I have been inundated with new music this past month so it’s been hard to narrow my favorites down to just 5. But you know, why limit myself? I’ll just talk about all my favorite new songs this month. Just one per band though, or else I would be writing forever. So this time, let’s call it a Top 11 list. You can think of it as a Top 10 plus an honorable mention, but I would say after the third song these are in no particular order and I like them all equally. I won’t say I will have this many songs every month, I might go back to just 5 next month, but we’ll see. There’s no limit, no maximum.
I’ve been listening mainly to music that came out either this year or last year. I’ve made some exciting discoveries this month, from bands around the world. A lot of US bands this time around, a lot of California bands in fact, but, I finally found an Armenian goth band! More on that later.
Lilith my Mother - There’s No Poetry in Light
Lilith My Mother is the solo project of Oleg Degtiarev out of Czechia, and their new album Now released just last month. Included on the album is the original title track along with no less than 13 remixes of the song from artists such as Project Ich, Luin and Batavia. It’s very interesting listening to each artist’s different take on the track, I don’t think I have ever heard so many remixes of one song. It really becomes an entirely different song sometimes. So don’t think the album is going to be redundant with so many remixes of the same song on it, it really is quite varied. No two are the same. In fact Oleg was kind enough to send me the album to listen to and review, and I decided to include it in my monthly Top Songs blog. My favorite track off the album is one of two songs that aren’t “Now”, and that’s “There’s No Poetry in Light”. A terrific song for lovers of the night and lovers of poetry, of which I am both. The lyrics themselves would make a good poem. I definitely recommend checking this album out.
You can find the album here:
No Man Cry - Undead
I finally did it! I finally found an Armenian goth band! They do exist! After finding so many Greek, Russian and Turkish goth bands it feels great to finally hear goth from my homeland. I know The Deenjes, an Armenian band which has made my lists before, can be goth-passing or goth-adjectant on certain tracks, but No Man Cry is fully goth. No Man Cry is the solo project of Tigran Davtyan out of Yerevan, Armenia, founded just last year. He now has three albums out. As soon as I found this band I bought their whole discography. So far my favorite song on the three albums is the above track, “Undead”. The song is off their debut album Kukuruznik, released almost exactly one year ago, which you see on the video above. The usage of an old Soviet skyscraper on the album cover (Kukuruznik, Russian for “corn”, is the name of the building, in fact, a legacy of Soviet modernism in Yerevan) reminds one of Molchat Doma, and given Armenia’s cultural closeness with Russia I wouldn’t be surprised if No Man Cry wasn’t influenced by the bustling Russian post-punk scene that has exploded in recent years. But No Man Cry has a charm all its own. They mainly sing in English, although they do have an occasional song in Armenian. The English in the lyrics isn’t always the best, reminding me of the Greek band Tango Mangalore; for instance one verse in this song is “Body that twitchy, eyes that are twitch, a blood on my hands I am dragging that witch.” It adds to the charm. As does the accent. I love how “Undead” opens with the sound of ravens and a church bell chiming, very classical gothic. The song goes on to have shades of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, with its “undead” chant, and a gloomy post-punk atmosphere. The drum beat at the beginning even reminds me of that song. In all, I think it’s a good introduction to this band if you want to check them out.
Check the album out here:
Death Loves Veronica - LIES
“You can’t break the system, it’s always been this way.”
This is another one of those songs, like the thematically similar songs “Deep Down in a Box” by Paradox Obscur and “Off the Grid” by Rein, that correlates with my worldview. It expresses a desire to escape the inescapable dystopian system upon which our society operates. The system is something you can’t escape, it’s always been this way and always will. Or at least that’s what the authorities would have you believe; the Sun has to expand into a red supergiant and swallow the Earth someday, after all, it won’t always be this way. Another good lyric is “Don’t go outside, just play the game.” Stay asleep and obedient, work to make the rich richer, pay your bills, never question anything, and then die. Stay locked up in the cave and stare at the shadows on the wall your whole life. Basically the stuff I write about in my Doom Scroll blogs all the time. The system is a game I never asked to play.
Death Loves Veronica is the solo project of Veronica Campbell of San Antonio, Texas. She’s been releasing albums for a few years now but I only just discovered her, and I like what I’ve heard. I have a lot of great music to get through. This track is off the album Chemical, which released late last month and can be found here:
Slow Danse With the Dead- Red Wine and Sad Songs
You can find the album here:
Mystic Priestess - No Tomorrow, Only Today
Mystic Priestess is a deathrock band out of Oakland, California, same county I grew up in. I wonder where all the goths were when I lived in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area, I always felt like the only one on the planet when I lived there. Anyway, I discovered this band last year when they appeared on a radio show I occasionally listen to either on their website or through Radio Garden, The Hanging Garden on BFF. FM out of San Francisco. I heard the track “Toxic Masculinity” and enjoyed it, but I hadn’t gotten around to listening to to their other music until recently. Their music is often very angry and politically charged, as is the case with the above track “No Tomorrow, Only Today”, a song about how the United States is headed for nuclear doom. But what really grabbed me about this track was the rare and illusive goth sax. Yes, the gothic saxophone appears again. I’m going to make a goth sax mixtape once I find enough songs with it.
This track is off their self-titled album, which was released last December. Highly recommended listening. You can buy the digital album, but the CD is only two dollars more and you also get their previous EPs as well as the MP3s, so that’s probably the best way to go.
Glaare - Buyer’s Remorse
Glaare’s 2017 debut album To Death and a Day is still a favorite of mine, I even got it on cassette. The song “My Love Grows in Darkness”, first song on the album, is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, and I don’t say that lightly, considering my MP3 player is now past 2,200 songs. So I was thrilled when I learned that Glaare was going to have a new album out this year. The new album, Your Hellbound Heart, takes their sound in a bit of a new direction, with synthwave tones thrown into their usual shoegaze/post-punk. The theme of the album is sci-fi action movies of the 1980s, such as Hellraiser and They Live. One of the songs is even called “Terminator 2” and is told from the perspective of Sarah Connor, a character in the film. It’s very much a concept album, which are getting rare these days. Like their previous album, listening to it from beginning to end is like listening to one single work rather than a collection of unrelated songs, and that’s the mark of a good mix. There’s a lost science to placing songs on an album (or mixtape) in a way that they flow into each other and you kind of forget that you’re listening to more than one song at times. Glaare is good at this.
My favorite off the album is “Buyer’s Remorse”, with the title track “Your Hellbound Heart” a close second. Those two songs are a bit slower and sound closer to Glaare’s initial sound, although I do like all the songs. Admittedly nothing is quite like “My Love Grows in Darkness”, but perhaps that song is like lightning in a bottle. I do wonder if this album signals a permanent change of musical direction for the band, or if the next one will be different still.
Listen to it here:
Pitch After Dark - Torn
I discussed this band last month when I was hooked on their song “Trapped Inside”. I bought both of their albums then, and I love every song on both. This song eventually surpassed “Trapped Inside”. It’s more subdued and mellow than that song, but with that same great post-punk sound. I just love the vocals of singer Pari Dark, and while the guitar solos that appear in their songs almost feel a bit outside the genre, that punctuate the songs well. Anyway, this song is a good one to listen to during my walks outside. Dark yet relaxing.
This track appears on their self-titled debut album, released last year.
New Cross - Fist of the Hanged Man
New Cross is a band out of London, England, which emerged last year. I recently became hooked on this song after it was shared on the Guitars and Sound YouTube page. I went on a quest to find out more about this band for the blog but information seems pretty scant. They do have quite a lot of music out despite only debuting last year though, so it looks like I have some more new music to get to! This song can be found on the Fist of the Hanged Man EP, which also includes an instrumental version of the track.
Qyburn - Rain on a Grave
This song has two versions, a slow version and a speeded up version. I find that I prefer the speeded up version, but maybe it depends on one’s mood. This song is atmospheric and dreary. It just puts the image in your mind of a foggy graveyard, raindrops falling upon a tombstone. I imagine if it were played live a fog machine with blue and purple lights would be a must. Maybe it’s because of the image on the above video but I feel like the hooded druid is perfect too, like the Ghost of Christmas Future presiding over the grave of Ebenezer Scrooge. I guess this song just takes my imagination places. Which judging by Qyburn’s Bandcamp page was the intent. The music is supposed to evoke a setting. They’ve succeeded.
Qyburn is based out of Los Angeles, California. This track is off their new album Wax Mask.
Serj Tankian - Your Mom
Alright, time for some rock music. Serjik appears on my non-music related blogs quite frequently due to how our viewpoints usually align, but I hadn’t actually listened to his music in a long time until this song came out and got stuck in my head for days. Then I had to go marathon his discography again. This ties in with a nu-metal kick I’ve been on lately, which I will talk about next. Anyway, this song is a scathing attack on Islamic extremism, but I think it could also apply to anyone whose extreme dogmatic philosophy leads them to kill, like Armenia’s wonderful neighbors to the east for instance. I almost wonder if that is indirectly what he’s singing about, given present circumstances. I mean I guess ISIS and Al Qaeda still exist but they haven’t been in the news much for several years (that’s American news for you though, they exist but they aren’t a useful boogeyman at the moment so they’re not talked about). Some might take issue with the abelist language in it, (the word “retarded”, specifically), just to forewarn. I think he could have used a better word there. I mean when I was in high school just 20-ish years ago everyone was calling each other that, but it’s hurtful to people with mental disabilities so I don’t say it anymore. I’ve been trying to understand the connection with “your mom”. I think he’s asking if their mother would approve of their bloodthirsty behavior. I’m not exactly sure. Serj ending the song with “nah, bruh” was a stroke of genius though. Can we make this man Prime Minister of Armenia, please?
This track is off his new album Elasticity. You can find the album here:
Tetrarch - I’m Not Right
You know what, I like nu-metal and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t! So along with my typical musical tastes of post-punk, darkwave, and all the other spooky wave genres, thanks to my old CD collection now being on my MP3 player I’ve been going back and listening to the nu-metal of my early teens for the first time in many years (Korn, Disturbed, System of a Down, Adema, even Linkin Park). My trip down memory lane transferred over to Youtube where I was searching for other music I remembered from back then, and I eventually landed upon this band. People say Tetrarch is like a cross between Korn, Slipknot and Linkin Park (minus the rap, which yeah, was never my favorite part of a Linkin Park song). The singer sounds like Chester Bennington, the guitar work brings to mind Korn and on the heavier tracks Slipknot. There was another band that sounded just like that in the early 2000s known as Adema, a band I have also been listening to for the first time in forever. So really this band is carrying the torch of all these bands. This just goes to show what I’ve said on this blog before. Crusty old fogeys who complain that today’s music sucks just aren’t digging deep enough, and if you look hard enough you will find some band, somewhere in the world, making music in a genre most people think is dead. Case in point, I thought nu-metal was long dead, having been killed off by emo in the mid-2000s. I mean the only other genre I can think of that was “killed” by a sudden backlash like that is disco. I don’t know why everyone turned on nu-metal. And yet here I find a new band that makes me feel like a moody 14 year old again. It looks like nu-metal is making a recovery!
This track is off their new album Unstable, and can he found here:
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