last Lorries release was an ultra-limited gig-only affair back in 2015, with just 50 copies pressed for Leeds in the August and 100 for Valencia the following month. Said EP featured two new songs, ‘Safe as Houses’ and ‘Piece of my Mind’, which were listed as being from the ‘forthcoming album Strange Kind of Paradise’. Time passed, and it really didn’t look like the album would ever see the light of day. But now, this official EP presages its arrival in February 2025, some thirty-three years since they called it a day with Blasting Off (1992).

The Lorries always stood apart from their contemporaries: whereas the Leeds post-punk scene of the early 80s clearly favoured black in every possible way, the band’s guitar sound was steely grey and like scraping metal, and paired with murky bass and relentless percussion, they forged an industrial clang that, was the perfect mirror to both the landscape and the times. Chris Reed’s baritone was less theatrical and more gnarly and angry-sounding than your archetypal goths which would follow. Fans will already know and appreciate all of this, but with so much history – and so much time having passed – some context is worthwhile, especially for those unfamiliar.

During their 80s heyday, they built a catalogue of outstanding 12” releases, with some of their best cuts not on the albums, and with Driving Black, they’ve added another. It contains six tracks, with two mixes of the title track – I gather the original will feature on the album – long with a mix of the as-yet-unreleased ‘Chickenfeed’. ‘Safe as Houses’ and ‘Piece of my Mind’ finally get to be heard – and owned – by more than 150 people, and hearing them again in this context reminds me of the buzz I got when first heard them almost a decade ago: they’re unmistakably RLYL, and if they’re more in the vein of the material on Blow and Blasting Off, the one thing that’s remained consistent throughout the band’s entire career is their sonic density, that claustrophobic, concrete-heavy heft, with ‘Piece of Mind’ being a solid mid-tempo chugger and a grower at the same time. It seems that the two tracks from the 2015 EP didn’t make the album cut – but this can be seen as good news, if they have material of this quality going spare. The same is true of ‘Living With Spiders’, a frenzied track which has spindly guitars crawling and scratching all over it. It would be a standout, but the consistency of quality across the EP means it’s one more cracking tune.

The strangest thing is how time – or our perception of time – seems to become evermore distorted. Perhaps some of it’s an age thing, but… I remember at the time, The Sisters of Mercy’s release of Floodland was hailed not only as the rebirth it was – stylistically and in terms of commercial success – but as a huge comeback after a great absence. But Floodland arrived only just over two years after First and Last and Always. Even more remarkably, I seem to recall the release of Crawling Mantra under the name The Lorries that same year was considered something of a comeback and a departure, even though Paint Your Wagon was released only the year before. The world seemingly lost the plot when The Stone Roses delivered The Second Coming after a five-year gap (and they really needn’t have bothered). And now, while Daniel Ek is advocating the production of ‘content’ on a constant basis, we have bands putting out their first new material in an eternity, and rather than having forgotten about them, fans are fervent – and rightly so.

Chris Reed’s reuniting with David ‘Wolfie’ Wolfenden – Leeds alumni who first appeared with Expelaires in 1979 along with one Craig Adams, who would do a stint as a member of The Mission’s touring lineup – is most welcome, because they’re simply a great pairing, and this is nowhere more apparent than on lead track ‘Driving Black’, which is vintage Lorries, kicking off with urgent, driving drums, before the throb of bass and rhythm guitar and a sinewy lead guitar, sharp and taut as a tripwire cut in and casts a thread right back to their earliest work in terms of style and structure.

The parallels between now and the 80s are uncomfortable; we may have ditched a Conservative government, but workers are still feeling the pinch, and global tensions are off the scale. That the BBC’s apocalyptic movie Threads is getting only its fourth screening – to mark its fortieth anniversary – feels worryingly relevant. And so it is that Red Lorry Yellow Lorry still sound essential and contemporary is equally testament to their songwriting and delivery, and the bleak times in which we find ourselves. Putting the social and political backdrop to one side, the Driving Black EP is an absolute triumph. There are no half-measures, nothing is weak or half-arsed, and it’s – remarkably – as if they’ve never been away.

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Beauty In Chaos – Dancing With Angels

Posted: 28 July 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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33.3 – 24th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Since their inception and debut album Finding Beauty in Chaos in 2018, the project helmed by Human Drama and Gene Loves Jezebel guitarist Michael Ciravolo has presented a staggering array of collaborators and contributors. Not so much a band as an open music collective, they return with Dancing With Angels, which promises appearances by ‘luminaries from The Mission, The Bellwether Syndicate, Holy Wars, Kommunity FK, The Awakening & Strangelove.’ Indeed, Wayne Hussey has been a regular contributor, and he, and wife, Cynthia return this time around to appear on the dreamy, Cure-esque single cut ‘Diving for Pearls’, with chiming guitars and bulbous bass sound reminiscent of ‘Pictures of You’.

Each of the album’s eight atmospheric gothy post-punk hued songs features a different vocalist or vocalists, with duties shared by William Faith and Sarah Rose Faith of The Bellwether Syndicate on opener ‘Present Tense’, a cut that harks back to the sound of the alternative scene circa 1986, when The Mission were taking their first steps and Gene Loves Jezebel were at their commercial peak. Given Ciravolo’s other work, this isn’t entirely surprising – but what is welcome, and impressive, is the extent to which the sonic blueprint is expanded to incorporate a broad range of styles, stretching out to the shimmery shoegaze dream pop of ‘The Devil You Know’ at one end of the spectrum, and the brooding anthem that is ‘Echoes and the Angels’ via the crackling guitar-driven indie of ‘Kiss Me (Goodbye)’.

With its rippling piano and swooning vocals, courtesy of Cynthia Isabella of Lost Gems (and formerly of Silence in the Snow’, ‘Hollow’ is delicate and emotive, while ‘Holy Ground’ brings soaring lead guitars to a solid rockin’ tune. It may be because it’s sandwiched between ‘Hollow’ and the slow-burning closer, ‘Made of Rain’ (featuring Ashton Nyte making a fifth appearance with Beauty in Chaos), but it feels like the weakest of the songs here.

Whether or not Ciravolo wrote the songs with the singers in mind, or if they evolved around them once they were on board, the fact each guest brought their own lyrics means they feel like they’re in their natural environment, and each songs sounds like it belongs to them. The end result has something of a mixtape feel to it, while retaining that essential coherence.

Nevermore has the project’s moniker felt more apposite: conjured from a whirlwind, an effervescent creative froth of a diverse range of creative minds, Dancing With Angels stands as testament to the power of collaboration.

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Black Angel – Lascivious

Posted: 15 October 2023 in Albums
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6th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Lascivious is Black Angel’s fifth album, which promises the band’s ‘hybrid Gothic Rock sound and taking flavors from their 80’s predecessors while adding new tones… retaining the essential gothic elements that drive his inspiration as originally provided by the likes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, The Cult & Sisters of Mercy.’

Certainly, Lascivious is steeped in the stylistic tropes of the 80s, not least of all the thick four-four bass grooves and smashing snare drum which both dominates and defines the sound. But the first thing that strikes me, as a longstanding fan of that golden era in the 80s (I was too young for the start of it all but when The Sisters and The Mission started breaking the Top 40 singles charts between 86 and 88, it was a revelation which set me on a lifelong journey) is that the ‘new tones’ very much involve contemporary production. That is to say, it’s just that much cleaner and fuller, more polished than the true ‘vintage’ sound.

Ah, but they know the features of yesteryear. It’s been a while since I’ve heard a fadeout, but that’s just what happens on the album’s first track, ‘Killer’ – and it’s not the last time on the album they employ it either.

The drum intro on ‘Black Velvet Amphetamine’ is an on-point lift of the snare sound of the Sisters’ cover of ‘Gimme Shelter’, and many of the sounds can be pinpointed as having a certain root or origin. In fact, five seconds into the title track, it’s clear that the drums are lifted from ‘Heartland’, although it also leans on the Sisters’ cover of ‘Emma’ by Hot Chocolate, and it’s clear they’ve been raiding the early Sisters back catalogue – and fair play. The Sisters achieved some incredible sounds with minimal means, with ‘Temple of Love’ marking their first step up from an eight-track ‘studio’ in the run-down northern seaside town of Bridlington.

But if the drums and guitar work make big nods to The Sisters, Corey Landis’ croon is closer to that of Wayne Hussey than the cavernous baritone of Andrew Eldritch. One of the divisions between fan-camps when Hussey and Adams went and formed The Mission – and a source of tension when Hussey began offering songs with lyrics. I write as a fan of the Mission when I say that while they work in the songs, Hussey’s lyrics are more cliché patchworks than literary masterpieces (Eldritch played with and perverted cliché and did so poetically), and one problem with bands who followed in the wake (excuse the pun) of both The Sisters and The Mission is that they’ve had a tendency to ape the lyrical substance without really adding anything creatively unique

‘She’s My Suicide’ slips into more generic rock with a gothy edge, and makes me think of the bands who emerged following the cult but had more of a hair rock leaning, reminding me why despite all my teen goth credentials, I was pretty picky but then, right at the end, they pull out a really gritty, spindly guitar break that’s magnificent, reminding me of The March Violets. And this is a fair summary of the album as a whole: some really good bits, some solid songs, but some rather weak and generic aspects which hold it back in the bracket of ‘decent’ rather than ‘awesome’.

‘Bite It’ bristles with spiky guitars and a low-slung groove, and is perhaps the first song that seems to really fit with the sleaze implied by the album’s title, and ‘Want’ also achieves this, but suffers from trying too hard to be ‘More’. It’s a fair stab at bombast, but it’s hard to compete with the Sisters, especially when they’ve got Jim Steinman on hand, plus a whole host of backing singers and a monster budget for state of the art studio time. I’m sorry I’m not more undemanding. Halfway through ‘Dirty Little Secret’, I realise its chords are based on Motörhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’, and afford myself a small chuckle.

The slower, ‘Ticking of the Clock’ is driven by a crunchy, flangy bass that’s pure early Cure, and is one of the album’s real standouts, by daring to deviate from any obvious formula, and in fairness, the title track is low-slung, sleazy, and grinds out a dark seduction with style.

Sonically, Lascivious is more than solid, and Black Angel clearly know what their doing: there’s no question they have their sound and style absolutely nailed – and consequently, with this set of solid songs, the album will go down well with existing fans and a huge chunk of the goth crowd, and deservedly so.

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Feather Trade announce late May shows

Posted: 24 May 2022 in Previews and Editorial
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Shit happens: some good, some bad. Feather Trade, who grabbed our attention when supporting Benefits in York back in February, were scheduled to support The Mission on May 26th. As fate would have it, the night’s scheduling with an early curfew meant they got dropped from the lineup, although their regular drummer is now occupying the stool for Hussey and co. How does stuff like that even happen? But when life gives you lemons, Feather Trade book a run of shows instead.

If you’re in the vicinity of any of these places, we’d very much recommend going.

FRIDAY MAY 27 – MANCHESTER – AATMA

w / Cold Water Swimmers

Inca Babies

Jim’s Rolling Beat

SATURDAY MAY 28 – MACCLESFIELD – MASH GURU

w/ Urban Theory

SUNDAY MAY 29 – HAILFAX – THE TURKS HEAD

w/ Triptych (from Glasgow)

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Salvation – We Gave You Diamonds… Live at De Casino

Posted: 13 February 2022 in Albums
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Christopher Nosnibor

While the majority of their output belongs to the post-85, second wave of post-punk / indie-goth, both (timewise) and sonically, Salvation’s roots actually go back to the murkier days of when The Sisters of Mercy were a true Leeds band, living in a dingy terrace in LS6 and recording at Kenny Giles’ 8-track studio in Bridlington and running a label not so much on a shoestring, but on zero budget and Letraset.

Salvation’s first ingle, ‘Girlsoul’ was released on Merciful Release in ’83, and was produced by Eldritch, before a parting of the ways not dissimilar from that which befell The March Violets took place, and while their second single, ‘Jessica’s Crime’ was produced by Wayne Hussey in 1984, the mini-album Clash of Dreams which was scheduled for A Merciful Release in 1985 was shelved and only got to see the light of day in 2014.

By then, they had evolved into the more accessible indie-goth sound, which emerged circa 1985-6, and which perhaps not coincidentally corresponded with The Sisters of Mercy’s evolution towards a more commercial sound with the arrival of Wayne Hussey and their signing to WEA and the release of ‘Body and Soul’ and First and Last and Always, before the split that led to the emergence of The Mission.

But their coming together with Hussey early on marked the beginning of a longstanding partnership: in fact, it was in 1990, supporting The Mission at Sheffield City Hall I first encountered Salvation, which would have coincided with the release of their major label debut Sass, which marked something of a more commercially-orientated direction, and would also represent the band’s last new material as the band crashed under the pressures of relentless touring.

Fast-forward to 2020, and the band have emerged from their retirement to tour Europe with The Mission. We Gave You Diamonds… Live at De Casino was recorded Live at De Casino, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium on March 7th 2020 on the final night of a four-date tour supporting The Mission, and it’s a career-spanning showcase of a set that captures salvation on fine form, and Daniel Mass sounds relaxed with his chat between songs.

Only two of the eleven songs ‘(Clearing Out the) Debris’ and ‘Paint it Rose’ are from Sass, and the set is otherwise culled from their independent years, kicking off with ‘The Answer’ from 1986’s ‘Seek’ EP. It’s clearly of that mid-80s vintage, but still sounds fresh and is delivered with an energy that translated through the medium of the live recording, with its thumping bass and flowery guitar flourishes both crisp and clear. ‘Ladyfaithe’ from the same EP, which would subsequently their 1987 debut album Diamonds are Forever is also dropped early.

Mass probably doesn’t need to announce that they’re from Leeds at the start of the set: they sounds like a Leeds band, to the core. They also sound like a band who are having a blast, and the songs are played with precision and power, and they’ve held up well despite the passage of all the years: ‘All and More’ still kicks ass with twisty guitars and a solid bass groove, and reminds us just how strong they were at penning sharp hooks and nagging guitar lines.

They delve right back as far as ‘The Shining’ (a standout and a personal favourite that always gets lodged as an earworm whenever I play it) from their second single as well as the unreleased ‘The October Hour’ from the debut that never was. ‘Payola’ and ‘Pearl Necklace’, the B-sides from their single release of Donovan’s ‘Sunshine Superman’ from 1988. Yes, it’s a blast from the past, but this doesn’t have the vibe of a nostalgia trip: Salvation sound like a band reinvigorated and energised and feeling the songs.

And now, as we finally crawl out of the seemingly-eternal suspension of life that was the Covid pandemic, Salvation are once again set to play as support to The Mission – although the handful of dates isn’t quite the crippling schedule of thirty years ago. On the strength of We Gave You Diamonds, it’ll be worth making it down early doors, and with any luck they’ll be booking a few headline shows of their own before long.

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Orcus Nullify – Beautiful Hell EP

Posted: 28 December 2021 in Singles and EPs
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James Wells

In advance, we learn that ‘The songs on Beautiful Hell will take you on a tour of the wreckage that is the contemporary state of affairs brought about during the reign of the Orange Beast. There was the destruction and reversal of environmental policies like withdrawal from the Parris Climate Accord, termination of the Clean Water Act & turning back the clock on human rights’, and that ‘the title track ‘Beautiful Hell’ draws a juxtaposition between the beauty of this planet and decaying state of political affairs. The tune ‘Under his Eye’ is focused on what is seemingly a path toward a Neo-Nazi Christian state. ‘Night Bird Cries’ is a lament for the decline of our environment and morality, that increasingly vie for our attention but go unheeded.’

The sound of Orcus Nullify – headed by bassist / vocalist Bruce Nullify – on this release is very much vintage goth, with fractal guitars, heavy in chorus and flange and setting spindly frameworks around thundering bass and tribal drums, the murky production evolving the sound and style of early Christian Death.

The intro to the title track sounds very like that of The Mission’s ‘Severina’ before it goes all splintering, spirally Nightbreed-sounding second-wave goth. For the record, that’s no criticism, just a contextual referencing placemarker. ‘Night Dance’ showcases a raw, dingy sound where the guitars are trebly and the bass is muddy and everything combines to create something dark and intense. ‘Fall from Faith’ is The Mission amped up to eleven, it’s The March Violets, it’s Groovin’ with Lucy, it’s Rosetta Stone.

As such, it’s not inventive, and Orcus Nullify clearly aren’t out to reinvent the genre, but to add to the body of the catalogue that could reasonably be labelled ‘classic goth’. Nothing wrong with that, and credit to the band, they’ve got the sound nailed, and some decent choons, too, with Beautiful Hell being a solid and dynamic EP.

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