Top 5 Songs of the Month ~ August 2023 ~ Allie Frost, Скубут, Moonvampire, Austin Spence
This blog is so late, but I wanted to at least get it out before August ends. I’ve had a very busy month, on top of working on my webcomic, my kid not being in school, and I have a new novel in the works, I’ve been doing it scene by scene rather than from beginning to end. It’s been a hard summer in general, and particularly hard to be a goth when the heat index outside is 115+ degrees Fahrenheit, but I’ve managed to survive when most of my clothes is black by trying not to be outside. My kid forces me to go outside though, and it burns. Must I become a victim of nature’s wrath while the people responsible for the rising temperatures are cozy in their mansions and yachts? I suppose the answer to that is yes. Even though all I did was have the misfortune of being born during this particularly difficult time in human history. I suppose I’m not completely guiltless, I’ve used plastic straws and such. I just hope my area doesn’t get hit with a bunch of hurricanes this year.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been listening to, as of mid-August. If everything goes as it should I’ll do the next music blog in mid-September about three weeks from now, we shall see what life throws my way. And I listed what music I was into in past Augusts at the bottom as well.
Allie Frost ~ Abandoned Ghost
The voice clip at the beginning of this song is so profound, about how when you die you either walk into the light and become a part of it forever, or you might get lost on your way to the light and become a ghost. It’s just a whisper so you have to really pay attention to it, especially when the drums start to kick in before the clip is done. I’ve just been discovering Allie Frost and I like her singing a lot. Another track of hers I’m fond of right now is “Deadly Desert”.
This song came out last November, and was released as a single including a remix and instrumental version.
I’m a simple man, I see a video that says “post-punk Mexicano” on it, I click it. I know it will be good. Mexico has amazing goth music, and has for some time, as evidenced by this song from 1990. I uncovered a few new-to-me songs while remaking my “1990 in Music” mix CD, adding a lot more underground goth music that I’ve discovered since making the first mix CD probably 6 or 7 years ago. The vocals on this song are zany and outlandish, lots of guttural growls and shrieks. Toward the end of the song the singer makes me think of Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit when he gets the Dip squirted at him and he melts. I love it though. I do not speak Spanish so I don’t know what he’s saying. But it doesn’t matter to me.
This song is off the album Contracultura, and was a self-release.
Скубут ~ Холод (Cold)
Skubut, in English letters, has been a mainstay on my lists for a couple of years now. They are an Austria-based Russian post-punk band in a similar vein to Molchat Doma, although they also remind me of like a Russian Slow Danse with the Dead. A new music video for this track just came out on the 11th of August, although the song is from 2022. It reminded me of this song again though and I developed a new appreciation for it.
This is off their July 2022 album Безжизненный (Lifeless)
This song is what people who don’t listen to goth music think goth music sounds like. Vampires are a classic topic in post-punk and deathrock going back to Bauhaus. A little stereotypical too, but I don’t mind. Seems to me they’re making a sly Lebanon Hanover reference with the line “Dance with me, it’s not Gallowdance”. The music video is fun, with clips from classic vampire movies. Moonvampire is a band to look out for, I’ve liked their recent release a lot.
And despite the fact that it’s out and you can buy it now, the single officially releases September 23. Oooh, music from the future!
I mentioned Skubut sounds a little like Slow Danse with the Dead, but this sounds even more like that band. A dark minimalist track with droning vocals, it seems like it would fit into the “misery goth” subgenre pretty well, if not just Minimal Wave or Coldwave. I look forward to hearing more from Austin Spence.
This was released as part of a demo album Sect of the Triple Six in July of this year.
It was either black metal or power metal in the summer of 2003 for me. And songs with “of Eternity” in the title. Cradle of Filth’s “Dawn of Eternity” was a favorite for its badass epic instrumental opening, I was still loving Kotipelto’s ancient Egypt-themed solo album, and I had just discovered Dornenreich, a very heavy German black metal band that still had moments of soothing melody in between the screams.
My musical tastes were still rather directionless in 2008. I rediscovered the Depeche Mode track “Behind the Wheel”, which I first heard when I recorded it on a mixtape off the radio in around 2001 or so, not knowing who made the song. Mindless Faith was still soothing my dark side, and I still had a fascination with jazz and swing, thus the Squirrel Nut Zippers. The music video for the song had an entertaining Fleischer-esque 1930s animation style.
Ayria’s “Box Under my Bed” was a very relevant track and still is, about keeping your memories in a box the same way I keep my memories on mixtapes, both good and bad. And One and Depeche Mode are very much the same genre really, synthpop was my vibe at the time. Depeche Mode had just come out with a new album “Delta Machine”, which I liked a few tracks off of.
Daron Makakian’s “Lives” is a stirring anthem to the resilience of the Armenians, a people “kicked out of history”. Malakian is a member of System of a Down, so it has that same kind of sound to it. I had just discovered Lebanon Hanover, five years later than I could have but better late than never. And I was attracted to “Welcome to the Machine” by Pink Floyd because I was working a soul-crushing call center job while my wife was pregnant with my son, who I knew I was going to have to introduce to this awful system we live under one day.
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