Luciferian Light Orchestra - Taste the Blood of the Altar Wine

 #Luciferian Light Orchestra #doom metal #psychedelic rock #heavy metal #occult rock #psychedelic metal #gothic rock #heavy psych #retro 1970s #Swedish #music video

Luciferian Light Orchestra is a band formed in 2014 by Therion’s Christofer Johnsson. The band performs songs that Johnsson has written over the years but thought that they were too retro sounding for Therion. Christofer always had a big passion for ’70’s music. Luciferian Light Orchestra sounds like a ’70’s version of Therion, mainly inspired by the ’70’s occult vibes and themes. The self-titled album was recorded and mixed by Christofer at Adulruna Studio and and mixed by Lennart Östlund (Led Zeppelin, ABBA) at Polar Studios, Stockholm. In the process of making the record, there was a large group of people involved: 2 drummers, 1 bass player, 5 guitarists, 2 keyboard players, 3 hammond organists, 4 lead singers, 5 backing singers It's not official who contributed on the album and who the members are, but Christofer has revealed that it’s ”a mix of old symphonic rock and progressive musicians, some current Therion members, one ex-Therion member and some artists from other bands. Plus some known and unknown people from Dragon Rouge giving a hand with backing vocals.”  From: https://svartrecords.com/en/product/luciferian-light-orchestra-black-ep/4110

Dead Can Dance - Children Of The Sun

 #Dead Can Dance #Lisa Gerrard #Brendan Perry #neoclassical #darkwave #world music #ambient pop #art rock #avant garde #gothic rock #worldbeat #neo-medieval

Dead Can Dance have been included in a wide variety of musical subgenres within rock. Due to their name, image, and electronic-drum-driven ethereal sound, many defined the band as part of the dark, gothic style when they began to achieve notice in the early 1980s. Indeed, the media have called the work of Dead Can Dance everything from “world music” to “unclassifiable.” Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard, the core of Dead Can Dance, have said their creations come from pure inspiration. “No two people ever make the same music naturally, not if they’re really honest with their music,” Perry told Ann Marie Aubin in Strobe. “What we try to do is draw very deep inside us, in regions that are normally connected with the subconscious - a willful immersion in trance-like states and improvisation, then bring down a whole gamut of influences we don’t really have conscious control over.” Perry and Gerrard met in 1980 in Melbourne, Australia. They decided to name their project Dead Can Dance after a ritual mask from New Guinea. “The mask, though once a living part of a tree, is dead,” Perry explained. “Nevertheless, it has, through the artistry of its maker, been imbued with a life force of its own.”  From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/dead-can-dance 

Dead Can Dance combine elements of European folk music - particularly music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance - with ambient pop and worldbeat flourishes, touching on everything from Gaelic folk and Gregorian chant to avant-garde pop and darkwave. Originating in Australia, the group relocated to London in the early 1980s and signed with 4AD, for which they released a string of acclaimed albums, including the popular 1991 compilation A Passage in Time, which introduced the project's distinctive medieval art-pop to the United States before ceasing operations in 1998. They reunited in 2005 for a short tour, and officially re-formed in 2012 and issued their 12th studio LP, Anastasis, with Dionysus arriving six years later. Over the course of their career, Dead Can Dance have featured a multitude of members, but two musicians have remained at the core of the band - guitarist Brendan Perry and vocalist Lisa Gerrard. Perry had previously been the lead vocalist and bassist for the Australian-based punk band the Scavengers, a group that was never able to land a recording contract. In 1979, the band changed its name to the Marching Girls, but still wasn't able to get a contract. The following year, Perry left the group and began experimenting with electronic music, particularly tape loops and rhythms. In 1981, Perry formed Dead Can Dance with Lisa Gerrard, Paul Erikson, and Simon Monroe. By 1982, Perry and Gerrard decided to relocate to London; Erikson and Monroe decided to stay in Australia. Within a year, Dead Can Dance had signed a record deal with 4AD. In the spring of 1984, they released their eponymous debut album, comprised of songs the pair had written in the previous four years. By the end of the year, the group had contributed two tracks to It'll End in Tears, the first album by This Mortal Coil, and had released an EP called Garden of the Arcane Delights. In 1985, Dead Can Dance released their second album, Spleen and Ideal. The album helped build their European cult following, peaking at number two on the U.K. indie charts. For the next two years, Dead Can Dance were relatively quiet, releasing only two new songs in 1986, both which appeared on the 4AD compilation Lonely Is an Eyesore. Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, the group's third album, appeared in 1986. In 1988, the band released its fourth album, The Serpent's Egg, and wrote the score for the Agustí Villaronga film El Niño de la Luna, which also featured Lisa Gerrard in her acting debut.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dead-can-dance-mn0000225948/biography  

Chelsea Wolfe - Carrion Flowers

 #Chelsea Wolfe #dark folk #gothic rock #experimental rock #noise rock #ethereal wave #industrial #doom metal #black metal #electronic #singer-songwriter #music video

“What I want is to open up. I want to know what’s inside me. I want everybody to open up. I’m like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin—to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I’m sure of it.”
– Henry Miller
Digging beneath the mess of the world to find the beauty underneath is perhaps the most consistent theme in Chelsea Wolfe’s expansive discography—a theme that ties together her ceaseless explorations in unorthodox textures, haunting melodies, and mining the grandeur embedded within ugliness and pain. With her sixth official album Hiss Spun, Wolfe adopts Miller’s quest to become empowered by embracing the mess of the self, to control the tumult of the soul in hopes of reigning in the chaos of the world around us. “I wanted to write some sort of escapist music; songs that were just about being in your body, and getting free,” Wolfe says of the album before extrapolating on the broader scope of her new collection of songs. “You’re just bombarded with constant bad news, people getting fucked over and killed for shitty reasons or for no reason at all, and it seems like the world has been in tears for months, and then you remember it’s been fucked for a long time, it’s been fucked since the beginning. It’s overwhelming and I have to write about it.”
Hiss Spun was recorded by Kurt Ballou in Salem, Massachusetts at the tail end of winter 2017 against a backdrop of deathly quiet snow-blanketed streets and the hissing radiators of warm interiors. While past albums operated on the intimacy of stripped-down folk music (The Grime and the Glow, Unknown Rooms), or the throbbing pulse of supplemental electronics (Pain Is Beauty, Abyss), Wolfe’s latest offering wrings its exquisiteness out of a palette of groaning bass, pounding drums, and crunching distortion. It’s an album that inadvertently drew part of its aura from the cold white of the New England winter, though the flesh-and-bone of the material was culled from upheavals in Wolfe’s personal life, and coming to terms with years of vulnerability, anger, self-destruction, and dark family history. Aside from adding low-end heft with gratuitous slabs of fuzz bass, longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm contributed harrowing swaths of sound collages from sources surrounding the artist and her band in recent years - the rumble of street construction at a tour stop in Prague, the howl of a coyote outside Wolfe’s rural house in California, the scrape of machinery on the floor of a warehouse at a down-and-out friend’s workplace. Music is rendered out of dissonance - bomb blasts from the Enola Gay, the shriek of primates, the fluttering pages of a Walt Whitman book are manipulated and seamlessly integrated into the feral and forlorn songs of Hiss Spun.  From: https://chelseawolfe.net/bio/

Diamanda Galas - Wild Women With Steak Knives

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

“Wild Women with Steak-Knives,” from the tragedy-grotesque Eyes Without Blood by Diamanda Galas, is “a cold examination of unrepentant monomania, the devoration instinct, for which the naive notion of filial mercy will only cock a vestigial grin.”

Wild Women with Steak-Knives (The Homicidal Love Song for Solo Scream)

I want you to get down on your knees
And I want you to ask me:
What is my name
What is my name
What is my name
What is my name
What is my
What is
Your name

I have been looking for a killer
And I'm not talking about meatballs
I am talking about steak
Steak
Steak
Yes...killer

I commend myself to a death of no importance
To the amputation of all seeking hands
Pulling, grasping, with the might of nations
Of sirens, in a never ending bloody-bliss
To the death of mere savagery
And the birth of pearly, white terror

Wild women with veins slashed and wombs spread
Singing songs of the death instinct
In voices yet unheard
Praising nothing but the promise of death on earth
Laughing seas of grinning red, red eyes
All washed ashore and devoured
By hard and unseeing spiders

I commend myself to a death beyond all hope of
Redemption
Beyond the desire for forgetfulness
Beyond the desire to feel all things at every moment
But to never forget
To kill for the sake of killing
And with a pure and most happy heart
Extoll and redeem disease

She was hanging...
And her...
And I asked you: well, well
And ask you: well, well
What would you do
Angel in the house tonight

Swans - Better Than You

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

Swans is an American experimental rock band formed in 1982 by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira. One of the few acts to emerge from the New York City-based no-wave scene and stay intact into the next decade, Swans have become recognized for an ever-changing sound, exploring genres such as noise rock, post-punk, industrial and post-rock. Initially, their music was known for its sonic brutality and misanthropic lyrics. Following the addition of singer, songwriter and keyboardist Jarboe in 1986, Swans began to incorporate melody and intricacy into their music. Jarboe remained the band's only constant member except Gira and semi-constant guitarist Norman Westberg until their dissolution in 1997. In 2010, Gira re-formed the band without Jarboe, establishing a stable lineup of musicians which has toured worldwide and released four albums to critical acclaim. This iteration of the group performed its last shows in November 2017, ending the tour in support of its final album The Glowing Man. Since 2019, Gira has been touring and recording with Swans as "a revolving cast of contributors". Since 1990, all Swans records have been released through Gira's own label, Young God Records.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swans_(band) 

Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight, Tonight

 #Smashing Pumpkins #Billy Corgan #alternative rock #progressive rock #heavy metal #gothic rock #psychedelia #dream pop #electronica #1990s #animated music video

The fourth single from their sprawling double decker dreamscape, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, “Tonight, Tonight” is epic in scope, driven by Billy Corgan’s urgently romantic lyrics, Jimmy Chamberlain’s speed-freak drumroll, and a thirty piece string section pulled from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Being only the second track on the album, it marked a drastic change for the Pumpkins, whose first two discs, Gish and Siamese Dream, although stellar, were more rooted in distortion, solos, and shoegaze. “Tonight, Tonight” was a cornerstone of the band’s expansion, showing off all of Corgan’s newfound, diverse musical tendencies.
And to think its enchanting music video almost never came to be. Directed by the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (who went on to helm Little Miss Sunshine), the original concept was a Busby Berkeley-esque musical, characterized by blankly smiling women in bathing caps performing elaborate swimming patterns and acrobatics. But when the Red Hot Chili Peppers released a nearly identical video for “Aeroplane”, Dayton and Faris had to revisit the drawing board.  After abandoning a third concept involving audience P.O.V., they decided to pay homage to another classic filmmaker, French visionary Georges Melies, and his milestone silent sci-fi film, 1902’s A Trip To The Moon. Most famous for its iconic image of a bullet-shaped rocket ship plunging into the eye of the Man On The Moon, A Trip To The Moon tells the story of a group of astronomers on a lunar voyage. Once on the giant rock, they encounter several insectoid extra terrestrials who capture them for unknown reasons. Luckily for our heroes, they discover that they can destroy the creatures by hitting them with blunt force, using their umbrellas to explode them. They eventually escape and plunge into the sea, thankfully rescued by an ocean steamer.
Although watching the revolutionary film nowadays is a cinematic treat, one can’t help but wish the details were more vivid. Filmmaking was still in its primitive stages, and its surreal nature is often bogged down by the cloudy cinematography. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a masterpiece, but the video for “Tonight, Tonight” brought it to a more fully realized form, bringing all the black and white dreariness into technicolor tints mixed with sepia. Most of the actors remain aesthetically drab while the environment around them glows with fluorescent beauty and a colored cardboard, children’s theatre aesthetic, making for a piece of art that looks fittingly archaic but wonderfully hallucinatory at the same time. It manages to capture the album artwork of Mellon Collie, something that was an inspiration for the directors as it “looked like a silent movie.”
The video follows the same basic skeleton of a storyline. However there are slight artistic changes: the astronomers are replaced with two young lovers (played by SpongeBob Squarepants voice actors Tom Kenny and Jill Talley), the rocketship is substituted with a steampunk blimp, and the humanoid stars are traded in for the Pumpkins themselves, decked out in Victorian evening wear and classical instruments. But the point of the video isn’t accuracy. It isn’t a remake. It simply uses the images and concept of the original film as a springboard for the Pumpkins’ more romantic form of storytelling. During each of the song’s sunbursting string crescendoes, we see the young couple persevere in some shape or form, the most emotional one being when they break free of the ropes that the aliens have used to ensnare them. The fight that ensues isn’t a triumph of scientific achievement as in the original film, but a triumph of our heroes’ relationship.
With the Pumpkins’ combination of both baroque and adolescent rock ‘n roll yearning swirling around you, it’s hard not to get a little teary eyed watching the young couple stick together, even if it is against a horde of extra terrestrials. The fact that Kenny and Talley were married in real life (and still are to this day) only three years before the video was made makes it all the more romantically compelling. As in the original film, they escape to the ocean, only here, they meet a merman who wards off a predatory fish. The merman enlists the help of his mermaid friends and a large octopus to put on an underwater show for the young couple before sending them to the surface in a gigantic bubble.
From: https://consequence.net/2008/11/ridiculously-awesome-music-videos-the-pumpkins-tonight-tonight/ 

Formed in 1988, The Smashing Pumpkins are an alternative rock band from the Windy City consisting of singer/songwriter/dictator Billy Corgan and usually three or four other band members. Corgan is the songwriter, lead vocalist and the only member who's been present throughout the band's entire lifespan. The band is known for a number of things: angsty lyrics, heavy guitars, dense production, epic scope (perhaps best displayed by the music video for "Tonight, Tonight"), and Corgan's nasal singing voice. While their sound began life as hard/alternative rock with experimental influences, they've also worked with elements from grunge, folk, electronica, shoegaze, and gothic rock.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/TheSmashingPumpkins

Sopor Aeternus - Sleep

 #Sopor Aeternus #Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows #Anna-Varney Cantodea #neoclassical #darkwave #dark folk #neo-medieval #neo-baroque #gothic rock #electronic #industrial #occult #performance art #music video

Officially founded in 1989, the German based Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows is one of the last of the very few dark groups/projects in Europe (in fact, on this planet), who have based the sacred trinity of their music, poetry and visual appearance on the explicit emphasis of the highly individual expression of pain, isolation, depression, token suicides and the desperate search for the “sacred reunion”; all conceived and acted out by Sopor’s sole protagonist - the transgendered and utterly beautiful Goddess (and likewise tragically Butoh-esque creature) Anna-Varney Cantodea. Perhaps best described as “introverted exhibitionism”, the holistic concept of Anna-Varney ‘s ritualistic/Jungian art is not necessarily rooted in the grounds of a commonly accepted sense of aesthetics - which is one of the many aspects that gives his/her work its serious and most unique character. Though the music playfully fuses elements of classical, baroque, medieval, and even electronic music, the essence of Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows always remains entirely “gothic”. Despite the fact that to this very day Anna-Varney still refuses to perform her magic(k)al work live in front of a human audience, Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows have long gathered cult status in underground circles worldwide. Strongly recommended to be approached only with an open heart and mind, the profound darkness (and occasionally subversive humour) of Anna-Varney ‘s multi-layered (yet fragile) art is mainly intended as a spiritual healing-process for the wounded soul.  From: https://www.season-of-mist.com/bands/sopor-aeternus/

Diamanda Galas - Skotoseme

 #Diamanda Galas #John Paul Jones #avant-garde #avant-metal #experimental #avant-goth #classical crossover #performance art #operatic #blues #jazz 

I have unscientifically determined that not enough people know about this (I mentioned it to someone I assumed would own a copy and she said “Whaaaaat?”), so off we go: in 1994, Mute records released The Sporting Life, a fantastic collaboration between Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and the amazing avant-garde/operatic vocalist Diamanda Galas. The result was an album too underground for the casual Zeppelin-head, for whom lyrics like “Husband/With this knife/I do you adore” were probably a bit much (plus that crowd was occupied with drooling over Page & Plant around then anyway), yet tamer and more straightforwardly rock than Gala’s fans were used to. But goddamn if the thing doesn’t smoke—and the booklet photos of Jones and Galas cavorting in a convertible with a pretty intimidating knife are good fun, too. Per AllMusic’s Ned Raggett:
Having explored sheer extremity throughout her fascinating range of solo efforts, Galas takes a turn to the slightly more accessible with her collaboration with Jones on The Sporting Life. Her vocal approach is still something which will freak out the unfamiliar listener, so anyone expecting some VH1-friendly switchover needs to think again. Keyboards are once again her other main instrument of choice, with both Hammond organ and piano used. Meanwhile, the Led Zeppelin bassist and arranger handles production as well as guitar and bass, while one Pete Thomas — apparently the Attractions’ drummer on an interesting side effort indeed — handles percussion. While it’s inaccurate to say the results are Galas fronting Led Zeppelin, Thomas does put in some heavy pounding with a hint of John Bonham’s massive stomp.
The album is noteworthy for reasons beyond its unexpected combination of principals. Jones’ playing on the album really doesn’t recall Zeppelin all that much. It actually sounds as though he’d been taking some cues from the Jesus Lizard’s bassist David Sims, and it definitely plays like a product of its time as opposed to a ‘70s throwback, which isn’t too much of a surprise — I’d always sensed that Jones was a more musically adventurous Zep than Jimmy Page, who himself was hardly a slouch in that department. Check out the opening track, “Skótoseme” (the title is Greek for “kill me”). That rawness and sparse instrumentation continues with “Do You Take This Man,” from which the above “Husband/With this knife” lyric is quoted. It’s pretty much all like that, really. Next is a version of the old Percy Sledge tune “Dark End of the Street,” rendered just with drums, organ, and Galas’ bottomlessly expressive voice. Galas and Jones spoke with Bomb magazine’s Michael Albo about the choice to keep the instrumentation minimal:

DG But, I had heard Led Zeppelin for years not necessarily knowing who it was. You know what I mean, one of those things like, (gasp) “How riveting, I like that, I could sing with that.” Especially if you’re talking about Jones-Bonham, the power rhythm section. John Paul Jones is legendary. I’d been creating tapes and working very, very remotely with musicians. Usually it would go into a tape thing and then it would turn into some concerts. So when we talked, we talked about doing live performances together from the beginning, which was a little different for me. You’ve got voice, hammond organ, drums, amp, that’s it. The power trio.

MA So from the very beginning it was a very solid, spare arrangement, not too studio.

DG It couldn’t have been; not the way John Paul plays, not the way I play. What do we need all that for? It would just get in the way. It would just be like having another bitch on stage. I mean why?

MA There are no lead guitars in this album

JJ The only guitar on this is the lap steel on the song “Last Man Down”. There’s no regular guitar anywhere else on the record.

MA Which I think is absolutely incredible. You know, when I was becoming a cognizant music listener, I didn’t know Led Zeppelin’s work as much as I knew John Paul Jones’s as a producer/arranger; and Diamanda, you were releasing your work as I became interested in the “avant-garde.” So I am interested in how your audiences, the fans of Led Zep and those of Diamanda, are going to merge. What sparks will come out of this?

JJ Well, it’s not as if Zeppelin was exactly a rock band. We were a blues band base and there were a lot of excursions and journeys into unusual areas. So anybody familiar with that shouldn’t be surprised by anything we do. With this record, there’s still definitely the energy that is found in the best of rock and roll, and there’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t been heard before. Nobody else is doing anything like this.

From: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/led_zeppelins_john_paul_jones_diamanda_galas

Having explored sheer extremity throughout her fascinating range of solo efforts, Diamond Galas takes a turn to the slightly more accessible in her collaboration with John Paul Jones on The Sporting Life. Her vocal approach is still something which will freak out the unfamiliar listener, so anyone expecting some VH1-friendly switchover needs to think again. Keyboards are once again her other main instrument of choice, with both Hammond organ and piano used. Meanwhile, the Led Zeppelin bassist and arranger handles production as well as guitar and bass, while one Pete Thomas, the Attractions' drummer, handles percussion. While it's inaccurate to say the results are Galas fronting Led Zeppelin, Thomas does put in some heavy pounding with a hint of John Bonham's massive stomp. Hints of gently majestic arrangements here and there help draw a connection further. On the flip side, Thomas and Jones' rhythms often have a crisp urban funk touch at points, sounding more no-wave than heavy metal.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-sporting-life-mw0000117925

Diamanda Galas - The Litanies of Satan

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

Diamanda Galas is the kind of singular artist who seems to escape category and time. Her music - usually a mix of voice, piano, and minimal electronics - is more closely aligned to blues and jazz than the classical music she’s often roped in with. And the subject matter of her work is most often dark: genocide, war, abuse, torture. A couple of her records reference the devil and hell and Satan. She once recorded a spoken-word incantation complete with burning witch sounds called "Let Us Praise the Masters of Slow Death." And the one book she wrote is called "The Shit of God. " All that said, her work is ultimately uplifting. This is because Galas doesn’t work in a vacuum. She sings about real-world evils, and you can tell she wants to find solutions: She was once arrested inside New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989 as part of a demonstration opposing the Church’s stance on AIDS education and distributing condoms in public schools. She’s also an active collaborator, someone who seems to believe in community. She’s worked with avant-garde composers like Iannis Xenakis and John Zorn, but also with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, synthpop vets Erasure, and industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten—and her voice has been used by at least one black metal band.  From: https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/9891-the-music-that-made-diamanda-galas/