Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

 #Mrs. Piss #Chelsea Wolfe #Jess Gowrie #noise rock #experimental rock #industrial #goth metal #sludge metal #alternative rock #music video

Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie have formed a new group called Mrs. Piss. Their debut LP Self-Surgery is due out May 29 via Sargent House. Today, they’ve shared two singles, “Downer Surrounded by Uppers” and “Knelt”. Wolfe and Gowrie started the project while touring around Wolfe’s Hiss Spun album in 2017. They recorded Self-Surgery at the Dock Studio in Sacramento, California and at Wolfe’s home studio the Canyon. Wolfe performs vocals and guitar, with Gowrie on drums, guitar, bass, and programming.

In a statement, Wolfe said:
Working on this project brought Jess and I so much closer as songwriters and production partners, after reuniting as friends and bandmates. It was freeing and fun to channel some wild energies that I don’t typically put into my own music. We tried not to overthink the songs as we were writing them, but at the same time we did consciously put a lot into crafting them into our own weird sonic vision. This project was a chance for us to do things our own way, on our own terms, and we plan to invite more women musicians along for future Mrs. Piss recordings.

Gowrie added:
To me, Mrs. Piss represents a musical chemistry cut short long ago that now gets a second chance. Creating with Chelsea has always been very liberating for me, and we both push each other to try new things: anything and everything. Both of us have grown so much as writers and musicians since our first band together (Red Host), and with the journeys we had to take separately to get there, we both have so much more to say; so much more pain and anger to express. That said, we also had a lot of fun doing it, not to mention how freeing it is to not give a fuck and to just create.

From: https://pitchfork.com/news/chelsea-wolfe-and-jess-gowrie-announce-new-album-as-mrs-piss-share-new-songs-listen/

Queen Adreena - Taxidermy

 #Queen Adrena #Katie Jane Garside #alternative rock #noise rock #indie rock #art rock #punk metal #gothic rock #music video

Where once she shallowly proclaimed to love your money, Katie Jane Garside now wants more intangible things. These days she wants to haunt your dreams too. It’s been a torrid affair getting from there to here. After Daisy Chainsaw ripped apart, Garside was left close to breakdown and retreated to the hills as far away as possible from musical partner Crispin Gray. Reunited, and based on that frisson, Queen Adreena were always going to be a little out of the ordinary. Their return heralds a subtle, but fundamental, change in dynamics. Now writing her own lyrics instead of being Gray‘s mouthpiece, this time it’s personal. Sometimes disturbingly so. Because ‘Taxidermy’ is an apt title – this is about stuffing and mounting the psychological monsters that lurk under the bed. So, while carrying on Daisy Chainsaw‘s predilection for rock as infantile nightmare, here the scope is much wider than a one-track take on banshee pop. There are some obvious precedents, notably Bjork and PJ Harvey, but much more than either of those two reference points, this debut album is frequently akin to eavesdropping on psychotherapy. Veering between absolutes like love/hate, black/white, logic/madness, these songs walk a tightrope between serrated guitar lines and moments of twinkling repose. So ‘Yesterday’s Hymn’ is a genuinely beautiful, barely-there twist into trip-hop minimalism, while ‘I Adore You’ and ‘X-ing Off The Days’ grate with pain and churning guitars. With everything else straddled somewhere between these extremes, it’s uncomfortable listening, but raises ‘Taxidermy’ far above the simple world of sub-goth moves and ripped-up antique dresses of their past. ‘Are The Songs My Disease?’ inquires one title. Not on this showing – they might just turn out to be Garside‘s saviours from the footnotes of indie infamy.  From: https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-nme-2087-340874

 

Diamanda Galas - Deliver Me From Mine Enemies

 #Diamanda Galas #avant-garde #experimental #avant-goth #classical crossover #performance art #operatic #blues #jazz #spoken word #piano #a capella #extreme vocals

It was 1984, and Diamanda Galás — then in her late 20s, a moaning, screaming singer who wrote music with titles like “The Litanies of Satan” and “Song From the Blood of Those Murdered” — was visiting a friend’s lover in a hospital in New York. As in so many early ’80s New York hospital rooms, the man was dying of AIDS. “I didn’t know much about the AIDS epidemic at all,” Galás said recently in the rambling San Diego house she grew up in. “And it looked as if prongs were stuck into the middle of his body. The idea of such excruciating treatment and excruciating pain, just — I had to come to terms with it. And he said to me,” she recalled, “‘Would you do a piece about this — you know, about what you’re seeing right now?’ And I said yes, I would.” Released two years later, her answer was “The Divine Punishment.” Over pounding, seething electronics, Galás groans, whines, chants, squeals, mutters and gags, bellowing lines from Leviticus and Psalms, sometimes guttural, sometimes wailing.
“This is the law of the plague,” she claustrophobically intones, as if she’s lashing the listener in a dungeon. “To teach when it is clean and when it is unclean.” She followed it with two more albums radiating fury at the silence surrounding AIDS, which claimed her brother in 1986. Then came a milestone performance piece, “Plague Mass,” that condensed the trilogy into a blood-soaked cry of anguish. “I couldn’t imagine how she could do this to her vocal cords — such power and technique,” the Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry said in an email; Harry promptly started seeing Galás’s vocal coach.
In the decades after its arrival, this music ended up more discussed than actually heard, lost in the shuffle as Mute, the label that released it, was swallowed by one conglomerate after another. Galás, 66, has spent years wresting the material back and beginning to reissue it; a remastered “Divine Punishment” is out on June 10 — in all its blistering glory, and in the midst of yet another plague. “I think she’s the most important singer of the past 40 years,” the vocalist and songwriter Anohni said in an interview. “She’s expressing reality: not her reality, the reality. She’s always been willing to offer her body as a channel for reality, as a conduit for the expression of the moment.”
Those jeremiads of the ’80s forever intertwined Galás and AIDS. But her work both before and after the trilogy shared many of its preoccupations, with her classically trained yet brutal tone blurring the line between observing suffering and becoming its mouthpiece. The content was enigmatic — sometimes wordless, sometimes poetic — but the evocation of apocalyptic distress was indelible. In album after album, performance after performance, she has screeched for those left voiceless by physical infirmity, totalitarianism, mental illness, incarceration, sexual violence, exile, right up to what she calls “the genocide of the old” that’s been wrought by the coronavirus pandemic — though she’s never spouted the popular slogans about the fashionable issues of the day. Her next record, “Broken Gargoyles,” coming in August, takes as its inspiration the disfigured German soldiers who were ostracized in the wake of World War I.
“I’m really addressing the same thing over and over again,” she said, draped in black, her eye makeup vivid, sitting on her sofa. “The issue of a person who is isolated from society — either through choice or through necessity, through a sort of legal structure.” “Broken Gargoyles” finds her voice as singeing as ever. The question is when audiences will hear it in person. Galás’s last live performances were four years ago, in Los Angeles. Over a long period she spent stretches in San Diego, then finally moved back here for good, to care for her ailing parents — the age-old role of a Greek daughter. “I always was working,” Galás said, “but I wasn’t working in the public eye.” Her father died in 2009. The death of her mother — “my best friend and confidante” — in 2018 was particularly difficult: “After that, I thought, what’s this idea of being a singer? Because I realized I was singing for her.”  From: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/arts/music/diamanda-galas-divine-punishment.html

Emilie Autumn - Opheliac

 #Emilie Autumn #dark cabaret #electronica #industrial #classical #gothic folk rock #singer-songwriter

Emilie Autumn Liddell is a Gothic poet, singer / songwriter, violinist, harpsichordist, performance artist, feminist, and author. She's self described as that she sounds "like the best cup of English Breakfast spiked with cyanide and smashed on your antique wallpaper." Of Emilie's life, very little is known at the moment. What we do know is that she started playing violin at the age of four, a talent that she has continued to this day, and that she voluntarily stayed away from most of the mainstream music communities (both classical and commercial) due to bad experiences and clashes within them: In fact, most of her albums were self published by her own company. Her first album was On a Day - a classical album released in 2000, when she was 20 or 21. The following year she put out the Chambermaid and By the Sword EPs. In 2003 her first full vocal album was released: Enchant, an album filled with a number of songs inspired by fairy tales. Also contained in this CD was the Enchant Puzzle, which no one has ever solved. This was the Enchant era, when Emilie was a faerie.
After going through an extremely awful period in her life that resulted in a suicide attempt and hospitalisation, she was inspired to move in a different artistic direction. This began with the Opheliac EP, followed by the full album Opheliac. This album was far Darker and Edgier than Enchant, and a reflection of Emilie's mental state, as this album was released as an agreement with herself that she'd make the album instead of killing herself. The songs are mostly about madness and suicide, particularly in water. Much of the album is influenced by William Shakespeare, as is made obvious by the title. Many of the songs are not written from the perspective of Emilie, but from Ophelia herself, the Lady of Shalott, and others. Later in 2007, she re-released Enchant along with A Bit o' This & That, which was a collection of previously unheard songs, re-mixes, and tracks from older EPs. Also released that year was Laced / Unlaced. Laced was a re-release of On a Day... while Unlaced was an all-new collection of instrumental songs done in her newer style. In 2009 she was able to release her autobiography, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls. She has also released The Opheliac Companion, which provides information and background about the songs on Opheliac. The Opheliac era is what Emilie is most well known for. And from gaining more muffins (fans), she was able to make more and more theatrical tours which gained more and more theatrics tour by tour. Joining her on stage in the Asylum are her Bloody Crumpets, a group of lovely mad girls.
In 2012 she released another album, Fight Like a Girl, which had been lingering in Development Hell for several years. Despite her initial promises that it was going to be "more metal" than Opheliac was, it ended up being a theatrical concept album based around the fictionalised Victorian story that appeared in The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls. According to Emilie, she intends to use the album as part of the soundtrack to the play she's currently writing about the book. The album has created a Broken Base in the fandom because of its differences from the highly popular Opheliac and because the violin plays a much less significant role it in than it had in her previous music. Her current look and shows are generally referred to as the FLAG era by fans. She played the Painted Doll in The Devil's Carnival and its sequel Alleluia! The Devil's Carnival, musical films by the creators of Repo! The Genetic Opera, alongside two of her Crumpets, Captain Maggots and Contessa.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/EmilieAutumn

Zola Jesus - Exhumed

 #Zola Jesus #darkwave #electronic #industrial #experimental #art pop #electropop #gothic rock #music video

Nika Roza Danilova has been recording and performing as Zola Jesus for more than a decade. As a classically trained opera singer with a penchant for noisy, avant-garde sounds, she launched her career with a series of lo-fi releases that pitted her soaring vocals against harsh industrial clatter and jittery synths. Her work became more hi-fi as she began to explore her own skewed vision of pop music on releases like Stridulum, Valusia, and Conatus. That era culminated in the release of Versions, a collection of string quartet interpretations of her most beloved work, conducted by J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus). That album and subsequent tour were followed by her most hi-fi outing to date, Taiga. In 2017 she returned to both the Wisconsin woods in which she was raised and her longtime label, Sacred Bones Records, to release Okovi, her darkest album yet. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, and Patreon.

Zola Jesus on making a living as a musician:

What’s the best way to make a living as a musician?

Be really good at budgeting money. Don’t live in an expensive city. Don’t get too comfortable.

What’s the hardest part about making a living as a musician, as you’ve experienced it? How can you avoid that trouble?

The instability. It’s feast or famine. It’s important to understand that every good year comes with three bad ones, financially speaking. Don’t take anything for granted. Plan accordingly. Work smart. Work hard.

Do you think using social media — Instagram, Twitter — helps with sustainability?

Yes. Social media is the watering hole of our culture. For better or worse, it’s where we congregate. Also, having access to the public directly gives us autonomy and control over our art. No longer do we need to rely on some Big Joseph from Shareholders Inc to get our message out and speak up.

Where are there opportunities for making money in the music industry currently?

On a practical level, hope that your music gets played in a movie or TV show. It will help to pay the bills, especially at times when you have no active income. I’m starting to learn something else though. I think when we talk about “making money,” our ideas have to come from something capitalistic, like a sponsorship, or a record deal, or whatever fantasy of being a rich rock star yields. But really, instead of focusing on making money by selling what you do, we should focus on making connections. Fostering the relationship between you, your music, and the people who like your music. Find a community. Respect it. Once you have that, turn to it. The community can sustain you, if you let it. Forget the Apple advertisement or sponsorship or whatever else you think you might need to be a working musician in late-stage capitalism. Turn to people. Mutual fucking aid.

How important has Patreon been for your sustainability? Why do you think it’s been so successful?

Here I will repeat myself from what I said above. But, Patreon allows me to sleep at night. It has been amazing to experience the generosity of a community. I never thought about being able to be supported in this way. Before I started my Patreon, it always felt like I was forced to figure out how to package what I did as a thing to sell, and I hated it. I can’t think about my music in that way. But instead I realized, I could figure out how to change how I made money from my music. This way, I don’t need to change what I do. I just go directly to the people who my music is for, and they can all come together and support it, if they can.

How important is it to develop a digital audience for you work?

Well, I live in northern Wisconsin, so my regional audience is pretty sparse. “Digital audience” really just means audience. When you make a thing, especially a weird thing, you’re only going to find so many “matches.” That is to say, “people who get what you’re doing and like it.” These days, it’s pretty convenient to be able to have access to nearly an entire world of potential “matches.” So, while I tour as much as I can, there are only so many places I can go in order to evangelize my work. For everywhere else, I am grateful for the possibility that I could find a match of someone in some far-flung place that could never stumble upon my show. Having that channel open for us to find each other is vital.

How important is merch to making a living?

I’m horrible at merch, so hopefully it’s not super important and I’m not missing the point on all of it. For some people it’s huge I think, or so says the legend.

Is it possible to make money as a musician through streaming? How much is reasonable to expect?

Ha. Some say yes, some say no. It’s possible to make money, but not enough to live on. I would never count on it. You’re basically being paid micro amounts for each listen that could one day add up to the actual amount of the purchase of one record.

How should someone just getting started wade into the streaming waters?

I’d like to know as well. I guess getting on playlists is important? But I’m cynical about it. About all of it. Sorry, that’s not helpful! The one thing I can recommend is to use sites like Bandcamp, which puts musicians in the front seat with their music.

From: https://thecreativeindependent.com/wisdom/zola-jesus-on-making-a-living-as-a-musician/

Psychotica - Valentino

 #Psychotica #alternative rock #industrial rock #alternative metal #gothic rock #glam metal #1990s

The industrial goth band Psychotica was founded in 1994 by singer Pat Briggs, an alumnus of the glam rock outfit R.U.Ready who was at the time managing the small New York City nightclub Don Hill's. Encouraged to form a new band to boost club attendance, Briggs teamed with bassist and Don Hill bartender Tommy Salmorin to found Psychotica, soon bringing aboard onetime White Zombie guitarist Ena Kostabi, Nine Ways to Sunday cellist Enrique Tiru Velez, backing vocalist Reeka, and drummer Buz. After their first live performance, the group signed to the American label, releasing their 1996 debut LP a few weeks after beginning a stint as the opening act on that summer's Lollapalooza tour. By 1997, both Salmorin and Buz had exited to form a new group, Numb, and Reeka was also out of the band; the remaining trio of Briggs, Kostabi, and Velez welcomed synth player Doug DeAngelis, pianist Bette Sussman, bagpipe player Richard Markoff, and koto player Mark Stanley in time to record the second Psychotica LP, 1998's Espina. Singer and group leader Pat Briggs died on December 27, 2022.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/psychotica-mn0000377456/biography

It is an absolute shame that Psychotica no longer exists, and that vocalist Patrick Briggs has eased back into Nightclub ownership. What an amazing vocal talent! Wild and weird, with a Marilyn Manson like gothic undertone and David Bowie glam, I just don't understand why Psychotica never went further. They performed at Lollapalooza in '97, and that was pretty much the end. Patrick had a tendency to perform almost naked, though at Lollapalooza he wore a silver jumpsuit a la Devo. He was on the edge of acceptable behavior, but so very talented, bringing in pianists and bagpipes and symphonies behind his unique music. After Espina, they recorded one more album, Pandemic, that never got released. There are MP3's out on the internet from Pandemic, and I strongly urge you to find them and get them before they disappear. Pandemic has a Georgio Morodor (Cat People Soundtrack) remix of MacArthur Park, along with three not-to-be-missed ballads that Patrick's vocals just make you want to cry on: Valentino, Euthanasia, and Monsoon. Find Pandemic! You won't be sorry.  From: http://saltyka.blogspot.com/2007/06/psychotica.html

Virgin Black - Lamenting Kiss

 #Virgin Black #gothic metal #doom metal #avant-garde metal #symphonic metal #Australian #music video

When I first heard the band name 'Virgin Black' come up in conversation I thought this had to be some sort of gothic metal band with all band members wearing long dresses and corpse paint on their face. An average metal band that 16-year old high school 'metal experts' listen to nowadays (no offense meant to anyone). And in a way these preconceptions were actually right!Virgin Black is indeed a band that could partially be categorized as a gothic metal outfit. Yet that banner would not do enough justification to this bunch of talented musicians, for they go beyond the boundaries of conventional gothic metal.
There's this new wave of progressive artists who seem to incorporate classical music into their compositions; think of the likes of Epica, Nightwish and most noticeably Swedish prog metal outfit Therion, but Virgin Black surpasses each and every one of them. Yes, all of them share that longing for operatic vocals, yet Virgin Black's music is not about the bombastic nature of songs. These five Australians make music without reaching out to conventional metal. It's not all about heavy metal riffs or pompous drumming. No, Virgin Black seem to enjoy minimalist moments as well; some segments are pure classical or operatic pieces of music, whereas other moments are pure acoustic brilliance!
Come to think of it, perhaps 'doom metal' would be a more appropriate tag for this branch of music. The dramatic vocals, either operatic or normal singing in low key, don't make the happiest of conditions to listen to music, but they do somehow manage to charm the listener. To give you an idea of what to expect: lead vocalist Rowan London's voice is a sort of compromise of those trademark high-pitched prog metal vocalists and low-key opera vocalists, whereas bass player Ian Miller's additional vocals are pure black metal in origin, i.e. he growls. Yet, his growling is not at all bothersome, mainly because most of the time when he sings, you hear London backing him up with his low and dynamic voice or visa versa.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=14692

Dead Register - Alive

 #Dead Register #gothic rock #post-punk #industrial #gothic metal #gloom-gaze #music video

This Atlanta trio has graced a few of my end of the year best of lists. They are known for flirting with various shades of heavy, sludge and doom being the two sub-genres that come closest to describing the darkness thickly emoted from the sonic swathes they summon, using only bass, synths, and drums as the primary instrumentation. Their new album finds the band continuing deeper into the despairing abyss their previous work has gazed into. This time around the grooves are just more refined.
The title track that opens the album carries a sleek industrial stomp. The drumming gives the vocals plenty of room to lament. At times the tension has a shadowy post-punk feel, but with more oppression to its heavy-handed melancholy. The slithering minor scales on “Circle of Lies” provide a romantic contrast to the song’s more pounding sections. Overall this is a heavier grooving album from what they have done in the past. The atmosphere that drips from the corners of their sound is weaponized negative space, crushed when the riffs contract. This is demonstrated on “In Between” which is one of the album’s more driven songs thanks to the frantic drumming.
I would not say they are a band that aspires to be beloved by the masses, as they refuse to dumb anything down to the lowest common denominator, but you can hear how “Jaded Love” might be the closest they have come yet to something radio friendly. It works off of a more straightforward chug. This band can never be accused of just being heavy for the sake of being heavy. Instead it is a sonic intensity that is a by-product of this band writing great songs no matter what genre you want to pin to them. Heaviness is used as a color rather than the sole purpose of creation.
Regular readers here will not be surprised that this band has some almost goth leanings, given my taste in music. Here the “goth” qualities are not a Type O Negative like languishing over headstones, but instead come from how the ambience adorns the melodies of songs like “Two Silhouettes”. Chvasta‘s baritone croon might add to coloring their sound in a gray bleakness. It also serves to give the album’s narrative a unified voice during the stylistic shifts. “Longest Day” floats somewhere in a middle ground between the crossroads of sounds the band dips into.
On the last song the band dig deeper into the rock-tinged side of what they do. It is moodier, which is a more vulnerable side of heaviness. This causes the sound to become more doom-flavored in its intentions; rather than mourning or loss, it is more of a burden of the stark feeling one gets from just being alive in today’s world — a feeling for which this album provides a much-needed soundtrack. The message might not be to abandon all hope, but it does provide the sonic colors to lean into dystopia with.  From: https://www.nocleansinging.com/2022/03/14/dead-register-alive/

Blanche - Jack On Fire

 #Blanche #alt-country #Americana #folk blues #Southern gothic #country folk #gothic folk

The packaging for ‘If We Can’t Trust the Doctors’, the debut album by Detroit-based Blanche, includes an old time medicine ad for Blanche’s Nepenthe. The elixir claims to “induce forgetfulness of sorrow, dolor, ennui and wretchedness for those afflicted with melancholia, fits and tempers, neurasthenia, or the vapors”. The music that Blanche makes could easily be the promotional soundtrack for the Nepenthe sales pitch, the accompaniment to its traveling medicine show. It’s a collection of near-spooky gothic country-blues, dirges for sanity and laments for optimism wrapped in reverb, banjos, autoharp, pedal steel, and dank Poe atmospherics. Led X-ishly by the husband and wife duo of Dan and Tracee Mae Miller, Blanche plays old-timey Midwestern twang with one foot in authenticity and the other in well-versed satire.
Blanche was formed after the Millers’s short-lived band Two-Star Tabernacle called it quits in the late ’90s. (Another member of Two-Star Tabernacle — Jack White — would go on to find surprising success with the White Stripes, and later used members of Blanche as Loretta Lynn’s backing band for the critically acclaimed Van Lear Rose.) ‘If We Can’t Trust the Doctors’ was released by Detroit label Cass Records in 2003, was nominated for the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize, and is now finding a new life through distribution with V2 Records. Blanche is not yet a touchstone of the alt-country community, but it shows major promise as a potential bearer of folk fringe oddities.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/blanche-ifwecant-2495847373.html

Writhing and preening like a fistful of wild-eyed Southern preachers, Blanche sells sweet snake oil by the wagonload on their debut release ‘If We Can't Trust the Doctors’. Fronted by the enigmatic Dan Miller (the artist formerly known as Goober in the hillbilly-punk prototype Goober and the Peas) and his ethereal wife Tracee, the band weaves a hypnotic blend of old-timey medicine show theatrics and down-home acoustic pickin', all threaded through with a spooky string of murder ballads and women scorned. Along with assistance from Brendan Benson and His Name Is Alive's Warn DeFever, the album was handcrafted by the understated Dave Feeny, whose production reveals layers of banjo, pedal steel, autoharp, and subtly distorted guitars, all toothing together like rusting gears in a Model 'A' Ford rolled off the Detroit lines a century ago. While on the surface the songwriting seems straightforward and simple, the pages within peel back like crumbling photos in a black paper photo album lost in the drawers during the Eisenhower era.
While much of the energy from the album seems tied to the power of the old church, ‘If We Can't Trust the Doctors’ is no gospel album, but rather it taps deep into Greil Marcus' "old, weird America" of dusty 78's on Vocalion and Okeh, and the dusty-toothed wayfaring strangers of the Depression era circuit. The amazing thing about the album is that for all of its folkways influences, it still feels very much a contemporary work; certain to be found on iPods and peer-to-peer lists worldwide. Shining deep underneath the dust of the last hundred years are little glints of Blanche's sunnier moments, and while the band certainly proves that every silver lining has a cloud, the album is perfectly spooky and uplifting, chilling and rewarding, haunting and beautiful.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/if-we-cant-trust-the-doctors-mw0000396906

Rasputina - Cross Walk

 

 

#Rasputina #alternative/indie rock #cello rock #chamber rock #gothic rock #dark cabaret

Pioneers in the use of cello as the sole instrument within a rock band, Rasputina has been inspiring young string players to commit a number of musical sins since 1996. The group's concept was written as a manifesto, and manifested accordingly by directress Melora Creager as a wily subterfuge for a plot to open audiences to adventure. The funny, the sad, the heavy, the tender - it can all exist together. Employing elaborate costuming spanning a number of historical periods, Rasputina brings marginalized historical female figures and stories to light in the pop form, using archetypal characters such as Indian princesses, Hawaiian handmaidens and Medieval queens. Melora last performed in Europe with Nirvana, on their final tour in 1994. Over the years, Rasputina has performed/recorded with Marilyn Manson, Porno For Pyros, Cheap Trick, Goo Goo Dolls and many others. Hardened road-dogs, and with more than 7 albums under their belt, Rasputina continues to amaze and amuse.

MELORA CREAGER - voice, cello, banjo - Kansas born and raised, she moved to NYC in the 1980’s. Melora received classical music training as a child, but her performance career began with rock bands and East Village drag/performance artists. She founded the alternative/historical cello ensemble Rasputina in 1991 as a way to meet like-minded girls - girls that wanted to rock out on the cello and wear fine costumery. The sound and visual concepts that began in Creager's Rasputina manifestos presaged and influenced movements and trends such as Modern Victorians, Steampunk, freak-folk, corsetry, and crafting. In 19 recordings, and countless public performances, Creager has led a 20 year exploration in cello amplification, recording, and performance.

LUIS MOJICA - piano, beat-boxing - Luis uses the piano to cast wild narrative spells. His eyes are that of an androgynous monk with rainbow tentacles. Luis loops words, chants, and sounds through a loop pedal AKA beatboxing, ‘Beat-Boxing Baroque’. Luis brings his musical madness to Rasputina today.

CARPELLA PARVO - cello, voice - Cello-fingers in flight and with the voice of a bird, Carpella is from another country, but keeps it a secret which one. She played on Rasputina's debut album, Thanks for the Ether (1996), then succumbed to the very condition from which she takes her name - carpal tunnel syndrome. Having healed over 20 years, Carpella jubilantly returns to Rasputina in the 21st century. From: https://first-avenue.com/performer/rasputina/

Swans - You Know Nothing

 #Swans #Michael Gira #Jarboe #experimental rock #post-rock #noise rock #industrial #no-wave #neofolk #industrial rock #gothic rock #dark folk #apocalyptic folk

In a half-decade span beginning in the mid '80s, Swans swiftly transformed from bone-crushing no wave brutalists to God-fearing gothic rockers, and then to featherweight neo-folkies. White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and Love of Life, originally released in 1991 and 1992, respectively, marked the end of that metamorphosis, as the band settled into a sound at once songful and vast, luminous as a glass menagerie and forceful as a falling anvil. The two albums have long been treated as minor works in Swans' discography: out of print for years, they were cherry-picked (alongside selections from 1989's major-label fiasco The Burning World and the Gira/Jarboe side project the World of Skin) for 1999's inauspiciously titled Various Failures 1988-1992. "I'm ambivalent about much of it, but then what do I know?" Gira has written of the music on that anthology. "Some of it is genuinely good I think. Anyway, I was learning how to write a song as I went."
It's true that the period marked a shift from pummeling mantras to something more "musical," with singing instead of shouting and cascading chords instead of just drop-tuned gut-punches. That said, even here, Gira's concept of "songwriting" remains idiosyncratic: there's little in the way of verse/chorus structures, mainly just mantra-like incantations and chords wreathed around gleaming pedal tones surrounded by wide-open expanse. Drummers Anton Fier (White Light) and Vincent Signorelli and Ted Parson (Love of Life) lay into their snares with military gusto, driving the music forward in surging tattoos, and their nonstop rattle contributes to a sensation of overwhelming excess. Close your eyes, and you can practically see the sounds exploding like fireworks against the darkness of your lids.
The textures and tone colors are well suited to Gira's favorite themes, like love, death, and the sublime. Where early Swans lyrics were notable largely for their grueling power dynamics and limitless abjection—see "Raping a Slave", "Filth", "Cop", etc.—here Gira explores a more nuanced perspective. It's hardly all kittens and rainbows; both albums are littered with ugliness, from the dirge-like "Better Than You" ("So glad I'm better than you," he sings, in the world's most dead-eyed Dear John letter) to the claustrophobic "Amnesia", where he tells us "sex is a void filled with plastic" and "everything human's necessarily wrong." Gira has rarely wallowed as beautifully as he does on "Failure", one of the great nadirs—in the best way possible—of the band's catalog. Over bluesy acoustic guitar and frigid digital synthesizers, his preacher's drawl drips like blood from a stone; it would be hard to imagine a voice with more gravitas. But Gira has never met a dichotomy he could resist—he eats love and hate, sprinkled with a bit of good and evil, for breakfast—and here we can see the pendulum beginning to tip from darkness back to daylight.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21259-white-light-from-the-mouth-of-infinity-love-of-life/

Birdeatsbaby - Tenterhooks

 #Birdeatsbaby #alternative rock #progressive rock #alternative metal #dark cabaret #gothic pop #music video

Birdeatsbaby is a genre indefinable quartet formed in 2008 and based in Brighton. The dark and twisted quality of their music videos has gained them some degree of fame. Just like that other dark cabaret band, The Dresden Dolls, they present a lot of piano-led pop tunes, supplemented with drums, guitar, and violin. Singer and pianist Mishkin Fitzgerald has also released a solo album, and works in electro-math-rock band Cat Fire Radio.

This band contains examples of:
Cover Version: Birdeatsbaby has released covers of songs by Muse, Tool, Marilyn Manson, Korn, Hole, and PJ Harvey to name a few.
Genre Shift: The bombastic cabaret theme of the early videos has been somewhat withdrawn from their latest videos, giving place to more desaturated colors à la Nolan, and more melancholic songs.
Genre Throwback: The "Feast of Hammers" music video evokes Hammer Horror movies.
Gothic Horror: "The Bullet Within" borrows from this genre, particularly the song "Hands of Orlac" which is named after a gothic horror film.
Harsh Vocals: Mishkin alternates between this and more gentle vocalizations.
Haunted Heroine: The subject of "Ghosts".
Murder Ballad: "Love Will Bring You Nothing."
Obligatory Bondage Song: A variation: "Miserable" is about a woman who is into BDSM, but the narrator of the song seems to disapprove of her lifestyle.
Riot Grrrl: The movement seems to have at least influenced the band, though it is unknown if Birdeatsbaby identifies itself as a part of it.
Pintsized Powerhouse: Mishkin trains in kickboxing in real life. She is shown training and fighting in the "Present Company" video from her first solo single.
Sanity Slippage Song: "Incitatus"
Take That!: "Gone", "Jim", and "The Replacement". All quite vicious and open. "Part of Me" may be the band's most scathing song to date.
Teenage Death Songs: "Seventeen".
Uncommon Time: The verses of "Tenterhooks" are effectively in 22/8 time, and sections of "The Bullet" are in phrases of 5.
Vomit Indiscretion Shot: In "Feast of Hammers", when Mishkin sees the masked men in action.
Whole-Plot Reference: The entire "I Always Hang Myself With The Same Rope" video is one to Alfred Hitchcock movies.
Word Salad Lyrics: Most of the album "Here She Comes-a-Tumblin'" was the result of a teenage Mishkin's insomnia-induced hallucinations and nightmares, resulting in some particularly strange and terrifying imagery on more than one occasion.

From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Birdeatsbaby

Birdeatsbaby is a Brighton, UK chamber rock/prog-punk/dark cabaret four-piece, of Mishkin Fitzgerald (lead vocals, piano), Hana Maria (violin, vocals), Garry Mitchell (bass, guitar) and Anna Mylee (drums). The band was formed in November 2007, followed by début album Here She Comes-a-Tumblin' (2009, self-released). Their albums include Feast Of Hammers (2012), The Bullet Within (2014), Tanta Furia (2016) and The World Conspires (2019). Not fitting current musical trends, Birdeatsbaby's sound is fast-paced with complex drums, and piano/bass/violin generally combined for dramatic/catchy choruses. Like a more hyper-active Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds meets a slightly depressed Freddie Mercury. Descriptions of the band have included: 'an unhinged burlesque brand of freak-pop' and 'Twin Peaks on snuff.'  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Birdeatsbaby/+wiki

Alice Glass - Suffer and Swallow

 #Alice Glass #electronic #goth #industrial #electropunk #avant-pop #ex-Crystal castles #animated music video

Alice Glass’s Los Angeles home is a picture of gothic splendour. Her kitchen resembles a graveyard of dead flowers; she is annoyed that her living black lilies never droop when she is looking. There is a fake Goya on the way down to her basement studio, where skulls surround the drums. A spider crawls out of the toilet roll when I use her bathroom. It is probably not part of the decor. Glass is less macabre: there is a tattoo of Bambi on her thigh. She loved the royal wedding. Her voice only rises above its perpetual whisper when she calls to her cats, Mr Peanut and Fuzzy, the alpha who dominates her pit bulls, Jacob and Shadow. She apologises for the boxes that entomb the sofa, merch from her recent debut solo tour. She had polled fans on Twitter to ask which song she should play from the back catalogue of her former band, the anarchic electro-punk duo Crystal Castles, which she quit in October 2014. Ultimately, she decided to play the material to which she still felt connected – “where I’m feeling worthless and hopeless”, she says. It took time in rehearsals to shake off their negative associations.
It was not until allegations surfaced against Harvey Weinstein that Glass (born Margaret Osborn) was emboldened to go public with detailed allegations of abuse against her ex-bandmate, Ethan Kath (real name Claudio Palmieri). She felt it was her responsibility, “especially after I had been told he had done similar things to at least one other woman”. Glass had previously alluded to her experience when she released her debut solo single, Stillbirth, in July 2015: “You don’t own me any more,” she shrieked over music that she likened to “being eaten by fire ants”. The song allowed her to speak covertly at a time when she was scared of going outside in case she was served with a lawsuit, she says, claiming that Kath started making legal threats in response to her tweeting stats about domestic abuse fatalities shortly after she announced her departure from the band. Glass says she received cease-and-desist letters from the same firm that represented Bill Cosby, which quoted her tweets and intimated that Glass was making these statements to benefit her career. But seeing other women speaking out about abuse last October was like watching “someone jumping off a cliff”, she says. “If someone goes first, it lets you know that you’re safe. It really put things into perspective. If it wasn’t for them, I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to speak out.”  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/15/alice-glass-on-leaving-crystal-castles-the-cruelty-never-ceases-to-amaze-me

The Birthday Massacre - Blue

 #The Birthday Massacre #gothic rock #darkwave #industrial rock #electronic rock #synth-rock #post-punk revival #Canadian #music video

The Birthday Massacre is a synth-rock band, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The band was officially formed in 1999, known at that time as Imagica. The band consists of Chibi (vocals), Rainbow (guitars and programming), Michael Falcore (guitars), Owen (keyboards), O.E. (previously drums, now bass), and Rhim (drums). Their sound is mostly a fusion of retro electronica and dynamic contemporary songwriting. Elements of children's fiction and adult fantasy are combined with twisting distortion and euphoric melody to create a unique and original sound dubbed "post-retro". This sound is also affiliated with "synth rock" a rising genre influenced by elements of 80's synthpop, industrial, and gothic rock.  From: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/890-the-birthday-massacre

This song is most definitely about duality of light and dark, ying and yang, and good and evil. Also, I notice how each person has a doll, and that only one person is on the floor while the others are floating. This is a parable about the true self and the ego. The ego is the false part of one's self that is quick to judge, selfish and will do something regardless of the consequences of their actions. The fact that these dolls have masks confirms that they are hiding their faces which the ego is very good at. The last place we would find our true enemy is within ourselves. Chibi who is on the floor is trying to fish out her doll (ego) but is unsuccessful in the attempt, when one thinks that their ego is the true self, which the ego wants, will find that they will destroy themselves and their loved ones. The ones floating are not making any attempt to catch their doll, because they see that they are not their ego and are free to rise to enlightenment as their dolls are also rising to the light. True self: Love, acceptance, nonjudgmental, the ability to let go and the urge to gain more knowledge to illuminate themselves and others. Ego (false self): Quick to judge, must hold on to what they have (most often material items or a person), lies, cheats and hides themselves from the light of the truth and would rather cover themselves in darkness to avoid being revealed because they themselves commit evil actions. I hope my comment can shed light on both this creative song and video and upon life as we know it.  From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858517179

In This Moment - As Above, So Below

 #In This Moment #alternative metal #metalcore #hard rock #gothic metal #industrial metal #music video

Initially conceived as a metalcore counterpart to Evanescence, In This Moment moved into more melodic territory with its fantastical 2008 breakthrough album The Dream. Though capable of throat-scraping screams, vocalist Maria Brink shone brightest on mature and atmospheric material, putting In This Moment in the running as a promising goth rock band. The Los Angeles-based act also widened its exposure by touring with the like-minded Lacuna Coil as well as metal veterans Megadeth and Ozzy Osbourne.  From: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6tbLPxj1uQ6vsRQZI2YFCT

For the uninitiated, an In This Moment concert is part rock show and part high-concept performance art. The visuals are tantalizing, challenging and occasionally confusing—but never dull. The band’s opening track on the night was a percussive and warlike cover of Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle.” Brink took center stage, towering over everyone in a robe and ornate headdress, and flanked by a pair of acolytes in a ritual-like ceremony. The band churned out the riffs as Brink held court, each passing song feeling like its own act in a play. The individual performances were so ornate and detailed that In This Moment fit only about eight songs into its 70 minutes.  From: https://riffmagazine.com/reviews/in-this-moment-black-veil-brides-20211003/

Queen Adreena - Suck

 #Queen Adrena #Katie Jane Garside #alternative rock #noise rock #indie rock #art rock #punk metal #gothic rock

Queen Adreena’s music is clearly unwholesome and conveys a feeling of gruesome schizophrenia. In my review of their excellent previous album entitled Drink me, I depicted the ex-Daisy Chainsaw’s music as, let me quote myself and have a swollen head, “on the one hand, urgent, noisy, fast and visceral punk songs in which Katie Jane Garside yells, shrieks and gives the impression of scarcely waking up from a terrible nightmare; and on the other hand, slow, poisonous atmospheric songs in which KJG’s unhealthy voice spreads its wings of depression. If you’ve never heard her voice, try to imagine Bjork performing ‘Army of Me’ completely stoned and trying to imitate Lydia Lunch. Add a punctual raucous tone due to helium inhaling and alcohol abuse,and you might have an idea of what her voice sounds like.”
What else other than drug addiction, unstable re-habs, alcohol abuse, and twisted minds can have possibly led Crispin Gray and Katie Jane Garside to play such a dubious music which really epitomize schizophrenia? When she stops yelling, shrieking and venting her rage or madness upon the listener, when she whispers or pants or just sings, KJ Garside’s changing child-like voice offers insane deliveries which, backed up by cryptic lyrics, sound like little girls’ nightmares (‘Pull Me Under’, ‘Join The Dots’, ‘Childproof’). There is certainly a child related theme in the lyrics but I do not dare analyse it, lest I become completely mad.  From: http://onlyangels.free.fr/reviews/q/queen_adreena/the_butcher_and_the_butterfly.htm

Rïcïnn - Doris

 #Rïcïnn #Laure Le Prunenec #neoclassical darkwave #art pop #avant-garde metal #baroque pop #experimental #gothic rock #French #animated music video

Laure Le Prunenec returns with another avant-garde masterpiece on her solo project Rïcïnn's sophomore album Nereïd, mixing classical influences with folk, electronics, and gothic sounds. Laure Le Prunenec is well-known for her work, among all those who enjoy the more experimental and avant-garde end of dark music. Her operatic vocal delivery on Igorrr, Öxxö Xööx, and Corpo-Mente has rightfully earned her a strong fan following, but what often flies under the radar is her solo work under the moniker of Rïcïnn – a captivating project, whose debut Lïan in 2016 put Le Prunenec’s vocals front and center, while bringing together bits of all the previously mentioned projects, to form a colossal masterpiece unlike any other. Four years later, Rïcïnn returns, taking a broader yet nuanced approach with a sophomore full-length – Nereïd. What made Rïcïnn‘s debut stand apart from her other projects is that it showcased Le Prunenec in her most expressive form, free from any restraints on style. Yet Lïan was just the first step of expression for Le Prunenec, whereas Nereïd sees her break all the shackles and soar high. The multiple layering of the vocals is more refined, and the vocal delivery has an even wider variety.  From: https://everythingisnoise.net/reviews/ricinn-nereid/

Diamanda Galas - Broken Gargoyles 1 - Mutilatus

 

 #Diamanda Galas #avant-garde #experimental #avant-goth #classical crossover #performance art #operatic #blues #jazz #spoken word #piano #a capella #no wave #bel canto #Schrei opera 

Diamanda Galás composes violently compassionate music about suffering. Her late-1980s Masque of the Red Death Trilogy focuses on AIDS, which killed her brother, Philip-Dimitri, in 1986, while other projects delve into the oppressive Greek Junta and the Armenian, Assyrian, and Anatolian Genocides. The 67-year-old goth icon performs less harrowing stuff, too - a hard-grooving 1994 collaboration with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, a bevy of brilliant takes on blues standards. Yet at her best, Galás sharpens her cutting sense of empathy, slices open difficult subject matter, and approaches it from inside: Her 1991 dirge for HIV’s most deadly era, Plague Mass, might be the heaviest live record ever made. Ultimately, Galás’ haunted ritual, like all of her releases, is a ceremony of tenderness.
A master of the early 19th century style of bel canto singing, Galás uses her operatic genius to explore tropes uncommon in experimental composition - especially the breakdown of tortured, diseased bodies. Shaped from spectral piano and electronics, her soundscapes batter, unsettle, rouse us. Her virtuosic voice, inspired by avant-garde saxophonists Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, spans an untold number of octaves. She screeches, wails, bleats, and slips between characters, usually vengeful, demonic figures skulking around like a bad conscience. Both performance artist and diva, Galás has a potent theatrical sense and a persona at once progressive and full of fire and brimstone. Echoing obsolete medical drawings that illustrate sickness as floating miasma or bodily humors to be drained, she rebukes ignorant societies while harnessing their wild imaginations.
Her latest record, Broken Gargoyles, highlights the chronic nature of our callousness toward the ill and injured. Inspired by the mistreatment of wounded World War I infantrymen, Galás unearths devastating source texts from a slightly earlier era: the verse of Georg Heym (1887-1912), son of an assistant in a yellow-fever clinic and an enfant terrible of German expressionist poetry. Before his death at 24, Heym wrote unflinchingly about sick patients, maimed soldiers, and other doomed souls he might have been exposed to through his father’s work. Setting four of Heym’s poems to pulsing, droning accompaniment, Galás traces a throughline of ostracized invalids across the past century-plus of public health catastrophes. Appropriately, she premiered some of this material at a medieval German leper sanctuary and began cobbling the album together during COVID lockdown. Broken Gargoyles targets governments’ botched coronavirus responses - implicitly, it sets sights on their homophobic sluggishness to protect gay men from monkeypox, too. The album may not shock the singer’s die-hard fans, but Broken Gargoyles is a moving, painful listen and an ideal access point for the uninitiated.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/diamanda-galas-broken-gargoyles/

Stolen Babies - Push Button

 #Stolen Babies #progressive metal #avant-garde metal #gothic rock #alternative metal #experimental rock #dance rock #performance rock

Stolen Babies are an American experimental rock band consisting of vocalist/accordionist Dominique Lenore Persi, bassist/guitarist Rani Sharone, and drummer Gil Sharone. Stolen Babies formed from a 12+ member high school performance troupe named The Fratellis; the band takes its name from one of the skits performed by the group during this period (written by Dominique Persi and her older brother, animator Raymond S. Persi). Stolen Babies released their first demo CD through their own label, No Comment Records.
Among the band's many musical influences are groups such as Oingo Boingo, Mr. Bungle, Cop Shoot Cop, and Fishbone (with whom Gil Sharone has performed). Stolen Babies are known for their unclassifiable odd rock and heavy, energetic performances. Except for the earliest demo, each album has featured artwork by indie comic artist Crab Scrambly.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Babies

Queen Adreena - Year (Of You)

 #Queen Adrena #Katie Jane Garside #alternative rock #noise rock #indie rock #art rock #punk metal #gothic rock

Queen Adreena was an alternative rock band from London, England that formed in 1999. Described at various times as “art, punk, gothic, metal, rock, or alternative”, Queen Adreena's music is difficult to categorize. Formed by singer Katie Jane Garside and guitarist Crispin Gray, they had previously collaborated in the celebrated but short-lived band Daisy Chainsaw. Garside and Gray did not cross paths again until 1999 when they formed Queen Adreena. An album, Taxidermy, soon followed in 2000. Pete Howard, the last drummer to play with The Clash, joined just before the band signed with Rough Trade for their second album, 2002’s Drink Me, featuring the lead single "Pretty Like Drugs." Queen Adreena toured extensively in the UK and Europe.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Queen+Adreena/+wiki

For those who are not familiar with Queen Adreena (or Queenadreena as they are known now), they are a 4-man rock outfit from London who formed around 1999 with Daisy Chainsaw's former singer Katie Jane Garside and guitarist Crispin Gray. The band released their first record "Taxidermy" back in 2000 and later gained some fame after releasing probably their most critically acclaimed and beloved record "The Butcher and the Butterfly" in 2005.
The noisy punk-ish sound that Daisy Chainsaw had is still present in Queenadreena but you can definitely hear that the band went for a much more "serious" approach to the music this way around. Djin was released in 2008 with fairly no promotion at all which led to many missing out on it. The album's length is consistent with their previous releases and so is Queenadreena's familiar "garage rock" noisy sound complimented with Katie Jane Garside's unique vocals. The album is filled with very catchy punk riffs and noise filled dirty guitar solos and you would not expect any less from Crispin Gray who has firmly established his excellent guitar sound over the years. Pete Howard provides his drumming skills on this album as well, unfortunately right before leaving the band. The drumming in Queenadreena has always been simple but effective which is the case with many bands that have that "garage rock" sound. When it comes to the bass, in a lot of bands it's just something that is in the background; it's important but not vital. That is not the case here where it's present and always solid and in some tracks provides more than the guitar which creates a very good mix between instruments in the songs. Katie's amazing voice is as strong as ever on this album and I would say that it feels like it hasn't aged a day since "The Butcher and the Butterfly". Both the soothing calm singing on softer tracks like "Night Curse" are present and so are the glass shattering high screams on tracks like "Lick". Her vocal range is quite breathtaking at times and that is no different when it comes to this album. Garside's lyrics are also back in Djinn where it's a mix between some really psychedelic and odd elements as well as some lyrics that feel more personal.  From: https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/44959/QueenAdreena-Djin/