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Wicked Hot Darkscene Jams to Chase away the November Chill

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Finally freeing up some time to start up interviews again. Which means it is also time to start working through my catalog of new darkscene releases you need to know about. I have a lot to cover so time to put the proverbial needle to the metaphoric record and share my thoughts on what the cool kids are listening to.

Bombay Gasoline – I’m Clean – New single out of Asheville, North Carolina. I’m not sure how it found it’s way on my radar, I think it was a post in the group. Elements of 90’s alt rock with a POWERFUL vocal delivery by Madison Maxwell. Absolute sky splitter of a voice. The structure is complete chaos in the best way, shifting time, tone, and instrumentation with a jazz tornado in a bottle abandon. Sizzling guitar leads makes it feel like the roller coaster car is always only half on the tracks. I’ll definitely be looking for more from this band.

Madison Maxwell – vocals, keys, lyrics, music
Gregg Webber – backing vocals
Joel Shuman – guitars
Grant Yost – bass
Eliza Hill – drums

I’m Clean | Bombay Gasoline

NOIR – The Best of the Remixes – Athan Maroulis (Spahn Ranch, Black Tape for a Blue Girl) is New York City darkwave royalty. He has one of those beautiful and distinctive voices that makes every project he is involved with shine. Featuring Kai Irina Hahn and Jamie Parganos on live keyboards, NØIR debuted with ‘Darkly Near,’ (2013). ‘The Burning Bridge‘ (2016) added guitarist/producer Erik Gustafson. When it comes to remixing there is nothing more satisfying than pulling out a 10/10 vocal melody and swirling it with your own sauce. It’s no wonder Athan was able to pull in some of the top talents in electronica willing to place his voice against another canvas. This compilation of remixes pulls tracks from Noirs catalog and fires them back into the world through a fresh lens. I got to listen to the live bandcamp streaming premier and take the journey with Athan and some of the remixers.

I will give some quick hit impressions of some of my favorite tracks.

1) My Dear (Assemblage 23) Tom Shear the master of futurepop absolutely crushed this. This melody is infectious and it soars on translucent angel wings. You always want an opener that cooks. This one is scorching holy fire.

2) Timephase (Die Sektor) – Slowing things down a bit to a filthy slither is Atlanta GA based Die Sektor featuring the electro psychedelic mind of Vlad McNeally. A band that is always coloring outside the lines they took this mix true to the title with a staggering lilt that phases across the dancefloor. You really feel the density of the drum strikes while being pulled towards the apex of a black hole.

4) A Pleasure To Burn (FIRES) – I’m a huge FIRES fan and here she really turns the sensual David Gahan aspect of Athan’s voice up to 11. A spinning vortex of light. Wicked modular solo into a Tangerine Dream breakdown with ethereal backup vocals. Gorgeous, sexy, and weird. Three of my favorite things.

8) Fallen (Silverwalks) – Daniel McCullough is a synth texture gourmet. Building layer upon layer with sonic flavors into a shadow disco jam that makes it impossible to remain stationary.

I merely scratched the surface. If you haven’t dug into NOIR’s catalog before now you are in for a treat. This compilation is a great way to get a taste.

The Best of the Remixes | NOIR

NORMORIA – Paralyzed (Feat. MATT HART) – Brand new single from Sweden to California transplants featuring British Industrial Pop star Matt Hart. A stomping blend of hard progressive rock and Industrial mayhem. Angel belts out operatic pleas over Matt’s sinister snarls to simulate the horror of sleep paralysis. The crunch of these guitar riffs really make the walls close in. I think we are all relating to this image of crippling anxiety right now.

Paralyzed (Feat. MATT HART) | NORMORIA

EN ESCH – Dance Hall Putsch – I recently had the opportunity to interview the Industrial legend about this new solo album which I think is his most cohesive razor crisp offering to date. I’ll be releasing that soon as well as seeing him play with longtime collaborator Raymond Watts on Saturday at Smalls in Detroit. This is another stellar release by up-and-coming indie label GIVE/TAKE. Lot’s of amazing contributors on this album, to me it was the most En Esch focused of his solo albums. Always one to push artist boundaries over continuity “Dance Hall Putsch” holds more focused cohesion. It started at the beginning of the pandemic and continued to take shape as Russia invaded the Ukraine just 500 miles from Berlin. As an American I sometimes forget how much closer that felt to home for Europeans as a world power moved the machinery of war to their doorstep. You can hear the tonal shift from hopeful dance bangers towards fear and despair. The album also reminds me that En Esch is originally a percussionist. These songs start with a beat in their core and expand outward. That central circulatory pulse is the binding force through each rise and fall.

Favorite Tracks:

2) I’m So Sick feat. Mea Fisher aka DJ Mea (Lords of Acid) – A big weaving organ synth sound crashing into a throbbing club beat and crystal specter vocals. En Esch echos back with snarling poetry. A whirling dervish of energy to establish a sharp and reckless tone.

4) Eden feat. Gabriel Lennox – This is a Mona Mur song that I love, feat Gabriel Lennox of Seraph Sin who appears a few times on the record. Mona’s original version has a sorrowful space opera delivery. The En Esch version while stalking and wild feels brighter and more hopeful. It’s a beautiful homage of respect. I’m a sucker for an artist covering the song of someone you can tell they really respect as an artist.

Photo by Chris Cardi Photography

7) Wumms feat. Raymond Watts (PIG) – This track is just immensely fun. I think the German roughly translates to bang or an onomatopoeia. The intro is a swirling whip that sounds like two friends playing a theremin in call and answer. It’s strange, electric, and feels like a percussion conversation.

10) Epic feat. Mea Fisher aka DJ Mea (Lords of Acid) – I had to include this for the sheer absurdity. The best covers are always ones where you make the song your own. En Esch told a story of KMFDM pulling into a festival and while setting up hearing Faith No More and being taken by this banger track. All these year later we get this reimagining with Mea Fisher. I feel like I was listening to Mike Patton fall backwards into a K hole.

If you are a long time En Esch fan like me I highly recommend grabbing the coke bottle limited edition vinyl. The whole album is fun, reckless, and deep. Tackling an uncertain future with bravado and spirit.

Dance Hall Putsch | EN ESCH

Die Robot – Vampire Vs Zombie (Double Feature) – Die Robot the pacific northwest duo Barbie Saint & Vince Christian with this sizzling monster themed minimalist electronic shadoweave. They have really honed this Electropunk meets retro rockabilly feel into something dangerous. I love how both tracks feel connected but with such contrasting styles. A modern day monster mash up.

Vampire Vs Zombie (Double Feature) | Die Robot

The Sisters of Mercy grinding away on tour.

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“Everybody Shouts on “I Love Lucy” Pee Wee Reads the Evening News, a pre-owned song or a secondhand Uzi, everybody’s got a job to lose, here come the golden oldies”.

Andrew Eldritch

Was the opening line to the Sisters Of Mercy opening song “Doctor Jeep”, written over 30 years ago, about the American culture, media, and how we get our news, somehow the song is more relevant today than when it was written. Welcome to “The Golden Oldies” The Sisters of Mercy are on their way through a world tour, and they stopped in Salt Lake City for the first time since 1991. I was at that show, which was legendary to all who went, and I have seen them since, most recently while on work assignment in Germany in January.

If you have followed them which I have since 1987’s “Floodland” then you know what they will give us live.

Opening Band

Blaqk Audio.

I had no idea who Blaqk Audio was. I bumped into my mate Jeff who worked at a local venue I have shot at over the years, and he was rather excited for their set, explaining that these guys were members of AFI, 5 albums deep into this project.

They are in the vein of AFI, but I would describe them as follows: If Erasure was moderately goth, with the vocals from Apotgyma Berzerk, and a tinge of Alphaville. They were a big surprise, and good, they worked the crowd, as the vocalist Dave Havok bantered with the audience. He was very intense as he sang but kept the crowd lively and took every opportunity to thank us for being such a devout crowd over the years and to say how grateful they were for being on the road with such a legendary band as The Sisters of Mercy. Next time you see their name on the bill, you REALLY will love Blaqk Audio.

The Sisters of Mercy.

The stage had the lighting cages, in towers with camouflage wrapped around them, as well as the “Doktor Avalanche” booth with the “Operator”, and drum machine also covered with it. The “Operator” Chris Catalyst went behind the panels and fired up the beats while the guitarist ripped out the opening riff of “Doctor Jeep”, and Andrew Eldritch walked out to cheers, and began the show with the line “Everybody shouts on I Love Lucy”. Immediately for Salt Lake City, the absence from April 10th, 1991 til now was filled, and they cranked out a few verses of “Doctor Jeep” to the 3rd bridge suddenly Ben (The guitarist) flew into a key change, and Kai sang the chorus of “On Detonation Boulevard”, the time change was tight, and the finished the two song opener.

In Germany Andrew Eldritch was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, tonight he was in a sleeveless top, his head shaved, and of course sunglasses.

By now so many of us had collected bootlegs of the tour (they are everywhere online) so a lot of us knew the unreleased material, starting with “Don’t Drive On Ice”, sounding properly out of the Floodland era, had having a dance-able beat.

I was allowed into the photo pit for songs 3-5, getting my pics with “Ribbons” probably my fave song off the 1990s “Vision Thing” the last album of new material. I was a bit caught in the hypnotic groove of this one, and just casually took some photos while Andrew stepped out of his typical low droning vocals to give us the intense like as if sung by Robert Smith of ” The Cure” , “BUT SHE LOOKED GOOD IN RIBBONS!!!! So just walk on in”. “Ribbons” live never gets old, and tonight was no exception.

With a simple cymbal tap beat coming from Dr. Avalance and Ben kept motioning us to make more noise, the guitar riffs began to build on top of the drums, so we knew were into “Alice”. Andrew was singing almost beneath the guitar, very different than we have heard that song done live for the last almost 40 years.

I finished my time in the pit with “Summer” some new material that had developed on the tour. On earlier dates, the natives were restless with the new material, but now it seems to work well putting these songs in between some classics. Right before I left the pit I yelled at the guitarist “Ben, give me a good one, make it pretty” he smiled and gave me a good rock-star pose. Ben Christo is a god on the guitar, I have known his previous work with Nathan Gray.

With “Dominion / Mother Russia” from “Floodland” living up to everyone’s expectations, a staple for live performances, and on almost every bootleg I have ever heard. They then launched into several songs we would have expected to be on “The New Album”, as follows: “I Will Call You”, We Are The Same”, “Quantum Baby” and then the instant classic “Eyes of Caligula”. I am sure you will be able to find some great live recordings of them out there and when you hear “Eyes” you will understand why we have been waiting so long for the new material. This song is the updated version of the entire zeitgeist of the “Vision Thing” album, starting with Palestine, to the tunnels through the landscape of Israel, to what I imagine a young Palestinian girl “Wrapped in sugar for her pain, “NO” she says, “I’m wearing stains”, and what think was a wedding, cut short, a one-sided view of a country “No “New Jerusalem” there’s no us, it’s only them, this is not my map at all”, then on to what I experienced living in Rotterdam Holland in 1997, playing soccer with mates, and finding discarded syringes on the grass near the benches in the park. Saying “Eyes of Caligula look on”.

In the 30+ years of listening to The Sisters, and diving into Andrew’s lyrics, most people call it depressing, gloom, and doom music, I always found the lyrics mostly full of biting commentary, calling out the social and political situation, but this time, with these lyrics, I actually felt pain and despair. This song was also written before the October 7th launch of the conflict in Israel / Palestine. This song gave voice to the pain of so many people, helpless in the face of those who can do something to make a difference, just looking on, indifferent to the shitshow innocent people are living through. A total banger on this one, Andrew Eldritch has given us plenty to think about this time around.

On the turn of a dime, the string arrangement from “MORE” and the punters went wild. Most of the punters that night had been to the last gig they played in SLC, 33 years ago, and as legendary as that gig was for anyone who went, the two complaints on the setlist were the absence of “More” or “Doctor Jeep” we were hard pressed to find bootlegs with either for quite a while. Opened with “Doctor Jeep” and then we finally got it, and this time “MORE” was “enough”.

Mixing up the setlist with a new song “But Genevieve” was followed by the 1990s “I Was Wrong” which was in a different position from the gig in Germany. A song that I would have loved to have heard in 1991, but really didn’t start getting plays until when they kicked up tours again in 2019, so this was a fantastic one to insert into the set, pretty much any place.

They played “Here” and “When I’m on Fire” both getting played on the new sets and growing with the punters, as somehow we are waiting to hear recorded versions of these songs, each evoking a different feeling and still capturing the essence of “The Sisters Of Mercy”, as they closed the first part of the set with “Temple Of Love”, with the entire venue 3000 strong dancing along to it. The lights turned a strange blue, purple, red, and even pink all around the strange camouflage that wrapped around the equipment on the stage.

The band left the stage, while the venue continued cheering, and everyone was wondering what we would get for an encore. They were back for a while, longer than most bands would make us wait, and everyone knew that they were going to hear more, I personally think the band did it just to ramp up the anticipation.

With the shadow of Chris Catalyst coming back to the console, and Ben and Kia’s shadows were barely visible, the synthetic beats tapped out and the ever-familiar bass line of “Lucretia” rang out, and the punters went wild. I know this bassline well because it was the first one I learned outside of the New Order / Joy division catalog. Andrew sang this one in higher registers than on the album, giving it a very different take, and it was fabulous to hear it this way.

Everyone was almost satisfied, we could have gone for another 5 songs, and The Sisters finished off the evening with “This Corrosion” the punters loud enough that it could have counted as a singalong.

All in all, this was one of the best gigs I have seen of theirs, and I can say the sound was a hundred times better than the Wiesbaden show I saw in January. All the punters left happy with the set, though we would have had plenty of suggestions, the 30-plus years of waiting was worth it for so many who were in high school the last time they rolled through town.

For now they are taking on Europe on another leg of this what seems to be a very long world tour.

https://www.the-sisters-of-mercy.com/

#thesistersofmercy #gothrock #andreweldritch #benchristo #kaid’esprit

Kai D’Esprit Ben Christo

Pan/Dora by dreDDup

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This one took me a while to digest. After listening repeatedly, there is A LOT going on with dreDDup’s eleventh outing, Pan/Dora. With songs dating back to before COVID, Pan/Dora is a densely packed smorgasbord of the “massacre industrial” that’s come to be expected from this Serbian powerhouse.

These 13 songs are well-composed, spanning a spectrum of harsh electronic musical styles. Want to get stompy-stompy on the dance floor? Check, listen to Die Heart. Want to thrash about in the mosh pit?  They got you with Cherry Noble. Want to swoon dreamily to an impenetrable wall of sound? Covered. Dig the eight-minute fever dream closer that is A Broken Dream (Father).

dreDDup continue on their prolific tear, as album #12 has already been announced. But between now and then, enjoy all that Pan/Dora has to offer. Even if it may take a while.

https://dreddup.bandcamp.com/album/pan-dora-2024

“Katharsis” – Amulet

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Oh look, some wonderful friends have appeared to read some shit I wrote. Greetings! Today I’ll be covering the 19 track behemoth “Katharsis” by Washington DC’s own Amulet. Amulet is a duo fronted by Stephanie Stryker and along with her is MJ Phoenix who handles the bulk of the instrumental work and does some vocals as well. This album features some collaborators as well which is nice. Bob Carr adds some guitar work here. James Scott does bass on a track, Rob Early contributes some keys, Emmanuel B. Minko shows up to do some engineering. Oh and check this out, my own personal sleep paralysis demon Dan Milligan is here on drums. How nice, I can’t fucking get away from this dude. Dan is the fucking man and his work can be seen nearly everywhere in the scene so I already have high hopes.

Now when i saw there were NINETEEN total tracks in “Katharsis” clocking in at about 74 minutes I was worried that the album might get a little stale. Then I remembered that my band Decent News put out an album that had less tracks but still had a 70 minute runtime. By no means would runtime be a reason to complain but it would be hypocritical if I did. That being said, by the time is was 6 tracks in I was pretty sold. The duo’s vocals work really well with each other. MJ’s sawzall grime juxtaposed against Stephanie’s soft melodic voice is really fun to listen too. I wish there was more layering of the twos vocals, but that’s just me.

Production wise, everything’s mixed very well. Sometimes it does kind of feel like there was a spill at the reverb factory, but I’ll give that a pass. On the technical side, everything is done very well. Even in songwriting, every song here could have stood out as a single. While on paper that sounds incredible, In practice, when you have 19 songs on an album that are at a technical level good songs, things start to blend together a little. I know most people aren’t listening to albums front to back anymore but as a cohesive piece of work, there’s not a lot of risk taking or experimentation and it feels pretty safe. Personally I feel like this album would be more powerful if it was split in two. Every track on this Katharsis is very vocal driven, and the vocals are excellent. Every song does have a catchy vocal hook that’s hard to shake. Like I have shit to do right now but the chorus to “The Hope That Kills You” keeps distracting me, which right now sucks because I can’t find my keys and I have to pick up laundry. Aside from the Vocals, there are some synth leads and guitar melodies in the album but they’re not an identifying feature of the songs. Alot of the instrumentation feels like it’s only there to support the vocals. I felt like I was waiting for someone to step out of the mix and do a cool interlude into the next section of the song. Your focus is on the vocals the entire time. Please don’t let my own critiques steer you away from checking the album out. My own weird preferences don’t take away at all from “Katharsis”. As I said every track here could absolutely stand out as a single. It’s still catchy, with some great standouts here.

The opening track “Wyrdwork” is a chilling crescendo of reverbed piano and pained cooing that really forces you to settle in. “Erase Me” as some ambient coldwave guitar work in it that is tastefully executed. “Walk Away” is surprisingly more hard hitting than you’d expect in contrast to the rest of “Katharsis”. There really is alot to enjoy here, personally I would’ve preferred a little more variation. Looking back on their previous releases I’m surprised this album didn’t explore more (I highly Recomend listening to “Secrets and Lies” and “Clear Blue Skies” – Chef’s kiss). I give Katharsis 7 whole Demonia Gift Cards out of 10.

UPDATE: I found my keys, I got too high and put them in the fridge

Music | Amulet

Sorrows by Warm Gadget

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Is it possible for a band to have a unique drum sound even if they don’t have a live drummer? I think so. 

Oregon’s Warm Gadget has come a long way from their punk-ish origins to create an industrial rock sound that is powerful and relentless, yet still allows for melody to creep its way into the mix. This is evident on their new release, Sorrows. The percussion parts are heavy as hell and will shake the fillings loose in your teeth; layered and intricate with a distinctive bombast. Drum programming is indeed an art form. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The lyrics on Sorrows are equally as in-your-face. Subjects such as conformity (The Masses), fucked-up relationships (Debutante), and the impermanence of society (Digging) are laid before us none too subtly. 

At eleven tracks (including three remixes), this sonic assault is quick and to the point without taxing your attention span. Debutante has the makings of a single, featuring vocals and guitar work from fellow Oregonian Page Hamilton of Helmet fame. Its singalong chorus and Hamilton’s distinctively screeching guitar solo make Debutante catchy and memorable.

Songs such as Unfollow are actually revived tracks from a few years ago that the band had left on the back burner until now. After letting the songs percolate for a suitable time, the end result was well worth the wait.

Even still, Sorrows is Warm Gadget’s strongest outing yet. These songs were best left until the band was ready for them; when every aspect of their playing and production skill was at its most polished and powerful. Recommended.

https://remissionentertainment.bandcamp.com/album/sorrows