I’ve spent the last month or so grieving over the latest stage of the Armenian genocide, which was the complete destruction of Artsakh by Azerbaijan. I wrote a separate rant blog about that rather than vent here.
And what music has been helping me cope with these dark days? Spoiler, a lot of it is dark. Listening to happy music just doesn’t work. Although I guess listening to nostalgic 90s alternative rock music helps a little. I’ve done a bit of that, working on my 90s YouTube playlist, a potent mix of alternative rock, grunge, nu-metal, black metal, a few guilty pleasures, and of course underground goth music, interspersed with Beavis and Butthead segments and a few MTV bumpers (most of which are on my 80s playlist). But I don’t want to do that constantly, and even that music isn’t necessarily “happy”. It works until “Disarm” by Smashing Pumpkins comes on and I start bawling. (Not actually, but it tugs on the heartstrings. “I used to beee a little boy”. Yeah.) Also just keeping my nose in books about ancient Egypt, studying their religion and teaching myself hieroglyphs, helps too. It’s a coping mechanism, escapism.
I’ll be looking at songs of Octobers past as well. There are sure to be a few spooky selections from my top 3 picks in 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018.
Cashiari ~ Oscura Noche
Not only is this a great Halloween song, it fits my mood perfectly. I first mentioned Cashiari last month, a Peruvian experimental dark-electro band.
This time of year you finally notice things are getting a bit darker. My music tastes has a way of changing with the seasons, I don’t know if anybody else’s does that. For example, Russian post-punk is best listened to in the winter, it just doesn’t have the same effect in summer. I also feel that way about acoustic, MTV Unplugged type music. It’s Autumn/Winter music. Listening to Molchat Doma in July is a bit like listening to Christmas music in July (except the music is good, just out of place). Summer is for synthwave, shoegaze, and heavier post-punk and deathrock. My music tastes follows a rhythm throughout the year, and this has been true since my teens at the earliest. Part of how I get into contact with these songs is just through listening to maybe around twenty or so new songs a day, and out of those twenty, one or two might strike a cord in me. When it does, I add them to a playlist to sort through later. The ones that make it all the way to the top though are kind of determined by whatever mood I’m in.
We have a very international selection of songs this month. Bands from Armenia, Peru, France, Australia, and the US. And below, in my Top Songs of September Through the Years, I have among other things a short review of Kraftwerk’s Tour de France Soundtracks album which came out twenty years ago now. I am so old.
Trait d’union ~ Marche Nocturne
This song took me on quite a ride the first time I listened to it, I had no idea what it was going to do next. It starts out sounding like it’s going to be some kind of minimalistic electronic music, but it just builds and builds, takes so many twists and turns, and it all works somehow. It reminds me of a hurricane, you start with a gentle wind, and it just gradually gets stronger, dark and menacing. That’s why it was the first song on my recent mixtape Tsovinar’s Fury, which is about hurricanes and such. Also it just makes for an epic opening track to a mixtape in general. But that’s just what goes on in my mind when I hear it, it’s in French and I don’t speak the language, nor can I find the lyrics to translate. Language barriers never stopped me from enjoying a song though. The song title translates to something like “Night Walk”.
Trait d’Union (French for “hyphen”…yeah I really thought it was going to translate to “trade union”) is from Toulouse, France, and this is off their EP 2, which fittingly only has two songs. It came out on October 13, 2022, I didn’t hear it until a few weeks ago though.
This is some great dark post-punk. Like the last song, it has a great atmosphere, they almost compliment one another. There’s a bit of synth in it but the electric guitar on this song is what makes it. It’s just kind of there to accent the music, not front and center like it would be in a metal song or something, but it just adds so much energy to the song. Mannequin Twin is a band out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Mormon goths? This is a brand new band by the looks of things, “Threshold” is the title track of their two-song EP that came out August 28.
Cashiari is an experimental dark electronic/post-punk band from Peru. Peru has a really great goth scene by the way, that goes back to the 1980s with bands like Euroshima and Lima 13. It was a bit difficult to find out more about Cashiari. But they often include trippy little animations for their music videos, such as the one to this song, the title of which translates to “The Girl with the Marble Face”. It starts with this strange knocking sound, then this little crocodile with a lion mane, who looks like Ammit the Devourer from Egyptian mythology if she was bipedal, starts dancing to 1930s music.
My four year old kid loves watching the dance animation by the way, although the rest of the video kinda isn’t child appropriate. My kid’s going to grow up weird like me, so it’s okay. The goth music begins after this intro, but we see the dancing crocodile a few more times throughout the video. And spoiler alert, at the end it turns out that knocking sound was a woman trapped under the floorboards beneath where the crocodile was dancing. I still don’t know if this animation was exclusively made to be the music video for this song or not, maybe I’ll find out more about Cashiari eventually.
I wasn’t able to find a Bandcamp page for Cashiari, but they do have an official YouTube channel.
This is a heavy-hitting 1996 deathrock track from a little-known band out of Australia, Troll. Apparently according to the uploader in the comments on the video, they only ever appeared on some sort of compilation, never releasing their own album. The best bands are always the ones like this, the ones who release like one demo tape and disappear. The YouTube channel Obscured Radio uploads underground stuff like this a lot.
That line in the chorus, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” is very relateable. I wish I could find out more about this band. This might have been their only song anyway.
Node & Melineh ~ Իմ Թագուհի (Im Taguhi)
Out of the very few Armenian bands I know of that might fall under the definition of goth (or at least goth adjacent), Node of Yerevan, Armenia is the one that releases music on the most consistent basis. Here she has collaborated with a singer named Melineh to cover a song originally by Lilit and Karen Karapetyan. The title translates to “My Queen”. It’s a love song from what I can understand. The chorus goes “Where are you where are you where are you my queen?” It’s kind of synthpop music but there’s a kind of darker undertone to it. The vocals have this vibe I don’t think I ever hear in English language songs, just the things Melineh does with her voice.
I don’t see this song on Bandcamp, but the artist does have a page there.
Essentially a song about the repeal of Roe vs Wade last year, and how it was done for the sake of the economy rather than all that religious smoke screen. The wealthy need more human cattle, basically. “Forced birth, on a scorched Earth, this isn’t Disneyland, you’re in a pro-life death camp”. That chorus goes hard, really does. I love that there’s a Florida map in the background on the album cover too. This state is fast becoming a fascist dictatorship with theme parks. You know sometimes this country does feel like one big theme park, in that everything is overpriced, based on fictional stories and fake as fuck. Wherever you go you’re either a customer or an employee.
I don’t know how I missed this album when it came out, in October of last year. Damian Hearse has had several releases since. This is the title track.
In the middle of my black metal phase at age 17, Kraftwerk came out with their first new album since 1991, Tour de France Soundtracks. So I took a break from the darkness to listen to that. My friend who I had converted into a Kraftwerk fan and I took the bus across town to Tower Records to buy it on the day it came out, as was the fashion of the time. As psyched as I was for it at the time, in retrospect, the album left much to be desired. The only song that sounds like classic Kraftwerk to me is “Vitamin”. I don’t really like the title track (although it can be fun to replace “tour de France” with “underpants” during the chorus), or all those songs with the heavy breathing throughout. “Aerodynamik”, while it has a catchy beat, bores me now. And little did we know this would essentially be the final Kraftwerk album, besides those 3D remix ones that came out later which don’t really count. It was a sad way for this legendary band to go out. Ralf Hütter is basically just parading around Kraftwerk’s corpse at this point, it died when Florian Schneider left the band.
1. Dornenreich ~ Nicht um zu Sterben
2. Kraftwerk ~ Aerodynamik
3. Cradle of Filth ~ Suicide and Other Comforts
15 Years Ago ~ September 2008
When putting together my Year mixes, I realized the late 2000s-early 2010s were terrible times for goth music. You might have a decent release now and then but mostly the genre was (un)dead. I’m glad it came back, but I think this explains why my music tastes at the time were erratic. But I found a few new-to-me songs.
1. She Wants Revenge ~ Tear You Apart
2. Mortiis ~ Underdog
3. Type O Negative ~ September Sun
10 Years Ago ~ September 2013
I was still going through the CDs I had purchased at the Ayria concert the previous June. The Break Up was a good band, too bad they broke up. Eisbrecher had a new release at that time as well, but after this I by and large moved on from that type of music.
1. The Break Up ~ Her Fire
2. Eisbrecher ~ Verrückt
3. Ayria ~ Friends and Enemies
5 Years Ago ~ September 2018
This was an exciting moment, as I found out there was an Armenian band that did at least semi-goth music, The Deenjes. They have quite a few good songs, I still listen to them pretty regularly. Statiqbloom is a good industrial band, they sound like Velvet Acid Christ. And Werner Karloff is a German living in Mexico City who does sort of EBM type of music. “They Live” does reference the movie of the same name.
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.
June still doesn’t feel very long ago. Already the year is over half over, and from this point on the days shorten, and we slide back into darkness once more. For me July is kind of a transitional month. The last month in both the ancient Egyptian and ancient Armenian calendars. The hits have still been coming though, of course. And I’ve been working on more mixtape projects.
I do still plan on finishing that neopagan manifesto I started in my last blog entry, I just need time. I wrote a bunch of it out actually, and Blogger glitched out and deleted most of it. That was why I uploaded it unfinished in the first place. I think I better write in a separate document and then copy and paste it into the blog from now on.
As per my new tradition, be sure to have a look at the Top 3 songs of past Julys at the bottom. It’s always fun to see what patterns emerge.
Alone in the Hollow Garden ~ Aeon of Set 𓃩
This is a 12+ minute long dark ambient track dedicated to the Egyptian God of Storms, Deserts and Chaos, Set. It’s mostly instrumental, but it does contain a prayer to Set, even calling Him by His Egyptian name, Sutekh. I came across it not long after it came out in December 2021, an odd upload from the YouTube channel Ghostshadow Shadowghost, outside of their usual genre. But it stayed around on my playlist of meditation music until I rediscovered it during my ongoing Egyptian mythology binge, and developed an appreciation for it. It even uses a duduk, a native Armenian instrument, although the musician behind Alone in the Hollow Garden is from Bucharest, Romania. So that gets bonus points from me. And the album cover is very aesthetically pleasing.
I made it the first song on my meditation playlist for Set, 𓃩Dua Sutekh𓃩. I want to do one for all my favorite deities eventually. It’s my newest ongoing mix project after having finished the Wizard of Oz one. Those are hieroglyphs of little Sha animals, the possibly-mythical, possibly-extinct creature that Set has the head of. I found that on Wikipedia and I love using Shas instead of punctuation now 𓃩 Okay maybe not. You know, Set wasn’t always considered a bad guy in Egyptian mythology, despite what you might have heard. The myth about him killing Osiris came about later on in Egyptian history. He also helped the Sun God Ra navigate the underworld every night and defeated the Chaos Serpent. He saves the world every night from a malevolent eldritch abomination, and yet everyone hates the poor guy.
This is from the album Desert of Set, which includes two other, even longer tracks dedicated to Set.
The first official music video from Slow Danse with the Dead is finally out, done to the title track from their newest album. I’ve already been listening to this song for a few months, but a good music video always renews my interest in a song. Now is an exciting time for the band, as they are an official band now and not a solo project, and they’re starting to play local live shows. Nothing in my neck of the woods yet, but if it does happen I will be there.
Here’s their latest album which this song is from, also called Dark Ritual.
As promised, Pretty Addicted has been releasing a music video a month since January. Their upcoming album, due out in October, is full of deeply personal songs. I’ve covered the song “Heather” before, which at least to me is the most relatable of the tracks that I have heard so far. This song is another great track, about having hypochondria. Too many people treat that condition like some kind of joke, but it’s definitely no joke to those who suffer from it, who might even know on an intellectual level that there’s nothing wrong with them, but they still can’t shake the feeling that they’re sick, or even terminally ill.
You can find the track here, buying it helps finance the new album.
This sing has a groove to it. Very dancey. All I know about this band is that they’re from South Germany, I was only able to find their Soundcloud page through the description on this video. Soundcloud is like a foreign country to me, I’ve never really used it. So if anyone has any additional leads I’d be grateful. They do have their albums up on YouTube, but all I found on Bandcamp was a stoner rock band with the same name from Ohio. Perhaps we’ll be seeing a repeat of the Covenant vs The Kovenant feud soon?
Here’s my retro pick this month. From their 1984 EP of the same name, “The Dark”, the UK post-punk band Lost Loved Ones. This song is infectious. My favorite part is that little yodel where his voice goes up, “Iiiii, would die for yooooOOOUU!” You’ll know it when you hear it. This is one of those songs you have to sing along to, and it’s okay if you suck at singing, it will still be fun. I don’t know why it isn’t more famous of a song. The best songs from the 80s are the ones that never ended up on MTV, I swear. And the fewer albums a band had the better the band was. The truly great ones just released a demo tape and disappeared. And I’m always uncovering stuff I haven’t heard yet.
As with a lot of older bands, I don’t think their stuff is on Bandcamp.
Грань ~ Кассета
It’s been a good while since I latched onto some Russian post-punk. And in the middle of summer too. I always found that Russian post-punk just feels more right when you listen to it in the winter. You can listen in the summer, but you can’t truly feel the song. It has to be cold outside to truly appreciate it. But, this particular song had such a beautiful gloom to it I could enjoy it even when it’s humid and miserable outside here in Florida. This band is called Gran, or Edge according to Google Translate, from Chelyabinsk, Russia. And I didn’t know that the song title was going to translate to “Cassette”, but I had a feeling it might. One of my favorite things, of course. I’ve been trying to learn to at least be able to sound out the Cyrillic alphabet even if I don’t understand much Russian. Learning Russian by listening to Molchat Doma, about as effective as learning German by listening to Rammstein, I guess.
And this was another of those cases where I was able to find the band on Bandcamp, but not this song in particular. They have a bunch of albums up on there though.
A catchy love song rarely graces my blog, but here one is. At least it’s goth. I first got into the Los Angeles, California band FEVR late last year when I heard the song “I Can’t Do it No More”, one of those songs where the lyrics are much sadder than the upbeat music suggests. And I think I’ve fallen for FEVR.
This is off their brand new album Fate, which came out on July 6. It’s out in cassette too! I need to get me a copy.
I got out to the record store a lot that summer, always coming back with new CDs of bands I already knew I liked, and bands I was taking a risk on because they had cool album cover art. Kotipelto was one of the latter. Their album Waiting for the Dawn was ancient Egypt themed, and had this Egyptian guy standing in this colorful temple. See, even back then I was into ancient Egypt. I hadn’t quite heard of the band Stratovarius just yet, who Timo Kotipelto is the lead singer of, this being a solo album. The song “Chosen by Ra” is about the reign of Ramses the Great. Pretty nerdy thing to sing about. You’ll never hear that Post Malone guy singing about ancient history. “Dawn of Eternity” by Cradle of Filth is one of those songs with a badass epic opening. I can still rock out to that song today when I’m in the mood. And “Acid Theater” is back, it stuck around for two months in a row.
I was just starting to get into dark electro more. I had first gotten into Das Ich back in 2005, but I hadn’t really sought similar sounding bands until around this time. Mindless Faith is a great band that I would say are the same genre as Das Ich although the vocal style is very different. I found them through buying their CD at the record store as well, which was already the old fashioned way of doing things in 2008. And “Destillat”, still one if the best Das Ich songs. But I am always annoyed by how everyone loves the VNV Nation remix better than the original, and it gets played at all the clubs. I like the original, specifically the version with female backing vocals. There’s also a version without that and it’s kinda “meh”, but I still like that better than the VNV Nation version. And then there’s Hanzel und Gretyl. There was a time I really liked that band, although now I see them as a bit problematic. They try to get away with things by saying they’re a parody of German stereotypes, not sure if I buy it.
This was the month after I went to that Ayria concert with my fiancé and I was still enjoying the CDs I bought there. One was of course Ayria’s newest album at the time Plastic Makes Perfect, and another was a freebie that was given out to everyone at the concert by one of the local opening bands, The Break Up. I liked a few of the songs on it. I think their band name has since sadly become a self-fulfilling prophecy, last I checked. And I was still into Zombie Girl at the time too. Yay.
While yes I was miserable at the call center job during this time, this was the month I got to see Das Ich in concert in Tampa, Florida. And that remains to be one of my favorite concerts of all time. And it’s interesting to see Das Ich as a running thread through this look back at the Julys of my past. Maybe five years from now I’ll have another Das Ich craze, seems to happen every ten years. Too bad I hadn’t heard of them yet in 1998. Crazy to think that I could have. Anyway, Buzz Kull is a great band too, still like a lot of their stuff. Although it’s been a while since they came out with a new album. And then yes I was still working my way through The Cure’s early music at this time too. When I had time and wasn’t chained to a desk in a cubicle being harassed over the phone.
Another busy month, this blog is a bit later than it ought to have been. Should I just start doing these in the middle of the Gregorian calendar month? Maybe. I dunno. These are as of May 8th, the day this blog should have come out, so any song that came out after then has a chance to be on next month’s list. Also, I once again went down memory lane and provided my top 3 songs of May from 20, 15, 10 and 5 years ago. This will take you through many different eras of my life, as I went from metal to dark electro/EBM to post-punk and deathrock.
Anyway, here’s what Ive been listening to.
Slow Danse with the Dead ~ If One Coffin Lid Shuts Another Shall Open
Slow Danse with the Dead is back, now as a three-piece band rather than a solo project. And if the new album Dark Ritual is indicative of their new direction, I am very excited. The first half of the album is rerecorded tracks such as this one, from the earliest days of the band. I chose this song because I’ve always liked the message. The body may die but the soul is eternal. There is no end. But I could just as easily have picked any track off the album as a fave.
I couldn’t find the song on its own, so here’s the full album. It’s the second song after the spooky intro.
The Blood Pact is an 80s style deathrock band out of the US state of Virginia. This whole album is great from start to finish, and is another of those rare concept albums in the age of streaming. The album Death of the Vampire is packed with enough spooky tracks to satisfy any vampiric goth. I actually first came across this album on the video above, and after a few listens I decided to get it on Bandcamp. It’s not The Blood Pact’s first album either, they’ve had a handful of releases since debuting last year.
Hot damn, how did I miss this song for so long? I never heard this because it was originally only released on the European single for “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend”. It’s a cover of a song by of course Black Sabbath, but rewritten in order to give equal focus to Satan, apparently. It’s so badass though. I love it when I uncover some rare track from a band I thought I heard everything from. If you haven’t heard it, you should. It’s delightfully sinister sounding.
Haunt Me ~ All Things Turn Grey
Haunt Me is a band out of Austin, Texas that I’ve been following and enjoying for a while now. This is another one of those “We’re all going to die” songs I keep ending up liking. Other such songs include Type O Negative’s “Everything Dies”, Mortiis’ “Everyone Leaves”, Tears of Ozymandias’ “683280 Hours”, and Devoted Sinners “Everything I’ve Ever Loved is Dead”. Maybe one day I can make a very happy little mixtape of just death songs. Anyway, this one has a nice beat to it at least. I actually feel like it’s reassuring somehow. Yeah my back is ruined for life and my hair’s starting to get just a little thinner, but it happens to everyone. At age 37 I think I’ve still fared better than a lot of people. I still look like I could be in my 20s, despite my internal physical issues. Some people have lost all their hair and teeth by that age. Anyway, memento mori.
Okay, it’s time to give my thoughts on AI in music. Now the lyrics in this song were generated by AI using Nirvana’s songs, and the song’s music cobbled together by the artist, who did their best to sound like Kurt Cobain. I don’t actually think it does sound like Nirvana, maybe more like another 90s Nirvana-esque band like Local H, but I ended up just liking it as a song. It got stuck in my head. The lyrics “You’re as pure as water and I’m rotting away, I got my reasons. She’s the perfect daughter and I’m a mistake, I got my reasons” resonated with me somehow.
As for AI music itself, I think it’s okay if you’re just messing around with it for fun, particularly if it’s a deceased singer and the band is never getting back together again anyway. I can see it becoming a problem when you start using it with still-active bands. And it threatens to make pop music even more soulless than it already was if they make completely artificial music with it. I think if you’re going to use it at all this is the ideal way to do it, using a real human to sing it at least, and not for a profit. It comes off more like a tribute than a ripoff this way. I don’t think AI has reached the point where generating a voice makes it sound truly good, yet. At worst you get something like this.
I have different feelings about AI art though. That’s being used by capitalists to force the very few artists who can do it for a living back into wage slavery. If it gets even better this might happen with music too, sadly.
TOP SONGS OF May THROUGH THE YEARS
20 Years Ago ~ May 2003
My metal phase was ongoing, and The Kovenant mania had still not run its course for me at this time. Their album SETI came out in April 2003, and ended up being the final album from The Kovenant, despite teases from the band that there was another one in the works, or perhaps even finished but never released, titled Aria Galactica. I’m still waiting after all these years! I was also enjoying Cradle of Filth’s Midian album, which I still think is one of their best. Also, I learned through a mix CD a friend had made me of rare Rammstein songs that Rammstein had covered a Kraftwerk song, to my amazement at the time. Too bad it was “Das Modell” though. I think “Sex Object” would have been more up their alley. I wonder if I still have that CD buried somewhere in one of my huge CD binders I have stashed away.
Oh woe was me. I talk about this way more often than I should on this blog, I’ve been over it now for years I swear. It’s not something that keeps me up at night. But this was what was happening with my failed first relationship. On my 22nd birthday, April 21, I learned through a friend that my then-girlfriend was planning on breaking up with me. It shattered me. E Nomine carried me through my sorrows at the time. They were kind of a passing phase I went though, not helped by the revelation that they’re a Christian band. I can’t deny they have a few good songs though. I also gravitated toward “Stitches” by Orgy, and the song served as the title track for a mixtape full of breakup songs I put together as a coping mechanism.
Light Asylum’s IPC topped the charts for the second month in a row, because I could just not get this song out of my head. My then-girlfriend now-wife introduced me to the song “Runnin’ Up That Hill” by Kate Bush, giving me hipster cred over people who didn’t hear it until it was used in Stranger Things. I liked the Placebo cover because it was a bit gothier, but I think the original is overall the best. Ayria’s new album Plastic Makes Perfect was coming out soon too, and it’s still one of my favorites.
For some reason it took me until 2018 to give The Cure’s early albums a listen. “Cold” is still my favorite song by The Cure. At this time I was starting my grueling call center job with Macy’s, and “Cold” really encapsulated how I felt at the time. Like my heart had to be frozen as ice to be able to handle being yelled at all day. I discovered “See You” by Depeche Mode at this time too. An underrated track from early in the band’s career, from 1982. I wasn’t quite done with my synthwave phase either, hence Gunship. I mostly got tired of the genre by 2019 (because 95% of the songs sound the same or are just instrumentals, and it ceased to be dark and dreary enough for me as my tastes turned toward post-punk and goth rock), although I might still come across a song I like every now and then.
I have been having quite the eventful month, let’s just say. It all started when my wife and I narrowly avoided a horrible car crash, so that brush with death and the accompanying reminder that when you wake up each morning you don’t really know if you’ll still be alive by day’s end kept my mind busy; then my son got a terrible ear infection and was up all night screaming, then the following Monday when he went back to school, he got injured falling off the playground slide and had to be taken home, and just a bunch of other stressful stuff happened. I’m finally recovering mentally. That’s why this post is like a week and a half late. Any little motivation to work on my creative endeavors that I’ve been able to squeeze out has gone into making my webcomic. Well, I’m finally ahead on that so I might as well get this blog out. I’m going to keep the list to what it would have been on March 9th, even though I’ve discovered new music since then, or else I may not have much to list next month. I’m still going to try to do April’s blog on time.
Devoted Sinners ~ The Mediocre Goth Club
I’ve been to goth dance clubs exactly like the one described in this song. Haven’t updated their playlist since 1993, always playing the exact same worn out songs, even slipping in non-goth stuff like Rammstein, Die Antwoord and Korn to please all the normies in attendance. Even when they play something from the 21st century it’s always the same song; like say “Military Fashion Show” by And One, the band has dozens of better songs but it’s always that one. Anyway, thanks Devoted Sinners for voicing many of my frustrations with the goth scene.
The first song I heard from this Greek nautical-goth band was “Mort Marin” back in 2017. The singer is also a fisherman and sings about the sea a lot, an ongoing theme in his work. This song was on their January 2022 release One Fathom Heart. What got me to revisit this song and become addicted to it was that I was constructing a mixtape/playlist based around the theme of The Abyss. “Son of Adam” is all about staring into the abyss, Nietzsche-style. I have the playlist ready if you’re interested, I hope to write a blog entry on it with detailed explanations of the song choices. This song is one of the most fitting entries. Not to mention, it has fitted my mood as of late.
This is one of those songs that keeps getting better as it goes along, ending with this badass dark riff that reminds me of a guitar riff from a really good black metal band, although the Bristol, UK band Naut is definitely deathrock through and through. One of those rare songs where the last third or so is the best part, kinda like “Over Now” by Alice in Chains. Well, at the halfway point at 3:24 is where you get a change of pace, that’s really where it started to get my attention. It just builds and builds momentum from there. Got my inner metalhead teen excited.
Naut’s album Hunt came out on February 24, still pretty new. Give it a listen.
Back to the 1980s with this one, the gift that keeps on giving. To be honest I hadn’t heard this before the YouTube channel DarkGoth Alternative Music uploaded it with this 80s dance club video. Makes me wonder what other songs I’m going to discover and love from before I was born. (This came out in 1985, I was born the next year.) This so g is similar in tone to other wonderful, overlooked classics like “Game Over” by Ministry and “The Sounding” by Affordable Floors, I don’t know how to describe it but it’s kind of a similar, magical 80s vibe that you don’t hear anymore, even from bands that try their best to emulate 80s music.
Opera Multi Steel ~ Les Soleil Est Parti
The music video, with its clips from the silent film adaptation of Faust, was what grabbed my attention, but I stayed for the vaguely Middle Eastern sounding darkwave music. Opera Multi Steel, from Bourges, France, describes themselves as a medieval darkwave band, which is a combo I’ve never seen before. They’ve also been around since the 80s, so I have a discography to explore. This is brand new from last month though. Anyway, it got me to watch Faust for the first time. I love the 1920s special effects.
I am so glad I discovered this band recently. Yung Cortex also does vaporwave music, which I’m not into as much, but their post-punk is awesome. Last month’s pick “Time Won’t Stop” is still very relevant to me and fresh in my mind. Another favorite song of mine is “Miserable”. But this is a beautiful hate song that is so relevant to my day to day life. You ever get stuck talking to someone you never wanted to speak to in the first place, and they just go on and on and on, and you just kind of nod and smile because you don’t want to be rude but inside your mind you’re screaming “shut the fuck up!”? It happens to me surprisingly often. Doesn’t help that I’m a bit agoraphobic these days.
They have a Bandcamp page, but I don’t see this particular song on it.
The Australian darkwave band Buzz Kull is an old favorite of mine at this point. “Avoiding the Light” is still one of my favorite songs after first hearing it back in 2019. Their latest album, Fascination, was released in November of last year and somehow flew under my radar until this music video came out. I’ll have to get it next time there’s a Bandcamp Friday. See what other goodies are on there.
Guerra Fría from Guatemala is a band I really love right now. I could have picked any song here really. They sound a lot like Vestron Vulture, a very gloomy post-punk sound with some shoegaze influences. Hispanic goth bands deserve more attention. I feel like each country/region kind of has its own flavor of goth music, and the goth music of Central and South America certainly does have its own sort of vibe. This is off their February 2023album Cuando Todos Duerman.
I’ve lived through yet another month on this speck of dust floating through the endless cosmos. It wasn’t an easy one to get through either. I got sick, had a major back pain flare up for days after attempting to exercise, I got behind on my art, a crappy time all around. The ripple effect being that this blog was a bit late too, because I had to catch up on my webcomic. But of course, music is what gets me through the worst of times. Specifically making mixtapes.
2023 has already produced some amazing hits in just over a month. I have a couple older picks but the majority of the songs are brand new. There’s a bit of a running theme that goes through most of them having to do with depression. I know that’s not exactly a new thing with my monthly picks, but I found January to be a very sad month. Hence these songs.
Pretty Addicted ~ Heather
Vicious Precious of Pretty Addicted promised one single and music video per month this year culminating in a new album, which I look forward to. And January’s offering was an instant classic. In it, “Heather” is the name the singer gives to her mental illness, addressing it as a person who constantly causes her to catastrophize and be depressed, saying that it’s like sharing her mind with a psychopath. I think I have a Heather too. A voice that constantly tells you the worst possible things and tears apart your self esteem and makes you think everyone secretly hates you, a bully in your brain. That’s what it’s like to have a Heather living in your head. It’s almost like a split personality.
Anyway, if you enjoy this song, go support her work, she’s trying hard to finance her new album.
Those contrasting guitar riffs are what hooked me into this song, as well as the lyrics. “The lights go out on me.” It’s some great post-punk, very addictive, and it helped me through some dark times. I wish I had a bit more to say about it, but just listen to it. It was perfect for my mood many times in the last month.
I don’t think this band is on Bandcamp, from what I’ve researched. In fact, all I was really able to find was where they are on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. But, hopefully there will be some way to support the artist soon. Some artists though maybe don’t go for that, I’m thinking like The Deenjes from Armenia, who specifically want their music to be for free.
Yung Cortex ~ Time Won’t Stop
“Time won’t stop for me or you, drunk at the bar with an attitude, I don’t know where I can go, my house doesn’t feel like it’s a home right now.”
Maybe with the exception of the “drunk at the bar” line, the other three-fourths of this song us just so relatable to feelings I’ve felt over the years, in the past. My living situation, while it could be a lot worse, is not ideal let’s just say, and rarely ever has been throughout my life. My bedroom has always been my sanctuary, at least I still have that, even if sometimes I don’t feel at home anywhere else. And the years roll by. 2019 feels like a couple months ago, but it’s been four years. My kid is four years old. What happened? That’s the entire time I was in High School, and that felt like an entire epoch at the time. At some point, time started to move on without me. But that isn’t to say my body has been free of the ravages of time. Far from it. My spine certainly knows how many years go by.
As for the artist, Yung Cortex seems to be brand new, I don’t think they even have an album out yet. Although the music video for this song debuted in May of last year. You can support them on Distrokid.
Скубут is back for more. And this is just a great track. You don’t often hear harsh vocals in post-punk so it was an interesting choice to use it. The song is still in Russian, and I haven’t been able to translate it but I just like the sound of it. It was released as a single on February 1st.
The artistic music video is probably what attracted me to this song, full of animated grayscale paintings. “I remember happiness”. It seems to be from the point of view of someone who has been depressed for a very long time. I was at my most happiest when I was at the perfect balance of intelligence and ignorance. Maybe at around 10-11 years old. I think I’ve probably ranted about that before on my blog. Happiness, when it does appear, has been fleeting since that time. Middle School, sigh.
This is from their new album Together Alone, released on January 6th.
I really like the musical direction that Male Tears has taken lately, as fun as the cheesy 80s synthpop was. Although it’s another of those music videos that looks like it was filmed on VHS to evoke a retro feel. It was edited for sure, but it does look like the original footage for the video before editing was filmed with a real VHS camcorder and not just a filter on a phone. I think I can tell, I still watch VHS tapes pretty regularly. If I’m wrong then it was a really good filter. Anyway, it’s a fun dancey goth club song, with darker lyrics than the beat would suggest.
So this song is actually going to be on a forthcoming album, KRYPT, due out on April 28. For now, just enjoy the video.
“Babybabybaby wants an…EMPIRE!” This song is funny, catchy, some good early Industrial music. It’s hard to believe this song came out in 1984, it’s very ahead of its time. Reminds me of Skinny Puppy, which was also debuting around that time too. This was the side project of ex-guitarist for Bauhaus, Daniel Ash. Practically goth royalty, even if Peter Murphy gets all the attention.
They have an album on Bandcamp, but it didn’t have this song. All I was able to dig up though. It’s not their personal Bandcamp page but it’s connected to their record label, so you have to dig through hundreds of albums on the record label to find the right one. Maybe Discogs is the way to go with these older albums.
Softcult ~ Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle
Yes, I’m still not over my Nirvana craze. But this was a cover I stumbled upon while looking up the original song, and I ended up liking it a lot. It’s a dreampop/shoegaze take on the song, that really plays up what I think is everyone’s favorite line in this song “I miss the comfort of being sad.” It sounds cosmic. Is being sad really comfortable? It’s better than being angry or stressed out, I suppose. It’s comfortable compared to that. But I think what that line is really about is how after being depressed for so long, during those rare moments where you feel happy, it almost seems like something is missing. You almost miss being depressed. It’s strange, but I’ve felt that way before. Kurt Cobain may have said he just wrote his lyrics at the last minute and they were meaningless, but they can still really be quite profound at times.
This was released in May of last year. The band is pretty new and very active, having released several singles since this one. They also covered another Nirvana, “Been a Son”. Worth checking out if you like the shoegaze, not really goth but perhaps goth-adjacent sound, like Drab Majesty. They say that they’re music for mall goths on their Bandcamp page, amusingly.
